Will 2024 see the end of the continuing crisis in the education sector in West Bengal or will it get aggravated further with none of the opposing parties ready to budge from their respective stands? The latest tussle has surfaced over the announcement by the University Grants Commission (UGC) about the discontinuation of the recognition of M Phil as a degree. State education minister Bratya Basu has said that his department will not follow the UGC guidelines on this count and instead go ahead as per the advice of the department’s own experts.
The minister’s stand will not be tenable in the long term from both the legal and academic points of view. On a subject like education, which is in the concurrent list, the state government cannot take any decision that goes against the Central Act in the matter. Even legal experts opine that if any State Act or amendment in the Act has a factor of a tussle with a Central Act in a matter related to any concurrent list subject, the clause of the Central Act will be supreme in the matter.
Even from the academic point of view the logic of the education department in opposing the UGC’s directive on M Phil is untenable. For argument’s sake even after the UGC notification if the system of recognising M Phil as a degree continues only in West Bengal, what will those who get the degree gain out of it? For those getting the fresh M Phil it will be nothing but a useless piece of paper when the question of national recognition will arise.
The second crisis is the ongoing tussle between the education department and Governor C V Ananda Bose over the issue of the appointment of interim vice- chancellors for these universities operating without a permanent vice-chancellor for a long time. Currently, ten state universities are operating without a functional head as the six-month tenure of their interim vice-chancellors appointed by the government is already over and because of some legal complication the Governor is neither able to reinstate them or arrange for their replacement.
Even the state universities are running with interim vice-chancellors in the absence of permanent V-Cs, as the education department is unwilling to grant functional autonomy to the interim V-Cs. The education department is not even ready to allow the interim vice-chancellors to convene meetings of the working committees or senates or syndicates of these universities, as a result of which the university authorities are unable to take decisions regarding the academic future of their students. One such crucial decision that is being held up relates to the new examination pattern in view of the changed syllabus at the graduation level. In this political tug of war, the ultimate sufferers are the students.
