People's Democracy

Left Sweeps College, University Teachers Elections

B Prasant

LEFT candidates, fighting under the banner of the Society for the Democratisation of Education, swept the elections to the executive committee of the West Bengal College and University Teachers’ Association (WBCUTA). The elections saw the various panels put up by the Trinamul Congress, the BJP, the Pradesh Congress, and the SUCI suffer a massive rout.

The elections are held on a proportional representation basis. The teachers of the non-government colleges and of the universities elect a general committee for each college/university. The numerical strength of the teachers in their respective institutions determines the number of members of the general committees.

The members of the general committees then cast their votes to elect the executive committee of the WBCUTA. This years polls recorded one of the highest percentage of turn out. The elections also saw the members on the Left panel poll on an average around 75 per cent of the valid votes-- a figure that is the highest in recent years.

The WBCUTA is the only teachers’ organisation in the country where the constitution stipulates that top six members of the "losers’ panel" would be considered elected to the executive committee. Abiding by the stipulation, the Left put up a panel, and this consisted, as in the past, of 18 teachers. However, the college and university teachers elect 24 members of the executive committee. Had the Left put up candidates for all 24 seats, there is no doubt that it would have overwhelmed the opposition completely.

The election campaign in the run up to the polls was marred by ugly acts of mud slinging indulged in by the teachers swearing allegiance to the Trinamul Congress, in particular.

The Left panel’s campaign plank was the positive achievements of the teachers’ movement over the decades and the years since the process of democratisation started in the wake of the sweeping to office of a Left Front government way back in 1977.

Following the elections, the WBCUTA went on to organise its 75th Conference and Annual General Meeting in the township of Balurghat, in northern Bengal, in the district of south Dinajpore. Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee spoke at the WBCUTA conference.

In his address to the conference, Bhattacharjee said that "every teacher contributes in a meaningful way to the process of nation-building as he/she is engaged in the noble task of building good human beings."

Urging upon the teachers to continue to be social activists, Bhattacharjee asked for their participation in the process of mobilising the right kind of opinion on the wide variety of social and economic issues currently confronting the nation.

The Bengal chief minister recalled the manner in which the Left Front government could work towards enhancing the dignity and honour of the teaching community while looking to organising their salaries on a stable and rational basis. Calling upon the teachers to work towards further improvements in the education system, Bhattacharjee iterated that only a tiny minority of the teachers of Bengal would agree to respond to the imperatives of privatisation and go in for imparting large-scale private tuition.

The chief minister also touched upon such issues as that concerning part-time teachers and teachers employed on contract basis. He also assured the conference that he would look personally into some of the lingering problems of the teaching communities like the timely release of pay packets and of pensions, especially in the districts.

The 75th Conference of the WBCUTA elected Anil Bhattacharya of the Acharya Prafulla Chandra College as its general secretary and Subir Mukherjee of the Serampore College as its president. Bhattacharya, a long-time activist in the teachers’ movement, was the outgoing general secretary of WBCUTA.

The conference, which was inaugurated by former principal Atul Chakravarty of the Balurghat College, saw the sessions presided over by the noted scientist Dr. Amarnath Bhaduri. Among other who addressed the conference were: Bengal LF government’s higher education minister, Satya Sadhan Chakravarty, AIFUCTO general secretary Vijay Kumar, and LF ministers Narayan Biswas, Biswanath Chaudhuri, and Srikumar Mukherjee.