TOEING the line of aggressive privatisation being pursued by the centre, the BJP-led government in Tripura is taking one after another measure to hand over various departments and services to private hands. Now it is the turn of the education department to be axed. In the name of ‘Policy to Regulate and Encourage Private Participation in School Education in Tripura’, notified by the education department on December 2, the government has practically taken a step to destroy the education system in the state and hand over the present education infrastructure built up bit-by-bit by the Left Front government, to private businesses.

Except for a handful of private schools, most of the schools from primary to college levels in the state are managed by the government. Currently, government schools are running with an acute shortage of teachers that is badly affecting the academic curriculum. Many schools at primary level are run by a single teacher and it is anybody’s guess how the students in those schools are getting lessons. It is believed that to unburden the liability of recruiting teachers in these schools, the government has decided to hand over the schools to the private hands. The private companies which would intend to take over the schools certainly are not charitable institutions. They would want profitability. Thus, if this decision is implemented, the students belonging to lower income groups, particularly of SC, ST and religious minority families, will suffer extremely. Doors of schools will be closed for many students. Universal education shall cease to exist in the state. There will be discrimination in rendering basic education in the society. More importantly, the state’s literacy rate that picked up to the national level during the Left Front regime would abruptly come down.

In another notification, the government has announced a scheme, named ‘Vidyajyoti Schools Under Mission 100’, which is also a discriminatory one. According to the scheme, there will be 100 priority schools to be selected mainly from urban areas and advanced teaching method will be introduced in those schools, leaving several thousand schools mainly in rural areas under the traditional teaching method. The students of these priority schools must pay several thousand rupees per year, including Rs 1,000 as examination fee and other fees usually charged by CBSE. If this scheme is implemented, it will also set in a discriminatory system of education in the state dividing the students into two sections – a small section having capacity to afford, as ‘privileged’ and the vast others as ‘unprivileged’. 

The CPI(M), SFI, TSU and teachers’ organisations have vehemently opposed both the decisions of the government and demanded their roll-back. The organisations demanded urgent recruitment of the required number of teachers to remove the present deadlock in functioning of schools.

TAKING AWAY RIGHT TO ORGANISE

The government recently declared that the fire-fighting workers shall not have the right to form organisation, under the plea that they are rendering essential service. Fire-fighters have been enjoying the right to form organisation since the inception of this department, and it was there even during the emergency. In the history of the state, it may be said, they have a reputation of quick response and commendable performance. Nobody ever raised any complaint that their services were disrupted for their attachment with an organisation. The chief minister in a public meeting had openly blamed employees for coming late, playing cards inside the office and gossiping on duty hours, etc. Going a step ahead, the deputy speaker of the Tripura legislative assembly directed the BJP workers in an open meeting to grind the bones of the employees who dare to raise any demand to the government. Already there are imminent threats of applying ESMA on the employees if they press for benefit of the Seventh Pay Commission or release of dearness allowance, etc. Most of the employees’ organisations and the CPI(M) have sharply criticised this authoritarian decision to deprive the employees of their democratic right to form an organisation and demanded revocation of this notification. 

BIG SCAM IN MGNREGA

A big scam has come to light. The audit agency appointed by the central government reveals that during the last 45 months of the BJP-IPFT alliance regime, an amount of about Rs 183 crore was either misappropriated or deviated from the schedule course. That apart, pending wage to MGNREGA workers is near about Rs 2 crore at present. Year-wise misappropriation and deviation of MGNREGA fund is as follow:

          2018-19       Rs 105,86,00,000/-

          2019-20       Rs   38,13,95,000/-

          2020-21       Rs   38,26,65,000/-

          2021-22       Rs        66,33,799/- 

          Total           Rs 182,92,93,799/-

After this huge financial scam came to light, the government surprisingly neither lodged an FIR nor took any proactive measure to book the mastermind, but suspended two lower-level employees, one each in Sepahijala and Unakoti districts.

There is a provision of conduct of social audit of financial activities in each and every gram panchayat and village committees. After revelation of such a huge scam, following the direction of the Central Rural Development Department, the government has given appointment to the post of director, social audit department, who showed serious leniency in performing audit in panchayat and villages committees. Out of the total of 1178 gram panchayat and village committees, till now social audit was conducted in only 84 gram panchayat and villages, or 7.13 per cent of the total. This giant financial scam is a pointer that despite its rhetoric of transparency, the government is working overtime to abet and indulge in siphoning of government exchequer.