The opposition in West Bengal is perfectly justified in demanding Mamata Banerjee’s resignation for heading a corrupt administration. It is indeed a major hazard in politics, where voters may decide that any alternative is better than a corrupt regime that fleeces the vulnerable and then fails to provide a cover for its misdemeanours.
By taking responsibility for her men—ministers, bureaucrats and middlemen who took cash and promised tenured jobs to over 25,000 young people who had applied for a teaching career in state-run and aided schools—and promising that she would find a solution that does not take away the jobs, as ordered by the Supreme Court, Banerjee has played the opposition in a counter-move that’s quintessentially a classic art of the possible manoeuvre.
Ever since Banerjee declared that a settlement would be found, the opposition finds itself excluded from the dialogue between the state government and sacked teachers. The settlement must happen sooner rather than later for two simple reasons: the school calendar cannot be stopped and the schools need teachers and non-teaching staff to remain open.
The ‘tainted’ and ‘manipulated’ recruitment—descriptions used by the Supreme Court—created two categories of teachers. The ‘qualified’, or the majority recruited on merit, and the rest recruited through the racket. Whenever a temporary arrangement and the permanent solution happen, it will be a negotiation between Banerjee and the aggrieved teachers, who appear ready to clutch at any straws on offer, because the stakes for them are very high.
Compelled by circumstances to recognise that less than best is better than nothing, the qualified teachers have opted to trust Banerjee to find a solution. The fundamentals are brutal—of the 23 lakh candidates that sat for the recruitment exam in 2016, 25,753 were recruited, of which the Supreme Court order affects 25,327. According to Bikash Bhattacharya, the lawyer and Rajya Sabha member from the CPI(M) who initiated the litigation. 8,324 of the latter lot of teachers are ‘unqualified’ for different reasons.
The recruitment racket reveals the nature of political government, where the boundaries between politics and government are blurred. It is also an instance where a political fight alleging corruption does not yield the expected outcomes. The case also needs to be dissected to figure out why the opposition, riding the moral high horse, faces tougher odds than Banerjee, who acknowledges wrongdoing and then goes about setting things right. Her solutions may be unpalatable to the opposition and the voters who disapprove, but not to those who have handed power to her in three consecutive elections.
The reason Banerjee’s assurances seem plausible is that she has a track record. In the R G Kar Medical College and Hospital rape-and-murder case, the protesting junior doctors were not victimised by the state government. She sacked and transferred the health department’s bosses, as the protesting doctors had demanded. In the present case, she has maintained that she would not sack the recruited teachers, which is why the state government appealed against the Calcutta High Court order of 2023 and went to the Supreme Court. She has now gone back to the Supreme Court to buy time.
Therefore, when Banerjee stepped in after the top court order sacking the 25,753 teachers, she appropriated for herself the role of their champion. Split as the sacked teachers are over the ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ being lumped together, the fact that Banerjee has assured them that no jobs will be terminated and there will be “no break in service” is the reprieve the qualified wanted.
From the prime minister to Suvendu Adhikari, the BJP leader of the opposition in West Bengal, the cash-for-jobs racket became a core issue in the 2021 state assembly election campaign. The subsequent litigation yielded high-visibility pay dirt. The high court-ordered CBI investigation led to a flood of leaks of shocking visuals of raids and recovery of property, jewellery and stashes of cash. Banerjee’s erstwhile confidante Partha Chatterjee, the former state cabinet minister currently in CBI custody, was allegedly involved.
By 2024, the charges of racketeering by Banerjee’s trusted lieutenants had ballooned to include cattle and coal smuggling rackets, followed by the revelations of a nexus between politics and crime in Sandeshkhali.
The teachers’ recruitment racket and Banerjee stepping in to take control of the narrative is a game of hazards that both sides are playing—the difference may be that she seems better at the art of the possible than the righteous opposition. Despite all the allegations, the opposition’s expectations in West Bengal have been consistently contradicted by Banerjee’s durability, despite her drawbacks. The reason is perhaps the unstated understanding between the electorate and Banerjee that what she has to offer may be less than the best, but she can be trusted to deliver on what she promises.
Shikha Mukerjee
Senior journalist based in Kolkata
(Views are personal)