It seems former Presidency College principal Amal Mukhopadhyay has summarised the state of education in Bengal by calling the dumping of the centralised on line admission system as a retrograde step.He said,“It's sad that while the rest of the country is moving towards on line system, our state has chosen to do otherwise. Even if it takes time to get the system in place, it shouldn't be scrapped. This is the system of the future,“ .
Bratya Basu's removal as education minister and scrapping of the centralised on line admission system indicate the clout Trinamool Chhatra Parishad wields,as Basu had initiated the project after getting the nod from chief minister Mamata Banerjee. The CM herself had made an announcement at the foundation laying ceremony of the second campus of Presidency University. But the newly appointed education minister Partha Chatterjee made a U-turn, while citing systemic faults but party insiders say he was under tremendous pressure from TMCP to withdraw on line admissions because it would end union control over admissions.
Though TMCP President Shankudeb Panda denied this, saying: “We have not put pres sure on the government. They have decided whatever they wanted to. We had no role to play in introducing or scrapping the integrated online admission system.“
But the Left controlled SFI state committee president Madhuja Sen Roy said: “The minister has changed but not the government.When students are looking forward towards hassle free online admission, the government suddenly saddles them with the same old system where they will have to stand in long queues.“ She clarified that SFI was not opposed to on line admission and said. “We wanted manual system to remain too in villages. Partha Chatterjee has given approval to the seasonal business conducted by TMCP in colleges.“
JU professor Partha Pratim Biswas felt the decision had more to do with politics than education. “If indeed they had a technological issue, the decision wouldn't have been announced a day before the higher secondary results. It was a year ago that the (then) education minister had declared that the on line system would be in place in 2014. Three months ago, the CM said the same. This U-turn indicates, they had other considerations. He said,"Unless we have transparency in student admission and teacher recruitment, the education system can't improve,“ .
INDIA HONEST had visualised lot of hope from the "Porivartan" motivated Didi's government marking a basic change in the future of education in Bengal by going ahead, but it cannot resist by accepting the views of Debashish Sarkar, a government college teacher, who said, “Bratya Basu had announced a positive move. We were happy . The integrated on line ad mission system would have been a time saver for both parents and students. It would have been transparent.
He added further that now if the government falls back on the earlier system, the same things will continue. We have often seen student unions pressurising college authorities to deviate from the merit list. Guardians have complained that candidates were forced to donate money to a section of influential students.
IH sees merit in the allegation by another worried official who admitted,“With on line admission, there was no way the merit list could have been tampered with. The unions would not have been able to extort money in lieu of admission form distribution.One of the main sources of income for various college unions was distributing forms. Students who stood in queue had to donate some amount in the union funds otherwise they were threatened."
IH asks now, "Can we assure the parents and students even after all this that our future in education is bright and advancing, if regressive politics still dominates it ? It will remain a question unanswered for a much longer time ".
Bengal must come out soon from the shock resulted by the logging out itself from the centralised on line admission in colleges, that deprived nearly 2 lakh students of a single-window system that would have ushered in transparency , and would have rewarded merit by making the process hassle-free for the young aspirants in their first step for higher education, an area long dominated and excelled by students from Bengal.