The fight between the central government and Mamata Banerjee’s West Bengal government has reached the education department.
State Education Minister Bratya Basu on Thursday announced that the state government has decided to formulate its own state education policy and will not implement the central government’s national education policy.
Bratya Basu said, “The central government, like many other aspects, is trying to force the NEP on various state governments. However, we do not agree with this and therefore we have decided to formulate our own education policy for the state.”
A committee of 10 members has been formed to report on this within the next two months. These include Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, Columbia University teacher, historian and former Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member, Sugata Bose former Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Suranjan Das and Sanskrit language expert, Nrishina Prasad Bhaduri among others.
The state education department told the committee, before submitting the said report within the next two months, it will also study the independent education policies followed by non-BJP state governments like Maharashtra and Kerala.
Bhaduri said that the state government has the right to have its own education policy. Through the central government’s reasoning, the National Education Policy aims to increase the ratio of total enrollment in higher education including vocational education from 26.3% in 2018 to 50 percent by 2035.