Government to increase retirement age of college, university teachers: Mamata

Besides increasing their retirement age, the government would also include teachers in West Bengal Health Scheme so that they and their family members can avail health insurance, the chief minister said.

Mamata’s announcement and her specific courting of teachers is not incidental. Teachers constitute a core electorate in Bengal, and perhaps more importantly for the party, have since the 1950s been core supporters of the Left.

In 1954-’56, the teachers of Bengal, with Left support, launched a movement to demand subsistence salaries. The salary then varied from Rs 62 to Rs 96 a month, and went up to a maximum of Rs 112.

As one senior Left leader put it, “The teachers had no job security either, and the bourgeois state government had rejected the legitimate demands of these teachers and unleashed police repression against them.

A massive anti-Congress struggle then grew up against the move. Further, a statewide students’ agitation grew up when the Phillips commission called for curtailment of higher education.”

This, along with the food movement of 1958 and student agitation the same year, would lay the foundation for the Left Front government in Bengal.

Mamata said, “Bengal’s brain is a cultural brain and not a criminal brain. Why should our students run to Chicago and Harvard? We can create Chicago and Harvard-like universities here.”

She added that for part-time and other contractual staff of all government-aided colleges and universities, Swasthya Sathi scheme would be launched under which they would get medical insurance up to Rs 5 lakh, she said.

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