People's Democracy

Tripura Teachers Protest BJP’s Education Policy

THE Tripura Government Teachers' Association (H B Road) is organising nowadays massive marches and meetings of school teachers in all the four districts of the state. The series of actions is in response to the call of countrywide protest actions given by the School Teacher Federation of India (STFI) against the NDA government's decision to introduce a divisive and devastative curriculum in schools all over the country. The protest action in Agartala was organised on September 30, with the spirited participation of a large number of teachers and science organisation activists hailing from Khowai, Sonamura, Bishalgarh and Sadar subdivisions of West Tripura.

The teachers, male and female, started gathering in Rabindra Shatabarshiki Bhavan compound of Agartala from 10 a m on September 30 in connection with the action programme. Then they took out a massive march carrying banners and festoons, paraded through the streets of the town and reached the Town Hall in the neighbourhood of the assembly building. The entire area surged with the spirited protesters and reverberated with slogans. Soon the town hall overflowed with them. The audience of the hall meeting spilled over from the two-storied auditorium into the corridors and even to the adjoining streets.

Addressing the meeting as the chief guest, education minister Anil Sarkar said the BJP government is making an all-out attack on education as a long-term strategy of its fascist fundamentalism so as to divide people on communal lines and to subjugate the country to imperialism. At the same time, in Tripura, a grim conspiracy has been hatched to silence and blunt the edge of people’s protest against these moves by killing the leaders of the Left and democratic forces, almost every day. The future of the state as well as of the country is hanging in the balance and depends on whether we are able to combat this catastrophic conspiracy of the BJP government, he cautioned.

STFI secretary Arun Bhattacharjee said that in a situation where the BJP government has plotted to turn into bigots an entire generation through its education policy, there remains no alternative but to fight a pitched battle against this design all over the country and immediately. (INN)