Rural Students Doing Well in Exams

Raises Hackles of Bourgeoisie Media 

B Prasant

RESULTS of the Madhyamik or Secondary Examinations are out.  Once again, the results could be published in good time and this is not a small matter.  Given the large number of students who appear for these examinations, and considering the wide array of subjects and subject combinations that exist and continue to grow every year, the sheer logistics and management problems involved are quite formidable.

For a section of the corporate media, Bengali and English, however, there is cause for introspection on the character of the merit list of students who sat for the examinations.  The scions of the bourgeois press are worried about the reasons why, once more, the boys and girls of the muffassil and the suburbs have done as well as they did. 

At least one Bengali fortnightly, Desh, of the Ananda Bazaar group, has hinted editorially in its most recent issue that the marks must have been manipulated, and in a planned manner, to produce the results of the Madhyamik Examinations for this year.  The argument, convoluted and one-sided, offered to prop up this odd hypothesis seems to be that the Bengal Left Front government is fast losing its rural base and that by highlighting the students from the rural stretches and small townships, the government is trying to showcase rural progress before the people of the state, especially of the non-metropolis areas, with an eye on the upcoming elections to the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha. 

The tone and tenor of the argument of Desh, ostensibly a literary magazine, has been taken up by several Bengali and English language dailies in a somewhat more unsophisticated manner, and who carry on from where Desh has left off.  Here, they argue venomously, editorially and otherwise, that this is an undeniable proof that the Left Front, led by the hated Communists, is anti-city, anti-urbanisation, and from then on, by easy steps, anti-industrialisation, and anti-modernisation.  It is even contended that the urban population is being ‘punished’ in this fashion because of the manner in which the cities and townships have supported the opposition in the different polls of late. 

These churlish attempts to embarrass the Left Front government are not difficult to rebut. Had these worthies bothered to check the progress achieved in the development and dissemination of education in Bengal from 1977, and had the courage to compare and contrast the education scenario prevailing in the state under the various Congress regimes with that in existence after the Left Front swept into office in 1977, they would have realised that the urban centre of attention of the previous administrations has not been replaced by a rural focus. The emphasis now is definitively on the over-all growth of education in the state as such. 

They should also note the very important role played by the constant and consistent literacy, and post-literacy, campaign-movement that has provided a welcome boost of the literacy rate of the state, especially since the 1980’s.  They could have also bothered to find out the number of educational institutions that the Left Front government has set up in and outside of Kolkata and the Kolkata metro area from 1977-78.  A balance in the growth profile of the urban-rural areas is what the Left Front government aims at and it is certainly an integral part of this policy to ensure that the neglected sectors are brought inside the purview of the general matrix of plan formulation and plan implementation of the education department. 

The other point raised about the voting pattern being reflected in the ‘geographical shift’ in these results is more easily answered.  The results of the recent rural polls and municipal elections have highlighted well how the popular support behind the Left Front government has continued to grow apace. 

Facing up to the truth is a formidable proposition for some.  But that does not mean that our compatriots in the corporate media should not have a go at it, if only occasionally, and suiting the will of their political puppet masters.