At the beginning of June, when a teacher at a government-sponsored school in Parokata gram panchayat of Alipurduar district in northern West Bengal applied for a loan from Uttarbanga Kshetriya Gramin Bank, a regional rural bank sponsored by Central Bank of India, he was asked to produce a unique document—a certificate of passing the state’s Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). The branch manager later told the media that they were taking no risks while disbursing loans to teachers in government -aided and -sponsored schools, and were therefore asking for the TET result.
In mid-June, a woman in Cooch Behar district’s Nishiganj area sat on dharna in front of the house of a college lecturer. She alleged that she was having a romantic affair with the lecturer but he stopped taking her calls since she lost her school teaching job following a high court order.
By the end of the month, the matrimonial columns in a Bengali daily featured an advertisement saying that parents of a woman in Uttar Dinajpur district were looking for a ‘suitable groom’—that excluded school teachers.
For ages, school teachers have remained a favourite as prospective grooms or brides in Bengali middle class society. But a chain of events that unfolded since the end of last year has so far resulted in the Calcutta high court terminating the services of over 1,200 employees in state government -aided and -sponsored schools, terming their…
