History of SACTWA
State Aided College Teachers' Welfare Association(SACTWA) is one of the largest and most successful teachers' association working towards the betterment and welfare of the society by contributing to higher education in West Bengal. The value of knowledge is a retrieval practice in the ambit of societal culture. The association has "a strange and eventful history" to quote William Shakespeare in his play As you Like It where he traces the seven stages of a man's life. Similarly this association has also evolved and is currently on the third stage or the phase of youth when it is strongly determined to uplift the society with vigour and faith. The members are it's roots and it has spread out it's branches from the college unit level, traversing the district unit to the state unit. It is founded on the basis of indomitable spirit, honesty, democracy and unity. Let's cruise through its evolution right from the outset till date.
What we now call an association was an individual vision, dream of a singular person named Gopal Chandra Ghosh who was, like many other Guest Lecturers deprived of minimum honorarium, felt victim to the uncertainty regarding job and future, at times humiliated. He had like all others an excruciating pain but he had a determination, courage and fire like no other to change the scenario and claim all that he deserves. He is from Midnapore, a soil which gave birth to revolution, a home of visionaries and brave souls who knew to fight. As great people say, first comes the thought, the vision and then comes the action.
The association has followed both the path of appeal, appeasement and non violent demands and desperate movement on the streets of Kolkata at College Square in the form of dharna, fasting and voicing demands for the basic right of existence and respect of the Guest Lecturers. Let's take a vicarious tour of the unrelenting determination and consistent effort of the association lasting almost a decade.
A letter was written by our beloved Gopal da without the mention of any designation and it was published on 'Sangbad Pratidin' newspaper on 27th February, 2012 and it's main theme was to eradicate the inequality which the contractual teachers were facing. After the change of power in 2011, a team comprising of two members went to Bikashbhaban with data collected from 5 odd colleges to meet the Education Minister of that time, professor Bratya Basu along with the MLA of Egra the late Mr. Samaresh Das. At that time, there was no existence of the present organisation. However, Professor Bratya Basu said that a good news was imminent. In the same year(2012), on 9th March the advisory board of Higher Education led by Professor Abhirup Sarkar submitted a recommendation consisting of 8 points for the upliftment of Higher Education and the seventh point was to create an equal service condition for the Part Time Teachers(PTT), Contractual Whole time Teachers(CWTT) and Guest Lecturers(GL). However things didnot improve and the need of an organisation was felt. Therefore, representatives of 50 colleges of Midnapore assembled at Lodha Smriti Bhaban and an organisation was formed namely "Paschimbanga Contractual and Guest Lecturers' Association". This name seemed prudent as there was a possibility of West Bengal being renamed as "Paschimbanga" by the government and also various colleges named these lecturers in various ways such as contractual, visiting, new part time teacher etc. This association traversed on the path of request and appeal to the government from 2012 to December 2015. During this time the organisation wrote applications to the principals of all the colleges (570 colleges) of West Bengal. Then it appealed in written form 3 consecutive times to all the Vice Chancellors, College Inspectors of all the universities. It also wrote applications to the chairman and all the members of West Bengal Higher Education Council and to each of the 16 members of the advisory committee of Higher Education headed by Professor Dr. Abhirup Sarkar. The organisation also submitted a deputation to the chairman and all 10 members of the standing committee of Bidhan Sabha led by Ashish Banerjee. Apart from this an application was sent to all 294 MLAs of West Bengal irrespective of any political colour. Like this the association spread it's demand to every nook and corner of Higher Education in West Bengal. The fourth pillar of democracy is the media. There was a need for this democratic association to utilize the power of media and this happened for the very first time on 27/7/2012 when the demand of the association was printed on "Khabar 365" which recorded the urgent need to impart equal respect to the Guest Lecturers of West Bengal. Then many articles regarding the need for eradication of inequalities of which the Guest Lecturers are victims were published in quick successions. On 21.8.2012 an article was published in Bartaman newspaper's editorial column titled "Contractual and Guest Lecturer." Then on 10.9.2012 in Ajkal newspaper's editorial column an article was published headlined "Contractual and Guest Lecturers' inequality." Then on 11.12.2012 an article was published in Ei Samay newspaper's editorial column titled "Contractual and Guest Lecturer." Next on 12.2.2013 an article was published in 'Dainik Chetana' which is a local newspaper headlined "Demand for equal respect to Contractual and Guest Lecturers." Then on 30.4.2013 an article was published on the editorial column of 'Bhorer Barta' headlined " An appeal to respected Education Minister." Then a further article was published on 26.8.2013 in 'Ajkal' newspaper titled "Guest Lecturers' 7 phases" Then on 15.10.2015 again in 'Ajkal' newspaper an article was published headlined "Guest Lecturers' open letter." Lastly in Anandabazar Patrika's editorial column an article comprising of different applications was published titled "Guest Lecturer" on 12.2.2019. Thus in this way a public base of the demand made by the association was established, leaflets were distributed and gradually an exploited and persecuted part of the society associated with teaching understood their existence and gradually began dreaming of a new dawn where they have stability, minimum respect and are free from exploitation. Here it is important to state that on 27.8.2013 Bidhansabha's standing committee of Higher Education led by professor Jiban Mukhopadhyay submitted a recommendation supporting our demands at Bidhansabha. The next recommendation came from the Vice Chancellor of Vidyasagar University. VC Professor Ranjan Chakraborty as the pioneer VC formed a representative committee of 4 members who discussed with PCGLA(the name of SACTWA at that time) on 27.3.2014 and agreed with all the demands made by the organisation. Then he passed it in the EC(Executive Council) of the University and sent recommendation to the Vice Chancellors of all the universities of West Bengal, the Higher Education Council and the Principal Secretary of that time, Bibek Kumar stating that the inequality and exploitation of the Guest Lecturers must be ended. This was the policy of non violence that the organisation adopted initially.
Then the organisation felt a dire need of an active uprising ahead of the Assembly Elections of West Bengal in 2016. On the fateful day of 29th December 2015 the association decided to initiate the movement which was historic. A peaceful sit-down strike was executed on the coldest day of that year. The members of the association concentrated under the statue of Vidyasagar with no roof over their head and passed the whole night determined to succeed. On 4.1.2016 the association headed for Rajbhavan to submit a deputation to the governor, Kesharinath Tripathi and on their way they had a fiasco with the police where many of the petitioners were wounded. The association persisted with the movement for a record sixty four(64) days.No other teachers' organisation erstwhile had any record of such a lengthy movement with no stability of service. On 18.2.2016 was another conspicuous day when the huge number of members of the association set out for a rally which can be called a 'Long March' starting from College Square to Bikashbhaban. It is needless to mention that there was a great administrative resistance which the members of the association had to resist. Then there was a plan for 'Nabanna Abhiyaan' which the state administration resisted by barricading the college square area. The association was then compelled to end the movement after 'Bidhan sabha Abhiyaan' as the code of conduct was enforced by The Election Commission. During this entire duration of relay fasting and concentration, many renowned personalities like the leader of the opposition party, Dr. Suryakanta Mishra visited the stage of the fasting activists and he delivered a speech on stage and also wrote a letter to the Education minister supporting the organisation. Among others there were renowned personalities like Samarendranath Ghosh who was also a member of the standing committee of Bidhan Sabha from CPIM, Tarun Kanti Naskar, the only MLA from SUCI and also a standing committee member, Congress leaders like Manas ranjan Bhuinya, Arunabha Ghosh visited the activists. The only representative from BJP, Shamik Bhattacharya and the only representative from DSP professor Probodh Chandra Sinha also visited the stage of the organisation. WBCUTA which is almost a century old teachers' organisation also supported WBGLA(the name of the organisation was revised to WBGLA from the earlier name PCGLA) and the state committee members of WBCUTA also visited the fasting stage of the activists of WBGLA.
After the elections, the government did not allow any organization to uphold any demand. So the organization focused more on strengthening itself internally. It started with fortifying the organization on the district level. First North Bengal conference was held at Alipurduar. There were several conferences in districts like Purulia, Jangalmahal, Malda, Murshidabad etc. Many eminent personalities were present at these conferences like the Purulia district president at Purulia conference, minister Swapan Debnath at Burdwan conference etc. Now the organization focused on the honourable chief minister’s house and a deputation was submitted. When a top level officer read everything and discussed with the organization, he was shocked and realized that this exploitation cannot go on and a remedy must be done. He forwarded a letter to the Higher Education Department and then the department arose from the slumber and quite a few times data, of the Guest Lecturers were asked to be submitted. However there was a lackadaisical attitude which caused the organization to submit another deputation to the Chief Minister who now took things over herself but there was again not enough initiave from the Higher Education Department. Again the organization planned another action on 9th June 2019. The Education Minister called Gopal Ghosh and wanted to meet him and his team. The meeting and discussion were done on 8th June over the course of three and a half hours. The E.M. checked all the files pertaining to the Guest Lecturers and promised to discuss with his officers and forbade the organization to go for any concentration, rally, fasting or rebellion of any sort. The association requested the honorable E.M. to conduct a press conference which we all witnessed where he promised to see into the matter within ten days after he had a discussion with Gopal Chandra Ghosh and 9 other representatives. However some conspirators within the organization decided to persist with the expedition of 9th June inspite of being forbidden by the association. However this confusion was promptly subdued by the administration. Within a month the E.M. met the organization at Bikashbhaban along with the D.P.I., finance secretary and four other representatives.
On 12th September 2019 the honorable E.M. announced in a press conference that the governing bodies of colleges can no longer appoint any Guest Lecturer without the permission of the government from 13th September 2019. The following month on 19th August the honourable C.M. announced from the administrative meeting at Howrah that the decade long struggle of the Guest Lecturers comes to an end and all the PTTs, CWTTs and G.Ls will now be named as SACTs or State Aided College Teachers and will get remuneration from the government. There will be two slabs: the UGC qualified teachers will be named as SACT 1 and the teachers not having the UGC qualification will be named as SACT 2. Then the association started its endeavor to publish the government memorandum as the remuneration of such teachers were to start from 1.1.2020 and without the written government order it would not have been possible. The association persisted with its effort to publish the memorandum which ultimately came out on 23rd December, 2019. Then the verification in person started after entering the data of the teachers. Then there was a new problem. The government did not want to give approvals to the teachers who did not have 3 years of service tenure and those who did not have proper bank statements. However the association was resilient and determined to ensure approvals for all and ultimately it was fruitful and every teacher got approval according to the memorandum. Then another problem arose. There were six hundred teachers who were marked as “excess” and were denied approvals. However it was because of the association’s relentlessness that each of them also got approval in their own colleges. Then there was the struggle to start remuneration which started from July 2020. The pending arrear of six months(January to June 2020) was also received before the Assembly Elections of 2021 because of the association’s consistent efforts. A G.O. pertaining to the leave rules of SACTs was also published on 12.8.2021 due to the association's constant vigilance towards the necessities of the SACTs and consistent effort in the form of appealing to the honourable E.M., the D.P.I. and the Principal Secretary of West Bengal in written form. We all love our mother tongue, the Bengali language and take pride on the facts that it is the sixth most spoken language in the world, is extremely rich in literature and the first Nobel prize among all the subjects in Asia was won on the basis of Bengali literary work. Most of the other states conduct the SET exam in their regional languages which express a regional pride as well. The association erstwhile implored to the former Education Minister Dr. Partha Chatterjee through an application written on 3.2.2021 to conduct the SET(State Eligibilty Test) exam in Bengali. This was published in the Anandabazar Patrika also. The advertisement of the SET exam published on 16. 8. 2021 made a historic decision to conduct the exam in Bengali. This can be considered a huge satisfaction and success of the association. SACTWA is the first teachers' organisation to uphold this justified demand which was answered. Ours is a humane, proud yet humble and democratic organisation which is forever striving towards the progress of our society, culture and education system.
The debt and gratitude of all the SACT teachers to the association and government are immense and SACTWA(the present name of WBGLA) will persistently try to uplift the society and strive for the betterment of the SACT fraternity in a democratic way.