In the context of the verbal demarche to the managements of private hospitals in February, Mamata Banerjee’s selfie with lady Principals of private schools at the Town Hall meeting was suggestive of a degree of bonhomie.

The chief minister does have a point when she makes a robust pitch for reduced fees, which can be atrocious when not affordable for most.

It does redound to her credit that this is an issue that was never touched by previous dispensations. Yet in comparison to private healthcare, the prescription is both the same and different.

Unlike the health segment, which now has a regulatory commission that is subject to monitoring by the government, the private schools, including the missionary institutions, are to be brought within the ambit of a “self-regulatory commission”.

It begs the fundamental question ~ Which school will be willing to reduce fees and abolish the praxis of “donations” on its own volition? The commission comprises ten schools, including La Martiniere for Boys and Girls, the network of Loreto schools, and the co-ed South Point.

Assuming that this adds up to 15 institutions, the majority of schools have been excluded from the “self-regulatory” network… and for no stated reason.

And excluded too are the schools outside of Kolkata.

This at once raises another fundamental disconnect. Will the schools that don’t figure in the commission readily accept the panel’s imprimatur? The praxis that has been evolved, obviously to fulfil the Benthamite doctrine of the “greatest good of the greatest number”, lends little or no scope for a consensual approach.

Not least because some of the finest schools, both for boys and girls, have been left out of the canvas. The 15-member commission will include representatives of ten English medium schools of Kolkata, the Archbishop of Calcutta, and the Bishop of the Calcutta Diocese of the Church of North India.

Not that the government is pursuing a hands-off policy; which explains the inclusion of West Bengal’s school education secretary. While this might seem logical, unmistakable is the weightage accorded to church-run Anglo-Indian schools… and not the mushroom expansion of private institutions that function as corporate enterprises, charge prohibitive fees, and boast airconditioned classrooms and buses.

Less easily explained is the induction of the state’s Director General of Police and Kolkata’s Commissioner of Police into a decidedly academic entity. Arguably, this is as surprising as the District Magistrate and SP of Darjeeling clarifying that Bengali will not be imposed in the hill schools… to the neglect of Nepali ~ the local language.

Far more explicit was the chief minister’s assurance that while Bengali will be taught up to Class 10, it shall not be compulsory for the board exams.