Once upon a time, in a state that once dreamed in verse and rebelled in prose, there thrived a quiet aspiration—to teach. Not to dominate, not to deceive, but to educate. One spent nights burning candles, poring over pedagogy, refining grammar, perfecting arithmetic, answering mock tests with a trembling hope. The dream was not extravagant. It was simple: to earn a position through the School Service Commission (SSC), to stand in a classroom, to guide a generation. But now, that very dream has been torn apart by an administrative holocaust—engineered, curated, and executed by the government of West Bengal with a blend of arrogance and apathy that only decades of unchallenged power can produce.

This isn't merely about a recruitment scam in 2016. This is about the death of merit, the betrayal of the people, and the institutionalised sanctification of incompetence. The government, in its unapologetic tyranny, didn't just ruin a process; it erased the future of thousands. And worse, it criminalised honesty.

People who studied for years, passed examinations, and stepped into classrooms with hearts full of responsibility have now been declared illegal. Not because they cheated, not because they bribed, but because they happened to be part of a batch where the corrupt mingled with the sincere. And while the Supreme Court's verdict—a sweeping cancellation of over 26,000 appointments—may be judicially correct, it is a humanitarian catastrophe. The government that curated this disaster hasn't shown the decency to differentiate. They lumped the honest with the dishonest, the competent with the criminal.

And they didn’t stop there. When these dismissed teachers took to the streets—not with weapons, not with violence, but with placards and petitions—they were met with batons. The state that once sang of Tagore’s wisdom has now turned into a brutal chamber of suppression. The police, acting on orders, raised sticks against people whose only fault was expecting justice from a government that had already sold its soul.

What are we watching if not the ritual slaughter of public education? Government schools in Bengal once stood as symbols of hope for the underprivileged. They were the temples of knowledge for children who couldn't afford the luxury of elite institutions. But today, they are being systematically strangled—first by neglect, then by corruption, and now by judicial backlash that punishes the wrong people.

One cannot help but ask: Was this deliberate? Was the mess engineered to force a collapse so complete that it would justify the wholesale privatisation of education? After all, public schools come with responsibilities—free mid-day meals, scholarships, accessible books, and the burden of equity. Private institutions, backed by suits and cheques, don't deal with such inconveniences. They teach profit. They don't teach children.

In this vile game of policy and politics, the real losers are not just the dismissed teachers, but the entire social fabric. Students now sit in classrooms taught by temporary substitutes or by teachers unsure of their futures. What lesson can one impart when one’s own place in the system hangs in question? When faith in institutions collapses, what is left to trust?

Yet, there are others—those who did not deserve to be in classrooms in the first place. The bribers. The utterly incompetent, valueless, opportunistic individuals who treated a government job not as a sacred trust, but a purchasable good. These are not teachers; these are parasites. They bribed their way in, and they poisoned the well for everyone. It is because of them that the deserving are now jobless. It is because of them that courtrooms are issuing sweeping verdicts. And it is because of them that even the innocent have been tainted by the same brush.

But here lies another unsettling truth. The 2016 batch has been made an example. But what about the earlier batches? The ones from the golden years before the scam exploded? Are we truly to believe that they were pristine? That every single candidate was selected through transparent meritocratic processes? Nonsense.

Many of them too bribed, pulled strings, or leveraged political contacts. They wear their badges of legality now, but we know the silent whispers in school staff rooms. We’ve heard stories of mark sheets that changed overnight, of remote postings “managed” via invisible hands, of gods replaced by connections higher up. They walk with impunity because their skeletons haven’t yet been summoned to court.

And what do we make of the examination procedures today? The system that once produced the minds of India’s cultural revolutionaries is now overseen by individuals who can’t spell ‘syllabus’. Ineligible teachers are checking the answer scripts of our Class 10 and 12 students. And we expect objectivity? We expect quality? We are raising a generation under the watch of hammer-heads.

Even now, we are sending our children to learn from those who had no right to step into a classroom. The rot is deeper than we can fathom. It is not just corruption; it is contamination. And this contamination is not being contained. It is being allowed, normalized, and justified.

In all this, what is the government doing? Defending itself with laughable justifications. They do not accept accountability. Instead, they blame the opposition for “conspiracies.” As if the forms filled, the roll numbers skipped, and the interviews tampered with were orchestrated by external agents. As if some phantom force possessed the state’s education department.

This is not a conspiracy from outside. This is a collapse from within. It is the failure of governance, the betrayal of the people, and the mocking of a system that dared to trust its leaders.

The government, far from being remorseful, has been vengeful. Not only did they destroy thousands of careers, but they attacked those who protested. As teachers marched peacefully for their reinstatement, they were beaten, arrested, and vilified. This is not democracy. This is not even misgovernance. This is tyranny.

And yet, the opposition parties aren’t saints either. They’ve found a new pond to fish in—a fresh scandal to milk votes from. Their empathy smells like strategy, their outrage is rehearsed. They don’t want justice. They want chairs. Power has no ideology; it has appetite.

So here we are. A society trapped between a deaf government and opportunistic opposition. In between, the people bleed. The teachers dismissed. The students misled. The institutions dismantled.

And what do we, the citizens, do? We gossip. We whisper. We tweet. We move on.

We blame the dismissed for not checking their batch. We console ourselves with, “At least it wasn’t our year.”

What pathetic comfort.

We allowed these politicians to climb into their chairs, and now we marvel at their audacity when they show us their teeth. But the truth is—they are only as bold as our blindness allows.

We are the fools who forgot that a democracy without vigilance is a monarchy in disguise. We did not just lose a batch of teachers. We lost the soul of governance. We lost the sanctity of merit. We lost the idea that effort matters.

The damage is generational. The recovery? Still invisible.

And so, this chronicle must end not with hope, but with a warning.

If we do not awaken now, if we do not demand answers, accountability, and justice -

The next scam won’t be about recruitment.

It will be about everything.

It will be about the future.

And we’ll still be sitting there, sipping tea, whispering:

“At least it wasn’t our year.”

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