Bengal’s education system needs fundamental rebuilding: Swapan
Times of India | 4 July 2026
Kolkata: Bengal finance minister Swapan Dasgupta said on Friday that the state’s education system needed rebuilding from fundamentals.
Speaking at the Education for Viksit Bharat Conclave in Kolkata, Dasgupta said: “Education, public education in Bengal is a devastated area. It’s not a question of improvement but fundamental rebuilding.”
He said Calcutta University was once among the best institutions of learning in Asia but it has now been reduced to the status of just a local university.
“We have set our sights too low. Our inheritance was lofty. We have come down many, many notches. To recover that is a challenge,” Dasgupta added.
The finance minister further said that the govt could only play the role of an enabler in education. “We can create an environment, we can be an enabler, but the actual work, the operationalising of this has to be done by the private sector,” he added.
“Only upgrading state universities, or only private universities, or bringing in foreign universities is not a solution. All three have to be done together,” he said.
“We are deficient in skilled teachers. In Kolkata, it is a rarity to find young people. It’s not an observation but a statement of pain. A great metropolis like Kolkata has turned into an old-age home. It tells us that something is wrong,” said Dasgupta.
Union minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar, who was also present at the conclave, praised Nisarga Adhikary — the ethical hacker who cracked the CBSE website and identified the weaknesses of the board’s online marking system.
“A Class 10 student hacked into the CBSE website. We channelled his expertise and talent and got him connected with IIT-Kanpur. He could have joined a protest. But we decided to give him the space to learn and contribute to the country’s death,” he said.
He also referred to the alleged teacher recruitment scam during his address. “It has weakened young people’s faith in a merit-based recruitment process,” he said.