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July 15, 2025
Already the second to last day in Kolkata! Today was packed with visits to various sites that make up the ecosystem of education in Kolkata.
We began with a visit to Loreto Day School / Loreto Rainbow Homes, whose vision is "To transform the lives of girl children at risk on the streets by creating equity of opportunity to break the cycle of poverty." They provide girls with the opportunity to live and study in a safe environment. As Sharmila put it, at the heart of Loreto Rainbow Homes is the belief that "every child has a right to an education."
The program was founded by Sister Cyril Mooney at Loreto Sealdah School, a private institution, in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, the Rainbow model had been replicated across other Loreto schools in Kolkata, promoting inclusive education across socioeconomic lines. Sharmila noted that the program is unique in Kolkata and wanted us to see it firsthand and interact with the students. During our brief visit, we ran activities with students in small groups and met with Sister Priyanka, Assistant Director Bishakha Sen, and the school’s principal, Sister Baishakhi.
Pictures of past Board Presidents. When I asked how many women are currently on the board, my answer came in the form of a glance.
Next, we drove to the Consulate General of the U.S., where the American Library and the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) are housed. This is one of the oldest American consulates in the world—second only to Paris. The first American Consul, Benjamin Joy, was appointed by George Washington and arrived in Kolkata in April, 1794.
We met with the American Center’s Director, a career diplomat named Elizabeth Lee, as well as USIEF staff, including Regional Officer Sumanta Basu and Program Manager Jhulan Ghose. After the second round of tea and sweets for the day, we made our way to the Salt Lake District to meet Dr. Ramanuj Ganguly, President of the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE).
The WBBSE oversees roughly 16,500 schools in West Bengal and is responsible for appointing headmasters/mistresses, hiring secondary teaching and non-teaching staff, teacher training, curriculum development, textbook publishing, and overseeing the Grade 10 Madhyamik board examination—an enormous task, especially considering the linguistic and cultural diversity of students and families across those 16,500 schools.
Dr. Ganguly, a soft-spoken sociologist, began by telling us that if we "really want to understand the school system," the time constraints of our visit make it impossible. Nevertheless, he generously offered us a crash course on the initiatives and challenges the WBBSE is navigating. “As in any public system, you can't expect much exuberance. There's not a lot of freedom,” he observed. But he emphasized one path forward: investing in teachers. “If we have our teachers well-prepared and empowered, that helps the system to improve.”
When Dr. Ganguly described the Board’s current initiative to strengthen social-emotional learning (SEL), I asked if he was familiar with Delhi’s Happiness Curriculum or if there had been any exchange of ideas. “I’m familiar with it as a sociologist,” he replied. Sharmila quickly added that West Bengal has had a “Joyful Learning Curriculum” for longer. Dr. Ganguly agreed, noting that while both programs share similar elements, the main difference is in nomenclature. We returned to the topic of SEL when I asked how the Board manages policy for such a diverse population. “The curriculum and textbooks are not diverse. This is the reason we are turning to SEL—to ground us from abstraction to reality. To understand students’ experiences.”
Another cup of tea and plate of sweets appeared before we posed for a group photo and continued to our next stop: the Department of Education of West Bengal, where we met with Mr. Surajit Roy, Additional Director and Special Secretary. Mr. Roy highlighted the importance of learning English and ongoing efforts to make English instruction more engaging and effective in order to expand opportunities for students, revealing the broader social and economic privileging of English over other languages.
Left to right: Sharmila, Olivia, Kim, Dr. Ganguly, Jhulan, Sumanta, & me.
Outside the government building that houses the Department of Education for West Bengal.
Through a PowerPoint presentation, he walked us through the elements of the education ecosystem in West Bengal, including the "Portal," which houses video modules for students and vast amounts of student learning data. Like many others we met, he noted the challenges posed by the “sheer numbers in West Bengal alone,” layered with linguistic and religious diversity—there are nine mediums of instruction—and “drastic economic divides.” When asked about future priorities, he said some will always remain constant: “100% enrollment and inclusiveness. The content is always dynamic; this will always need to be worked on.”
The day's fourth serving of tea and sweets arrived. As Mr. Roy said with a smile, “A visitor is a god in India, you know?”
With our official meetings complete, we headed to College Street, a cultural landmark in Kolkata known for its maze of book vendors, bookstores, academic institutions, and literary heritage. “This is a book lover’s heaven,” said Sharmila, adding that it reflects the deep love for education and literature in Bengali society. ((How have I not yet mentioned that Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to win a Nobel prize (in 1913 for Literature) was born in Kolkata? Tagore is revered and is everywhere here...)) She explained that the booksellers are among the most well-read and knowledgeable people in the city. Olivia and Kim each picked up a couple of books. I had hoped to do the same but found myself too tired and overwhelmed by the sea of choices. Still, it was a pleasure to stroll past the carefully arranged stacks at each stall and to leaf through used titles, many bearing handwritten dedications to their former owners.
We also made a quick stop at Indian Coffee House (though we skipped tea or coffee due to the heat). This historic café has hosted meetings of freedom fighters, intellectuals, authors, and artists. Across the street is Presidency University, founded in 1817 and Sharmila’s alma mater. After a few minutes of charming the security guards, we were granted access to the campus and guided by Sharmila and two security officers—with two persistent street dogs trotting alongside. The university has long been a progressive hub, including for the Young Bengal movement of the 1820s and 1830s, whose members "espoused liberty, equality, secularism, and a more representative form of government." Sharmila described Presidency as "the birthplace of every revolution in Bengal and Kolkata," as she pointed out her former haunts on the campus. Getting this glimpse into our host's student days was a fitting end to our educational tour of Kolkata.
Our evening concluded with biryani at Arsalan. While I've had biryani at Indian restaurants back home, nothing compares to the layers of spices that create complex depth in Bengali biryani.
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