The British government’s department for international development (DFID) has agreed to include primary education within the ambit of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC)’s capacity-building programme. The department funds the programme.

Following a meeting with DFID minister Garrett Thomas and the department’s permanent secretary Suma Chakraborty in London on Tuesday, mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya said: “The DFID might provide an additional grant for primary education, if required.” The CMC runs 320 schools, where 36,000 students study.

The DFID has provided technical support and Rs 212.25 crore to the CMC for carrying out capacity-building over the next six years.

“The capacity-building programme is being implemented on the basis of suggestions by the DFID-appointed consultant Infrastructure Professionals Enterprise and WSP-IMC, UK,” stated the mayor.

Bhattacharyya had earlier stressed the need of a chain of vocational training centres. He had said civic primary schools with poor student count could be converted into vocational training centres, where young people from economically-backward classes can get training in repair of cellphones, electronic goods, refrigerators, air coolers, cycles and automobiles.

On Wednesday, mayor Bhattacharyya made a presentation on ‘Urban Renewal through Holistic and Strategic Capacity Building’ at the World Leadership Forum in London. He was accompanied by municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay and joint municipal commissioner Sahidul Islam.

The CMC is one of the three municipal corporations shortlisted by the DFID for the Global Leadership Award. The presentation was made in connection with the award.

Bhattacharyya told the forum that Bengal has always been known internationally since the time of Ptolemy. Calcutta suffered several setbacks, he pointed out, since the first decade of the 20th Century.

The mayor identified seven factors for the decline of the city. They include partition of Bengal in 1905, shift of the Indian capital from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, migration of millions of workers to the city in the 1940s, communal riots in 1946 and the political instability and strikes in the 1960s.