The Vidyasagar Mela, however, is just a beginning; much more needs to be done in this, the seventh year of its inception. The state government sees education as a primary right of the people and the slogan that has come forth at the Mela is as simple as it is meaningful,``If you keep even one man behind, then it is he who will try to pull you backwards.'' There is a feeling of guilt, of conscience, in this slogan and that is precisely what the framers of the literacy campaign trying to remind the people at every level.

The Bengal Government, with no help from the Centre, has now taken upon itself to take the education drive full steam ahead and training camps and scientific syllabi have already been framed, the first of which have already been opened for public consumption. The top leadership of the state Left Front has already made an appeal to the other parties to take part in this drive cutting across political lines but going by the recent utterances of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress, it seems that the job will best be tackled by the Government itself. Unfortunately, one of the Opposition parties has even acted in quite a different way that a responsible political entity should choose to: it had let loose its goons on a library in a tiny hamlet which was doing seminal service for the cause of the uneducated.