The Plight of Teachers in India

I have been reading the views of Shri Darda, Education Minister in the Government of Maharashtra in the local news papers, who is concern about teachers taking private tutions which according to him is immoral and he promises to chase this practice out. While it is very moralistic of the minister to take such a stand, I urge him to take note of this article and at least realign his views on the subject, if not initiate action against the real culprits.

Firstly, let us consider school education. I have a school in my neighborhood which is well known in the entire country for the notoriety of its students. They have a pre-primary section with a fee structure of Rs 2500/- PM and each class has a strength of about 35 students. They hire two teachers per class and a maid to assist the teachers. As against a monthly revenue of Rs. 87,500/- from this class, they pay a meager sum of Rs 9000/- per teacher and Rs. 3000/- to the maid, a total of Rs 21,000/- per month.  According to the CBSE scales, they are suppose to get at least Rs. 16,000/-+perks. In order to maintain the standard of the school, they hire qualified and experienced teachers with a promise that they will review their salary after one year of probation but the probation never ends. There are teachers in this school working for the last four years and are still on probation. The teachers on probation are not issued any appointment letters and this school hires at least a dozen teachers each year for the pre-primary section alone because the old teachers after waiting for their rightful dues, leave the organization in disgust and this is not a stray incident but a norm in the school education sector, barring a very few. I wonder how one can expect honest work from teachers?             

Let us now look at higher education like the Engineering and MBA. The situation here is even more pathetic. There is a norm laid down by the AICTE with regard to salaries, appointment etc and each institution is required to maintain a certain student-teacher ratio and there are also norms for the ratio of junior vs. senior professors. However, most institutions do not fulfill this norm. They resort to hiring fresh pass outs who are available at throw away prices. Some institutions even hire their own students who could not get a campus placement. Engineering and MBA teachers are paid as little as Rs 10,000/- PM as against Rs 35000/- (Approx) as per 6^th pay commission. Most institutions do not even have a Director/Principal because the Honorable High Court ruled in a case, that in view of the acute shortage of senior faculties in the country, it is possible that some institutes do not get Professors and Principals but such institutions may still have students and thus in the interest of these students the institutions cannot be penalized for not meeting the faculty norms. Exploiting this ruling the institutions now advertise every six months but do not appoint any Professors / Principals and their usual plea is that they are still in the lookout for a suitable senior faculty. In many cases the institutions are also resorting to appointing faculties on paper. To curb this practice AICTE introduced recording the thumb impressions of the appointed candidates. But the institution owners are so ingenious that they have a counter measure for every such measure. All such ‘on paper’ faculties are paid a monthly honorarium for their services off the record and a hefty salary on record which is taken back each month through post dated cheques. Under such circumstances, I wonder how we can ensure integrity of this supposedly ‘beacon of light’ of the society i.e. the teaching community.

The actual situation on ground today is that while freshers are getting teaching jobs easily, there are no takers for the seniors and experienced ones because the institutions do not wish to pay and the regulators do not wish to question. I wonder under the given circumstances how education in this country will ever improve and how teachers can be expected to behave morally. No wonder the present generation of students don’t respect the teaching community.

One of my professional friends who is a Director in a leading management institution owned by a politician, recently shared his intent of quitting the job because he has been issued a show cause notice for not implementing 6^th pay commission norms in his institution when they have sufficient admissions and are charging exorbitant fees from the students. When he went to face the AICTE with the logic given by his management, he was asked by the AICTE to give an undertaking in a stamp paper to the effect that they will implement 6^th pay commission norms with the next academic session. However, the management agreed to introduce the new scales only on paper. Fearing that this may lead him into trouble later, he decided to quit. I wonder at the rationale of the AICTE of taking an undertaking from an employee of the organization instead of the employer. Obviously, the employers are mostly politicians, sitting MLAs/MPs and even Ministers.

The exploitation does not end here. Given the cutthroat competition in the educational industry, young teachers are necessarily hired for their ability to get new admissions more than their ability to teach. Shri. Darda must know that tuition teachers command higher salary as faculty because they are likely to get new admissions for the institution. Many institutions even have an incentive scheme for teachers who get admissions and this can be as high as Rs 15,000/- per candidate depending on the fee structure of the institution. I wonder if it is right to blame the teaching community, most of who have been converted into touts by the system.

I am sure we all know where the fault lies and if anything needs to be done it is at the institution level instead of conditioning the weak, which has been an age old tradition of this country.