Ramakanta Sir these days is found to be sad and spending most of the time brooding over things only known to him. He is otherwise very affable, agile and wears a smiling face. For last many weeks, he has passed into sulk and pulls a heavy face.
Ramakanta (56) is a Block Grant lecturer and has just a few years of service. His two sons, still unemployed, are in marriageable stage.
And, his ancestral house located by road will be demolished as he has been served a notice for the same by the NHAI for the four-laning works. Though Ramakant has preferred to be mum about his ordeal, his troubles are conspicuous—he has to arrange money for the marriage of his sons and immediately, he needs money to construct a house as the compensation in lieu of his house and land acquired by the Government is too meager.
All he says is: “We had hoped that the Government, which had promised to regularise our jobs by implementing grant-in-aid (GIA) months ago, would soon keep its words. But given the situation, it seems nothing would happen.”
Jajati Mishra (42), another lecturer, has his paralytic father at home requiring medicine and treatment regularly. Though his father was a retired Government employee and is a pension holder, Mishra is finding it as a great shock and embarrassment as he has been till date subsisting on the pension he withdraws on behalf of his father to run the family expenses. Mishra is listed to be given Block Grant after almost 15 years of his service. His son and daughter are reading in village school and his wife and old mother are waiting with bated breath for the release of Mishra’s grant.
“But even if I get Block Grant what purpose will it serveIJ” Mishra asked, adding that he will get a little over Rs 6,000 per month which would not suffice to run the monthly ration, leave alone other expenses.
Hundreds of Ramakantas and Jajatis under the Block Grant system in 662 and 488 colleges across the State have loads of miseries and their professional life is shorn of any enthusiasm for it has hardly supported them financially. On the other hand, these teachers, battered and bruised over the years for being denied due salary and dignity, are still on a wild goose chase. Time and again, the Government is promising them of regularising their jobs, but those promises hardly translate into action.
About 20,000 teachers and supporting staff members under the Block Grant college system of the Government have been suffering like anything for years, though the Government has paid no heed to it. They have held enough of agitation and experimented with many new and novel modes of protests to highlight their plight but in vain. The issue not just involves deprivation of dues for service but a question of human rights violation as well. For thousands of highly educated teachers under the Government grant system have been reeling under hardships for long years because of an apathetic Government and faulty grant policy of the State.
During the last Monsoon Session of the Assembly, the Government had promised to implement GIA after the abolition of Block Grant issue was exhaustively discussed. It had asked the teachers not to resort to strike and taken a month time to work out the matter. But several months after, the issue has been left where it was.
Consequently, the 488 college teachers have threatened to hold agitation once again. The 662 college teachers’ association is also upset over the Government backtracking on its words.