The State Government continues to dangle a carrot before Block Grant college teachers on the pretext of providing them Grant-In-Aid (GIA) even as irregular and paltry salary and uncertainty in job have stymied a big pool of manpower in the higher education sector. What is important is teaching profession as such has grown highly non remunerative and unattractive as a result of which meritorious students no longer prefer to pursue post graduation studies and are rather switching sides to technical and management education. The trend may not augur well for the State as in next two decades or so, there may be severe crunch of college teachers.
It’s not that the remuneration to a college teacher is bad, but the rot lies in the big gaps and discrimination maintained in their salary and facilities. While Government college teachers in regular scale are getting fat salary and perks as white elephants, the teachers in the aided and Block Grant colleges are meted out with the most unfair treatment. The UGC, State Scale and Block Grant payees in the aided institutions are deprived of one or the other facilities while among them also there lie huge discriminations in salary and facilities. The worrying fact is let alone better pay, the Block Grant teachers’ services are yet to be regularized. Besides low payment, they are made to work under an uncertain job prospect which has been the cause over many years for their taking to streets off and on.
The Block Grant issue could have been well swept under the mat had the teachers getting the grant been a minority. The problem for the Government is it is managing the education of a vast number of students through the Block Grant colleges which are the biggest in number compared to other categories of colleges. Private aided and unaided colleges together account for 66 per cent of colleges against mere 34 per cent Government-owned colleges in Odisha. As such the largest chunk of student population of the State is in the non Government colleges. It is so because of the failure of the Government to set up adequate number of colleges in the State and maintain equity in catering to the need of the people of various economic statuses, regions, classes and castes. Odisha has around 23 colleges per lakh population in age-group of 18-23 years against 25 colleges per lakh population nationally. At the same time, the average enrolment per college is only 589 against the all-India average of 703. This makes it amply clear that the State needs more colleges and in the context the demand of the existing college teachers cannot be neglected. Regrettably, the Government is harsh on the biggest chunk of human resources by denying them of their legitimate dues.
While these hapless teachers have been demanding rollback of the Block Grant and implementation of the traditional GIA like the one in the 1994 GIA Policy, unfortunately the Government’s stance is yet to be transparent. Since there is no genuine concern for a reform in the education sector and grant is given or hiked under poll compulsions over the last decade, the Government’s attitude has been marked by elusiveness, pretensions and lies. Block Grant teachers have been taken for a ride all the time in the matter of GIA.
Of late, it is heard that Higher Education Minister Pradeep Panigrahy has taken step for implementation of GIA. But then nobody is clear as to what the new grant would be like. Terms like ‘notional’ and ‘comprehensive’ GIA are doing the rounds. It’s time the Government stopped hoodwinking and came up with a policy that regularizes the Block Grant jobs.