A teacher must appreciate another teacher’s concern. Imbued with this spirit, the teachers, irrespective of whether Government or non-Government, regular or Block Grant, seem to be extending moral support to the Plus II answer scripts evaluation boycott.
This may be a reason why the Government and the CHSE have failed to make alternative arrangement to the full conviction of the over 3 lakh students, now in a state of anxiety about the uncertainty of the result publication, and of their guardians.
The plan to rope in university and degree college teachers in the ongoing valuation works has fallen flat given the fact that neither the number of teachers in the segment is adequate nor they are genuinely interested for the work. Frankly speaking, these teachers do not want to unnecessarily get embroiled in a controversial affair.
Since arranging number, not suitability of teachers, is paramount in the mind of the Government, it has gone for a second rung of arrangement of deploying the teachers from the Kendriya Vidyalayas, Ekalavya Vidyalayas and private residential colleges etc, hoping that it can provide the required manpower. It looks to be a worried Government in an overdrive.
The high moral ground that it has lost by repeatedly false assurances on repealing Block Grant, the Government’s long and arduous exercise looks like beating under the bush by evading the core issue of ending the endemic teachers’ dissent.
Undeniably at any rate, the prevailing impasse has brought upon a vital truth about the larger dependency of the Government and the higher education system on the non-Government teachers. If anything, it is indicative of an apathetic Government’s continued and unjust rebuff of the lowly paid teachers whom it is using for a larger part to run its system. Sadly, not prepared to recognize the basic logic, the Government, apparently misled, has been avoiding an amicable settlement even after six days of near paralysis in the valuation work and exploring one means after another-purely impractical, inefficient and ineffective.
“We are prepared to cooperate, provided we find the Government sensitive to our troubles in the least. Our agitation against Block Grant is too old. We had warned of boycotting the Plus II and Degree examinations much before they started in February this year much like we told not to cooperate in the valuation works long before. But the Government has been repeatedly glossing over the question of regularisng our job by extending the grant-in-aid (GIA),” lamented an agitating teacher.