If a report in a daily newspaper is any indication, the State Government has finally realised the importance of scrapping the Block Grant and implementing grant-in-aid (GIA) in its place. Already a process is underway in this regard which will go a long way to solve the problems of the college teachers, make them more committed to their duty and help improve the quality of higher education.
The Block Grant, it appears, has been the root of all evil leading to persistent stir by the disgruntled college teachers and employees, who after long years (10-20) of service have been given a minuscule scale of pay. The Block Grant under the GIA-2008 and 2009 policies was meant for about 20,000 staff members in 488 and 622 colleges making their career uncertain given the fact that the remuneration was fixed and measly.
The grant had dashed their hope for a regular pay and service. For the first time in the history of grant policy in Odisha did the Naveen Patnaik Government bring out such a grant policy that had neither been helpful in assuaging the pain of the employees, nor in improving the standard of education. On the contrary, it sowed the seed for more disgruntlements and led the staff members to resort to more strikes disrupting the studies in their institutions.
It heaped disgrace on the teachers who are post graduates and possess even higher qualifications to get a salary that was lower than the scale of a fourth grade Government employee. Under the Block Grant, there were no service conditions. There was also the fear of the grant being withdrawn at any time.
In view of the horrendous nature of the Block Grant whereby the highly qualified teachers feel being deprived of basic democratic and human rights, the teachers have lost all interest in work. They are spending more time as to how to get organized for exercising lobby or holding agitation for justice.
Even as the teacher’s agitation has grown up, the Government under various pleas has been ignoring their demand for GIA. All that it did was first it gave 40 per cent Block Grant, then kept on hiking it marginally till it reached at 100 per cent. In the last Assembly elections, the BJD Government almost cheated thousands of teachers and their families by assuring them of GIA but later paying only 100 per cent Block Grant.
However, in the long run, the State Government has initiated a process to provide GIA. Since the step is being taken at a time when many Block Grant teachers have covered a major part of their service with even a substantial chunk of them on the brink of retirement, the Government should not be carried away by any bureaucratic machination.
It should not frame a grant policy that is high sounding but not the original GIA. It is heard that a new grant policy ‘Notional GIA’ is going to be implemented. If the grant is not GIA and short of the facilities applicable in case of GIA, certainly it would be again a breach of trust and foment dissent among the beneficiaries.