Even as there seemed to be little sign of an end to the Plus II answer papers evaluation row with the striking teachers and the Government not budging for six days, it came as a relief to the worried students and their guardians when both relented and worked out a compromise.
With the lecturers joining valuation works from Sunday, a crisis which had the potential of giving birth to bigger crises ended. Despite having deployed teachers from KVs, Ekalavya Vidyalayas and other sources, neither the Government, nor all those having an axe to grind were sure of a faultless evaluation. The Government showed great deal of maturity by going for a stitch in time. Few doubt that the agitation of the Block Grant teachers had got the tacit backing of the teaching fraternity as a whole.
Irrespective of whether Government or non-Government, regular or Block Grant, the teachers extended moral support to the Plus II answer scripts evaluation boycott. And, this may be a reason why the Government and the CHSE’ attempt to make alternative arrangement failed and had been keeping over 3 lakh students in a state of anxiety over the uncertainty of the result publication.
The plan to rope in university and degree college teachers fell flat given the fact that neither the number of teachers in the segment was adequate nor they were genuinely interested for the work. Frankly speaking, these teachers fretted being unnecessarily embroiled in a controversial affair.
Since arranging number, not suitability of teachers, was paramount in the mind of the Government for a time, it went for a second rung of arrangement of deploying the teachers from the Kendriya Vidyalayas, Ekalavya Vidyalayas and private residential colleges etc, hoping thatit muster up the required manpower but that too did not work.
The high moral ground that it has lost by repeatedly false assurances on repealing Block Grant, the Government’s long and arduous exercise appeared like beating under the bush by evading the core issue of ending the endemic teachers’ dissent.
Undeniably at any rate, the controversy brought upon a vital truth about the larger dependency of the Government and the higher educationsystem on the non-Government teachers.
If anything, it was 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.