Chief Minister Harish Rawat may have his political compulsions, but he has sought to strike a chord with the people of Uttarakhand repeatedly through his public overtures.
His recent public snubbing of teachers of the basic education sector over their demand for special allowance for remote posting on the occasion of the provincial convention of the teachers has only reflected the common people’s concern over the deteriorating public delivery system.
Dubbing the special allowance demand for remote posting by the teachers as unjustified, the Chief Minister maintained that the State had been created on the ground of the region being a mountainous region. This fact negates such a demand in the first place, he said.
There are many Government-run schools that are on the verge of closure, but the teachers are worried with their salary and allowance, he said, admonishing the teachers publicly .
Such a posture and that too from a public platform on the part of the Chief Minister is without a parallel in the annals of the State’s history since it was carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000, said the people. Rawat’s predecessors chose to be politically correct in similar situations. They rather used Government employees’ transfers and postings as tools to further their political interests, they suggested. Going for such a posture is doubly difficult because of the fact that the teachers' organisations in the State are affiliated with one party or the other.
The Chief Minister Rawat sought to bring some semblance of transparency in the transfer and posting policy involving the education department when he overruled his own Education Minister's transfer orders of some teachers of the basic education sector sometime back.
The glaring fact is that whether it be the doctor or the teacher no one likes to work in remote and hilly areas of the State and this is what is leading to many Government- run schools and health centres across the State being closed. The common refrain running among the common people is that instead of taking a comprehensive outlook regarding the overall development of the State as a whole, the Government employees are engaged in further exacerbating the hill-plain cleft.
This is not the first time when the Chief Minister has gone out of his ways to endear the people at large by way of certain public overtures. He did it by chairing a Cabinet meeting in his home district Almora followed by a session of State Assembly at Gairsain. However, the people of the hill State are eagerly waiting for some concrete results to emerge on the ground.