By Justice Abhay S
Copyright indiatimes
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Across India’s sprawling education system, thousands of teachers continue to work without fair pay, benefits, or recognition, some for years, others for decades. A special Times of India report delves into the struggles of lecturers at unaided colleges in Bihar surviving on irregular stipends, contractual faculty in Gujarat who waged a decade-long legal battle for equal pay, and Siksha Mitras in Uttar Pradesh whose salaries were slashed overnight.In 1983, Md Aftab Alam received an appointment letter from Sanjay Gandhi Mahila College in Gaya. It promised him a job as a regular lecturer, with pay and service conditions at par with university faculty. Forty-two years later, Alam is still waiting for his first salary.“I taught, I evaluated papers, I invigilated exams,” he told The Times of India. “But officially, it’s as if I was never there.” His only proof of employment is a fading sheet of paper from 1983 and a lifetime of unpaid labour.Alam, who holds a PhD in English, lives in a rented two-room flat in Gaya with his wife, Shamsun Nisa. The family survives on occasional evaluation work during university exams. “Even private tuition stopped after Covid,” Nisa said. “People think he’s too broken to teach. But he still reads. He still steps out in the morning dressed for work.”A verdict in Gujarat, a struggle in BiharLive EventsLast month, the Supreme Court delivered a scathing verdict in a case involving 18 contractual assistant professors in Gujarat. The bench, led by Justice Abhay S Oka, ruled that denying teachers equal pay and service benefits violated constitutional protections. Quoting the familiar line, “Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara”, the court said the words meant little if teachers were paid a pittance.But for Alam and thousands of others across India, the reality is starker. In Bihar alone, more than 10,000 teachers work in 220 unaided affiliated degree colleges without proper salaries or benefits, according to the Federation of Affiliated Degree College Teachers’ Associations.Deepak Kumar Singh, a commerce lecturer at Banwari College, said he teaches daily without knowing if he will be paid. “My salary last year was Rs 9,000. In 2022–23, it was Rs 21,000. Before that, for four consecutive years, I received nothing,” he said. “No holidays, no leave. We come, we teach. We mark attendance on the biometric machine like everyone else.”Others have fared worse. Shankar Bhagat, who taught ancient Indian history, died of liver cirrhosis without treatment. His colleague, Mukesh Kumar Mishra, is battling cancer in Muzaffarpur without adequate medical care.Policy promises, broken outcomesA 2013 state policy linked performance-based grants to unaided institutions, but funding was inconsistent. As a result, most teachers are paid, if at all, from internal college revenues like exam fees and certificate charges. Salaries can be as low as Rs 1,500 a month.Magadh University, in response to an RTI filed by Alam, confirmed he had indeed been appointed as regular faculty. In 2023, the state’s higher education director even directed the registrar to take action. Nothing changed. “I couldn’t afford lawyers,” Alam said. “Sometimes I couldn’t afford two meals a day.”Beyond Bihar and GujaratThe struggle extends to other states. In Uttar Pradesh, Siksha Mitras, guest teachers recruited in large numbers in the early 2000s, were briefly regularised in 2015, only to be demoted two years later. Their salaries dropped from Rs 50,000 to Rs 10,000. “We were promoted, then demoted,” said Meenu Goswami, a teacher in Bulandshahr. “Some had loans, others lost homes. The salary cut killed them.” She recalled at least a dozen suicides among demoted teachers in her district.At the other end of the spectrum, principals of small private schools often earn no more than Rs 4,500 to Rs 25,000 a month. “Even the fancy schools don’t offer more,” said Atul Srivastava, president of the Association of Private Schools, UP.Meanwhile, since 2021, there has been no recruitment of government school teachers in UP, according to the Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association. “Thousands of schools now run entirely on guest faculty. There’s no pipeline anymore,” said its president Dinesh Sharma. “People are migrating to other states.”A promise yet to be keptThe National Education Policy 2020 pledged to restore dignity to the teaching profession, with better pay, regularisation, and a clear career path. But on the ground, stories like Alam’s point to a deep gap between policy and practice.Every morning, Alam still folds away his PhD certificate, picks up his old books, and walks to a college that never recognised him. “Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I wonder if I was ever really a teacher.”(With inputs from ToI report by Abdul Qadir, BK Mishra, Saeed Khan, Rahul Singh & Isha Jain)Add as a Reliable and Trusted News Source Add Now!
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