Teachers' Strike in UP Reveals a Deep-rooted Crisis of Education and Joblessness

The recent police violence on thousands of temporary teachers in Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow brought the city to a standstill. The police unleashed the violence on the teachers who had converged in Lucknow from different parts of the State to pressurise the government to make their positions permanent. The recent strike was only the latest in a series of such protests that reveal a deep-rooted employment crisis and a crumbling education system in Uttar Pradesh.

After India signed the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000, it allowed teaching positions to be filled on a contractual basis to achieve its target of education for all. Many State governments appointed 'Shiksha Mitras,' who would persuade people to enrol their children in schools and would spread awareness about the need for education.

The Shiksha Mitras needed to have only completed Class 12 and carry a recommendation from their local panchayat. The low salary scale enabled States to recruit a large number of such functionaries without too much of a burden on the exchequer. The governments extended their roles further to enable them to teach students up to class VIII. The National University of Education Planning and Administration data shows that 1,72,000 of the 1,74,666 vacancies for elementary school teachers (the sanctioned strength is 7,59,898 posts) in Uttar Pradesh were filled by deputing Shiksha Mitras.

But everything changed after the Right to Education Act was passed in 2009. The Act gave the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) the authority to frame rules for the appointment of the teachers. It emphasised that the aspirants for teaching posts in the country must pass the Teachers Eligibility Test (TET). Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party government, through an amendment to the Basic Shiksha Adhyapak Sewa Niyamawali, 1981,  abolished the requirement of passing TET and regularised the Shiksha Mitras for two years. But the Allahabad High Court quashed the regularisation process on September 12, 2015. The Supreme Court, in its order in July last year, upheld the high court judgment and maintained that  passing the TET was a must. It gave the serving teachers two chances to pass  the test.

The protesting teachers complained that they had completed all formalities but the government was running away from its responsibilities. Talking to NewsClick, Kamlesh, working as a Shiksha Mitra in Allahabad, said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government were not fulfilling their promises of regularising them. "The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised to resolve the issue within three months of coming to power. Instead of doing it, they introduced a new test for the teachers. The Uttarakhand government has already regularised teachers for 3,500 of 4,200 vacancies. If the government wants to resolve the crisis, it must regularise us," added Kamlesh.

He said that they had already qualified for being para teachers but were being paid very less. A para teacher is entitled to receive Rs 38,878 but they were being paid Rs 10,000 per month. Significantly, he added that they were also entrusted with the duties of Booth Level Officers to survey the residents ahead of elections to verify the details of election ID cards.  "We work as BLOs in the scorching heat but do not get paid," he said.

The indecision over the regularisation is already affecting education in Uttar Pradesh. Pending the regularisation, the state has the  highest number of vacancies of elementary teachers. Similarly, the state also has the lowest student-teacher ratio in the country (1:39 as opposed to the national average of 1:23) as per 2015-16 data. In such a situation, the failure of the government to properly address the demands of the Shiksha Mitras is likely to worsen the crisis in the near future.