Hemlata lost her husband in tragic circumstances in January this year. He was a regular primary school teacher in one of the government schools under the North Delhi corporation. Delhi's children, lakhs of them, belonging to families of the urban poor, attend primary schools run by the three municipal corporations in the north, east and south of Delhi. Her husband Khemchand taught in such a school in Chandni Chowk since 1997 and his last drawn salary was Rs 58,000.
Khemchand was taking care of his widowed mother, his wife Hemlata, five children and his single sister. He belonged to a landless Dalit family originally from Alwar in Rajasthan. He was the first of his family to get a government job having worked hard, educated himself and qualified to be a teacher. He had no other source of income and was the sole breadwinner of his family.
His colleagues living in the neighborhood got together and contributed the money needed for his last rites. There was no money in the house. In Delhi, there is a fund called the Teachers Welfare Fund with mandatory monthly contributions cut from each teacher's salary. If a teacher dies while in service, her family is given an immediate grant of five lakh rupees from the fund till the rest of the dues are paid. Hemlata has not received any money from the fund although her husband, like all the teachers employed in Delhi's government primary schools, made his contribution. She has not received a single penny of his dues. There is no word about the pension. She has been told by other women in similar circumstances that the pension payments are not being made.
Khemchand's plight is representative of 13,000 primary school teachers in the north and the east of the national capital who have not been paid their salaries since October. In South Delhi, the teachers fare better, perhaps because the corporation has a better financial profile. At Hemlata's small government quarters which she will have to vacate within three months, other school teachers share their experiences. Shabana (name changed), also a single mother who lost her husband a few years ago, is the principal of a primary school in the area. She says she too is in debt. "Everyday when I go to school to teach, it is with such a heavy heart, I wonder if I will make it through the day. I too am deep in debt. I have to educate my children and feed them. People believe that a government employee has a secure income. Look at us, we are government employees, but today we are worse than slaves. But still I go to teach the children. They need me.."
Teachers are also mandatorily "requisitioned" to attend functions organized by ministers. Recently, Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan held a function at his residence to present the achievements of his ministry. The Additional Director of the Education Department of the MCD sent a message to all school principals as follows: "The above message (invitation to the function) received from the Hon'ble Mayor for school principals and officers. In the light of the above all principals/in-charges today 12-2-2018 are to be present at the residence of Hon'ble Minister Shri Harsh Vardhan...".
Not paid salaries for the work they do, forced to attend to duties after hours without any payment, and then, to top it all, to have to compulsorily attend promotional functions organized by this or that central ministry which has little to do with their work - this is the state of teachers in the capital of India. It is these teachers who are expected to implement the Right to Education Act to guarantee each child good quality education. They teach the children of the poor. 49 per cent of Delhi lives in slums. Almost nine lakh children study in these primary schools. What is of concern is the deteriorating quality of education, the increasing rate of dropouts, the lack of infrastructure. With the utterly callous approach to teachers, the governments, both the central government as well as the Delhi government, indulge in a disastrous blame game in which both teachers and children suffer.
In this case, too, a public interest petition was filed by Social Jurist, a civil rights group and argued by the indefatigable lawyer Ashok Aggarwal. On January 5, ten days before Khemchand's tragic death, the acting Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice C Hari Shankar, had, in response to that PIL, issued an order that the current month's salaries of the 13,000 teachers must be paid within a week of the order and all the arrears within one month. Hemlata says Khemchand did not know of this order, maybe it would have eased his tension. But such is the arrogance and contempt of those mandated to implement the order that even now, one and a half months later, the order has not been implemented. Ashok Aggarwal is planning to move a contempt of court petition naming the respondents, the Government of Delhi and the Home Ministry of the Union Government.
(Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha.)
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