Prof Javed Mughal
I accord a warm welcome to the policy of the Department of Education proclaimed by the Minister concerned in compliance with the direction of High Court of Jammu and Kashmir. But the matter of great anguish is that even for decades together all the erstwhile Governments could not notice the nonsense going on in the education system and at the end of the day, the Judiciary had to come forward to be an eye opener for the responsible chambers of this ill-fated department. Corruption ruled the roost and irregularities gripped this pious component of the system particularly in our state ever since the dawn of independence but the Governments simply acted as the mute spectators. The department of education was already suffering from academic inertia, plagued by the detrimental paucity of staff, the lack of required infra-structure and the absence of regularity and punctuality and it will not be out of place to say that the very policy of recruiting ReTs was another miasmic step on the part of the Government that further added to the deterioration of the educational standard in our state.
The backdoor entries, bribery, exploitation, communalism, favoritism, nepotism, sexual harassment and so on were already enough to stain the reputation of this sacred system when another evil in the shape of ReT recruitment was appended with it. I simply deplore the mentality of the Govt. who appoint ReTs for Rs 3000/- and then expect a scintillating performance from them without reflecting for while that even a stone-breaker on the roadside and a simple labourer on the bus station does not agree to work for Rs 100 per day and here we are expecting an ReT to ensure quality against Rs 3000/- only. The point to be noted is that quality and standard can not be ensured on the coat tails of muscle power or a mere physical prowess but is the by-product of the mental equanimity, solace of heart and peace of mind which are linked first of all with the comfortable and secure survival of an employee and his family. An ReT is after all a human being; he has a family to be subsisted, small school going children who need pocket-money, the old and ailing parents at home to be looked after and has to justify his status in the society as well. Unless he is provided with all these amenities of life, he can not and must not be expected to ensure quality education.
When the permanent teachers, masters, ZEOs, CEOs and others drawing handsome salaries have practically failed to generate and maintain quality of education, how can an ReT be expected to do so. Is he not a human being? Doesn’t he have a heart feel dejected and mind to get perturbed at the ill-treatment meted out to him? The mind, the heart and the eyes should be satisfied to do anything good in the society because “when the mind full o thoughts, you can not think rightly; when the heart is full of desires, you can not feel rightly and when the eyes are full of dreams, you can not see rightly”. The thoughts, the desires and the dreams can disturb any human being and something of the same kind is happening to the lot of ReTs. The biggest folly of the Govt. was to create a very poor and ineffective substitute and via-media in the garb of an ReT to strengthen the fabric of education instead of initiating stern action against those who, despite having looted the Govt. exchequer and public pockets also, could not contribute even an iota to the betterment of educational domain. Instead they are seen in the political processions; while running educational shops and are very good businessmen but not honest teachers. The need of the hour is to sternly punish the black-sheep in the system. The High Court has issued directions to the department of education to verify the qualificational status of the ReTs and it must be done as early as possible. Rather I would go a step further to opine the concerned department that the credentials of not only the ReTs but of all the regular teachers, lecturers and even professors must microscopically be examined and verified. If it is done, a very gloomy and dismal picture is likely to come out in the wash because I fear that the fraud has been done less or more in every sphere of the system.
I strongly disagree with the decision of the concerned department to put all these ReTs to some written test or something of this sort. The Minister must reflect on his decision for a while and he will realize that whatever he is doing is not justified from any angle of thought. These ReTs are basically the by-product of a fake system nurtured by the Govt. itself and why to let them be the only sufferers for the black deeds of the erstwhile Government. The time instead is to book all those culprits who have brought this ReT policy and have recruited incompetent brains herein with the SVO and punish them severely. My suggestion to the Govt. is that a detailed verification of the qualifications of ReTs before regularizing them must be conducted and the fake degree holders must be debarred and severely penalized for what they have done but the idea of imposing any written test on them is not justified and be ruled out forthwith. For future, the Govt. should come forward with a stringent legislation about the recruitment of teachers. The ReT policy against Rs 3000 should be abolished with instant effect. Instead of recruiting ReTs, a provision, for Trial Teachers to be recruited after a detailed and satisfactory Entrance Test for a trial period of five years against the Basic+ DA, should be envisaged.
After the completion of the stipulated term of trial, these Trial Teachers should again be made to appear for a standard Entrance Test. Not only this but before regularizing them their APRs should be sought from their Heads, the special officers must be deputed to visit their schools and record the response of the students on a sample questionnaire, their demo-performance and their all over behavior throughout their stay in the department must be recorded. All this investigation about the Trial Teachers must be clubbed with their performance in the written Test and then they may be considered for their regularization.
The Govt. needs to understand that this state has never been exposed or conditioned to a healthy and responsible environment of education. The ‘education’, in fact, has been a third line aspect of the general policy of the state. Even the concerned departmental officers and the ministers and the bureaucrats treat the teachers as the most irrelevant thing in nature, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, and a preposterous shadow. First we have to believe and make everyone in the society believe that a teacher is the basis of all possible success and prosperity of the social set up and then we have to attach an equal amount of precedence to his position and give him the remuneration quite sufficient to his requirement. Only thereafter we can think of prescribing the laws of medes and the Persians for them and the quality can be demanded from them. Apart from it, why should this screening process be applied to these poor school teachers only? Why not to bring all the school lecturers and college as well as university professors to this touch-stone? I believe that some of the ReTs and the schools teachers are thousand and one times more competent than the school lecturers and the College Professors and at the same time the so-called lecturers and professors have rendered a much more loss to our academic world than these poor lowest-paid ReTs but our Govt. has never paid attention to this stark reality.
This Screening Test before every promotion and placement must be made compulsory for all those who are concerned with the teaching profession. The time is to wake up to the stump and rump of the ground situation going on at the moment and reflect on it seriously. Such time-bound examinations must be made mandatory in all other departments as well. Even bureaucrats should not be exempted from this touch-stone policy because the virus of incompetence is everywhere and it needs continuous antidote of revisions and purification and prophylactic measures. Hence the need of the hour is to make this society and the administrative mechanism corruption free and substantiate it with high standard of potential. It looks very odd when the system, en bloc, has girded up the loins against the weakest and the poor ReTs who are already the scapegoats.
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