By HH Mohrmen
Dr RC Laloo deserves a big hand for providing us with details and breakups of expenditure the government has incurred on education. The government has indeed allotted a large part of the budget to education and deserves to be appreciated for that. But Laloo’s reply to the motion moved by Clifford Marak of the GNC made it sound like it is not the duty of the government to educate the children of state; rather he made it sound like the government is doing the state and its young people a favour by allocating a large part of the budget for education. Dr Laloo is also trying to convince the House that the government has done its duty by allotting a good chunk of the budget to education. But the question is whether mere allocation of funds without having a foresight or vision and a forward-looking policy to provide the young people of the state with good education, good enough?
The duty of the government is to educate the children of the state and the duty of the teacher is to give education to the students and not to hit the streets every now and then. But what kind of education are we trying to instill in the minds of our young ones? Prof Dinesh Singh, Vice Chancellor Delhi University when asked about his vision for DU said, “I just want to help the youths of India to find their inner calling. You must figure out who you are. What is inside you? And learn to do what they should do in the society. Now that is what education is all about. And the rest is secondary.” (Career 360 March 2013) On this same issue Dr Anurag Behar Vice Chancellor Azim Premji University said ‘we think of education as something that is for the holistic development of individuals and for constructing a democratic equitable nation.’ The two Vice Chancellors define education as the process of helping the youths discover who they are and to inspire them to contribute towards the development of the society.
For Meghalaya the question is what is the goal of the present education system? If the success of education in Meghalaya is judged by the numbers of young people who remain unemployed, then I am sorry to say education in Meghalaya has miserably failed. I am no expert in education but a keen observer of the development in the state, and my observation is that our education system is only able to take a youth from the village and educate him/her and then render him/her useless or misfit in the society when he goes back home. An educated person is no longer interested in rolling his sleeves and farm because education has made him unsuitable to work in the field anymore. Many have said it before me that our education system has only produced young people who are fit for white coloured jobs. The minister himself has admitted this fact when he informed the House that education department is the largest employer in the state now.
Not only our education system has failed the youths, but it has also failed those who are the bricks and mortar of the department. This is obvious when every now and then various teachers’ association have to hit the streets for various reasons because the government has failed them. The government has failed in its duty to do justice to those who have devoted their time to educate the next generation of the state.
Let us start with Lower Primary Education. LP schools in Meghalaya started as District Lower Primary Schools and were initially under the District Councils as mandated by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The mismanagement of the LP schools by the Councils forced the powerful ‘All Meghalaya LP School Teachers’ Association,’ to demand the handing over Primary education to the state government. After the state government has taken over primary education, the Government, for reasons best known to it, separated the Lower Primary school into two namely government and non government LP schools. What is the logic of having two sets of LP schools in the state? There is no better reason to divide the LP schools in the state than to reduce the power and influence of the then AMPSTA and the minister who initiated this process in also holding the portfolio now.
Every time teachers have to strike work because their salaries are not regularly disbursed by the Department. No other government employees face this grievance on a regular basis. But the greatest injustice that has been done to the entire teaching fraternity in the State is the disparity of pay among teachers. Again if we take the LP school teacher as an example, those in the non-government schools whose salaries are paid by the government as per prescribed scale, are denied the benefits given to the LP School teacher in the government LP school. Then in the LP school level we also have the SSA schools and teachers in these schools are paid a salary of Rs. 6000 with Rs 7000 for the headmaster. This amount is three or four times less than the salary paid to those who received a government pay scale. In Jaintia hills, the JHADC is also running its own school with its own pay scale. All these teachers in the SSA, the District Council, the government LP and the non government LP school teachers are doing the same job and work the same amount of time, but there is a great difference in their pay. How can we expect the teachers not to fight for their rights when there is so much inequality and the government is not doing justice to them?
The same thing is happening in the Upper Primary School Section. There are government UP schools and as well as Private UP schools. Private UP schools are further divided into deficit and government aided. There is a disparity of pay between the government UP schools, deficit schools and teachers under the grant- in- aid system too. Under the grant-in-aid system 3 teachers are paid Rs. 8000 with Rs 9000 being the headmaster’s/headmistress’s salary. Teachers drawing government scale receive a salary two or three times more than the teachers in the government aided school. There is disparity again with teachers in the SSA- UP schools where 3 teachers are being paid Rs. 6000 each with Rs 7000 for the headmaster. Now why this huge difference in the salaries paid to these teachers when they are performing the same job and giving same amount of time to teaching? The same pattern is repeated in the Secondary School level. So how can we expect quality education when the government is not even providing the teachers equal pay? How can we rate the efficiency of the teachers when there is great in equality in the amount of money we pay them?
The state education department still needs a lot of work to do, to provide quality education to the people of the state. We need to take care of our teachers and if there is no disparity of pay amongst staff in the different state government departments then why only teachers? Staff of the departments of PWD, Health, Forest etc, are being paid the same pay scale according to their rank and status. Why then this inequality in the Education department?
The Government is therefore not doing enough. The minister should have asked for allocation of more funds for his department to enable him to give equal pay scale to the teachers and to provide better education to the students of the State. This is the third or may be the fourth time that Dr Laloo was given charge of the department, hopefully he has gained more insight to help improve the education scenario in the state.