Why your teacher is on Strike : An open letter to my students

Dear Students,

When I was in my undergrads, my teachers went for an indefinite strike which lasted for more than a month. Like most of my classmates, I had no clear idea what this strike was for and I chose to go with the common perception that all such strikes were for a hike in salary only, and the teachers who had called the strike or did participate in the same had no serious concerns about the students. Those were bad guys for me, and so were the doctors who chose to go on a strike without caring for their patients.

The world today has transformed to a great extent due to the e-revolution. Students are well informed about the world around them, and any query has an answer just a click away. I used to believe that today's student does not carry a misconception the way I used to. But when I spoke to some of you, I realized that there is a good fraction of students that does not understand the teachers'  movement to it's true spirit. I, therefore chose to write this open letter to you.

The very first thing we need to understand is the importance of peaceful agitations in the system called democracy. Though the basic principle of democracy allows the one in  majority to rule, it should not mean that any individual or group of individuals is denied it's fundamental rights and justice for being in minority. Peaceful protests are the most powerful means of sending the message to the authorities or the government that the concerns raised by them are serious enough. After all, no one would like to stop working and wasting time in agitation for trivial reasons. A non-violent peaceful protest leaves a far more powerful impact on the authorities than any other means, and it uses to have capabilities of associating a larger segment of the society with the cause.

Next, we try to understand the reasons teachers go on strike. Though the salary hike may seem to be a part on the agenda, it is not at all about money.  The teachers, based on your course and curriculum, teach you different specialized topics but they are also supposed to mentor you and accompany you throughout your journey of becoming an independent responsible individual. You are supposed to learn to respect, respect your own self as well as the dignity of the individuals around you. No school or college can teach self respect if it's teachers continue to compromise with self respect and do not fight for justice. We are fighting for self respect, for dignity, and for justice. We are not fighting for our salary hike, we are fighting for you, we are fighting for guardians, for marginalized section of the society, for working women, and for the future of public funded higher education.

If, at the first glance, my words sounded like rhetoric of common issues that had been in existence for very long, give me a little more patient reading while I continue to describe the issues to you.

The concept of public funded education system had been there since the independence of India. For education is never seen as just a means of employment, and should never be seen like that. We educate young minds because the next generation, needs to be aware of the knowledge gained by their predecessors over millenia and  at the same time to be a thinker, critical, rational and innovative enough to challenge and improve upon the beliefs of the previous generation. An educated youth contributes much more to the society than just getting a job and serving for a narrow objective. Therefore any society must have a system that educates everyone. And when we speak of such an inclusive education system, the question of demanding a fee for the education offered does not arise. Education is not a need of an individual, it is the need of the society. A student, therefore, is not only taking something from the education system, she is also returning something to the society simultaneously.

The present scenario, on the contrary, seems to move in the opposite direction. Policy makers have already assumed that by educating an individual, the system is trying to make her employable. Since an employed youth earns money from the employment, the system which has made the youth employable deserves a share in that earning which needs to be paid in advance. In simple words, efforts are being made to destroy the public funded education system.

Dear students, you may again start feeling that the education you are getting is not free, as you are asked to pay a fee every semester. Let me clarify for you that the amount collected by the students as the annual fee is a very small fraction of the annual budget of your college. I won't go into the rationale of this nominal fee charged from you. But if public funding of the higher education is to be ceased, then other means of meeting this deficit are needed to be devised. The calculation is simple, if you want to reduce the deficit, earn more and spend less. Let's first focus on 'spend less' business. A big fraction of the allocated fund of a college or university goes as the salary and other emoluments paid to it's teaching and administrative staff. To control this expenditure, the system has been continuing with a big chunk of staff employed on ad-hoc basis for years. An ad-hoc employee comtinues on the same basic salary every year and is denied many other benefits like reimbursement of medical expenses. Another scheme in pipeline is of contractual teaching staff that shall be paid a lump sum amount every month. The second part, namely the idea of increasing the imcome of a college or university has not been worked upon well. An institution with a force of underpaid contractual staff can't go to the industries, serve them and earn from that service. Therefore the safest shot is a hike in the fees of students. How much this hike could be? If we are thinking upon a model that does not ask for any financial help from the government, the fee hike can be up to 10,000%.  Now imagine the situation when your colleages will ask for  ₹ 10 lakhs for one semester and in return, offer you teaching by a team of contractual staff that is surviving with a high degree of job uncertainty and disappointments. Students belonging to econically weaker sections won't be able to enter into such an education system at all. At the same time, with the demise of a public funded quality education system, private players, whose entire model shall be a business model, get nourished well. We will end up creating a society that shall have two classes, one of highly educated billionaires and the other much larger class of uneducated poor.

My dear students, your teacher is on strike because s/he believes in fighting against the attack on dignity of the nobel profession of teaching. Your teacher is on strike because s/he cares for equal opportunities for all and your teacher is on strike because s/he can foresee what is going to take over, and believe me, that future, if becomes reality, will be catastrophic.