Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Teachers & unions

Sir,— This is with reference to the article "Teacher unions, politics and education"(July 15). It is aptly remarked that teacher absenteeism and shirking is one of the biggest problems in the schooling system in north India. I have known some centres of elementary education heavily indulging in manipulating the number of students to be able to maintain a certain number of teachers. Amazingly, some of these have more teachers than students.

In the same manner, intermediate and degree colleges too are eclipsed by lax teacher attitudes and lack of teacher accountability; teacher-politicians and teacher organisations are playing a prominent role in this. In fact, describing these several factors as a sequential "series of distinct steps" is inherently misleading. These factors interact and often occur simultaneously. In the ninth five year plan, Rs. 20,381 crores has been fixed for education and 58 per cent of this would be spent on elementary education but it should be borne in mind that if the Government has the responsibility of planning for education and arranging economic resources for this, we too have the primary responsibility of evolving certain ethics.

Manish Raj Upadhayay

Allahabad, U.P.

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