Patna flood: A Lesson for the People

 

A school teacher gets low salary. There is no permanent cadre of school teacher in Bihar. The existing permanent cadre of teachers is declared dying cadre. They have very poor service conditions. They conduct elections. They conduct different sorts of census. They have several responsibilities, from collection of ration to accounting, regarding mid-day meal . Some of them are often deputed in blocks and other offices for non teaching work. School heads have many responsibilities regarding construction work in schools. They are always reprimanded by BEOs and DEOs. Even a DM was found slapping a teacher in classroom. The teaching environment in schools are spolit by over dosage of bureucratic interference. A good number of school teachers having Masters' in Education are engaged for teaching in DIETs on class basis payment. Such teachers are forced to leave schools and visit DIETs that are generally few kilometers away from their schools. Thus affecting school teaching. Most of the DIETs function casually without following proper time schedule.
DIETs have academic role but they are governed by bureucracy. As a consequence all DIETs are almost dead.
It can be concluded beyond doubt that our school system and allied systems meant for its capacity building are unable to discharge their duties due to bureucratic control and unnecessary interferences.

Teachers cannot be blamed until schools and their capacity building institutions are freed from bureucratic control and non academic work & school heads be given autonomy to run schools.

To the contrary the bureucracy gets good & regular salary and has good service conditions. But Bihar bureucracy is burden on the state. Their performance is dismal. The current situation of Bihar's capital Patna due to inclement weather reveals the great inefficiency of bureaucracy . Huge water logging in most of the areas, electricity failure in several areas, public hospitals flooded with water, thousands of people unable to come out of their homes due to neck deep water in the area, small private ambulances unable to wade through water, bigger public ambulences not available even after several calls, people are starving, many people died. All these happened in spite of red alerts by meteorological department. If the disaster management department cannot handle the situatiation in Patna then we can easily imagine the kind of services people getting in flood affected areas of several districts of Bihar. Teachers would have definitely managed the situation and served the people better if teachers were given the task.

People must learn to call politicians and bureaucrats to their village or local parliaments and discuss problems with them. Janta darbar cannot be at the door step of CM, ministers or DMs. Bureucrats regularly attend Village parliaments in Kerala and learn about people's problems and try to solve them.

There is an urgent need to restore teachers' permanent cadre. Teachers must be paid good salary and best service conditions. Schools must be freed from any sort of bureucratic control.

It would be better if task based appointment of bureucrats are made on contract basis. Bureucrats should be appointed for finishing a particular task within a stipulated period.
We cannot afford appointing teachers, doctors and some other professionals on adhoc/contract basis. They must be appointed on regular basis with best of salary and service conditions.
Health & Education along with food and shelter are the prime responsibility of any welfare state. If the state instumentalities which are primarily managed by bureucracy fail to perform upto people's expectation, the people who are the master and custodian of the state power must take action for making correction in the system as a whole.

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