In this part of the world which is famous as Reash Waer, the most important and respectable section of society, that of teachers, is being deprived of both monetary reward as well as social respect they deserve for their services to society. For becoming a teacher, a person has to invest years as well as financial resources. It is teachers who produce doctors, engineers, administrators and what not. However, once teachers find themselves in the job market, they have no option other than to bow before the owners of educational institutions. Why do these nation builders become so helpless while searching for jobs? One (personal) answer is that while acquiring education these persons get used to a lifestyle where doing manual work becomes a nightmare. So, they have to search for avenues of employment where they wouldn’t need to do manual labour.
Secondly, in the case of market for teachers, supply exceeds demand due to many reasons, one prominent among them being high unemployment rate. Thus, teachers’ bargaining power becomes so weak that they are forced to accept to be underpaid. This serious issue needs to be attended to on priority and government intervention is the need of the hour.
There can be many solutions to the problem, such as fixing minimum remuneration, or fixing a percentage of the revenue that the owners of private educational institutions make, or an open market negotiation between all the parties involved, the parents, the owners of private schools, and the teachers, whereby private teachers can negotiate for a fixed amount per class they teach.

—The writer is a research scholar at Central University of Tamil Nadu. [email protected]

Aamir Ahmad Teeli