Teacher bodies lament caste survey duty

Despite protests, the Bihar government has also used teachers for its various campaigns, to the visible detriment of education sector.

A day after the Patna High Court upheld the caste survey in Bihar and the state government swiftly followed it with a directive to restart the stalled exercise, the burden of field work has once again fallen on government school teachers, who have lamented the additional duty in the middle of the ongoing academic session.

Patna CM Chandrashekhar Singh looks on as an enumerator collects information from residents as part of caste survey at Phulwari Sharif in Patna on Wednesday. (Santosh Kumar/HT)

Hours after the HC order on Tuesday, a letter was issued by from Md Sohail, secretary of the government, to restart the caste survey work immediately. “As the HC has dismissed all the writ petitions against caste survey, the order putting on hold the exercise in the light of the May 4 court order is withdrawn. Steps be taken to restart the work forthwith,” said the letter.

Soon after, the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) director Sajjan R also issued an order, cancelling all ongoing training programmes involving teachers with immediate effect till further orders and asking the trainees to report to their respective schools and work for completion of the caste survey at the earliest.

Bihar Secondary Teachers’ Association president Shatrughan Prasad Singh said he has written to chief minister Nitish Kumar, education minister Chandrashekhar as well as additional chief secretary (education) K K Pathak on the matter.

“Mid-session, teachers will be deployed for caste survey and after that, there will festival holidays and election duty. When are they supposed to teach? In 2016, the Supreme Court had also observed that engaging teachers in non-academic work was against the Constitution. It even objected to deputation of teachers on non-academic posts. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) also issued a similar order for its schools,” Singh said.

Meanwhile, in a letter to all the district magistrates (DMs), Pathak has written that while deploying teachers for the caste survey duty, it should be kept in mind that schools are not left without any teacher.

“The teachers should be deployed only for caste survey work, and no other administrative work be taken from them. The schools should not be left without teachers,” says the letter issued on Wednesday, barely two days after his directive to DMs asking them to avoid taking any non-academic work from teachers.

Singh said shortage of teachers was known to the government and therefore it was carrying out recruitment exercise, but still, the teachers are being overburdened. “Teachers are routinely engaged in a host of activities such as cattle census, general census, other surveys, election duties, pulse polio campaign, verification of family records and organising social campaigns, despite court orders and Centre’s directive. The CM has often talked of sparing teachers even from midday meal duty, but nothing has changed. Pathak’s directives have also proved to be just a piece of paper,” he said.

Anand Kaushal Singh, Primary Teachers’ Association President, said, “What happens to attendance monitoring? How long will education be sacrificed for politics in Bihar? Was Pathak’s action just for publicity? Why can’t other employees be deployed for caste survey work to spare teachers for teaching?”

Despite protests, the Bihar government has also used teachers for its various campaigns, to the visible detriment of education sector.

The annual status of education report (ASER) of 2018 and 2022, released in January 2023, pointed to low learning outcome in the state, with dip in reading levels.