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Through arbitrary teachers’ transfers?

Obviously, and also as per rules, before decisions on transfers on grounds of over-staffing are made, note should be taken of performance, exam results, attendance regularity, etc. of all teachers. However, in the present “rationalization” exercise, the teacher with the shortest duration of service has been considered excess. At the same time, according to the Department’s policy, the teacher with longest duration of service is to be considered for transfer on account of over-staffing. Officials are unable to explain this anomaly and say they are only following the CM’s instruction (Nav Bharat, May 17, 1999)!

It is also said that enrollment has been surveyed very cursorily and even rules in respect of NCC, NSS, sports and disabled teachers have been ignored. A councilor, who is also the secretary of the education sub-committee, says a lot has been done mindlessly with no regard to norms and “so issues are bound to arise” (Dainik Bhaskar, July 20, 1999).

Given all this, it is hardly surprising that the transfers do not seem to be resulting in optimal deployment of staff. In fact, while the origin of the merger scheme was the anomaly that there are teachers and no students, in some cases its implementation seems to be resulting in the opposite anomaly. In a primary school in Juni Indore there was only one teacher, who has now been transferred. In the new academic year there are students but no teacher. Likewise, in the school in Kulkarni ka Bhatta there used to be 200 students and 5 teachers. Three teachers were declared excess and transferred. Now the school has a principal, one teacher, 11 rooms and 235 students (Dainik Bhaskar, July 20, 1999).

Having been implemented in such an arbitrary manner, all that transfers seem to be achieving is chaos amongst the teaching community. Teachers transferred to rural areas have yet to report for work at new posts. The CM has placed their joining as a pre-condition to examining their grievances. But teachers fear that once they join, no one will listen to them. As a result, many teachers are attending neither their old nor their new school and are fully occupied in getting their transfer orders cancelled (Swadesh, July 20, 1999). So much for rationalizing staffing!