DH Exclusive | Retired teachers from Assam's 'venture' schools await aid on humanitarian grounds

After a little over 35 years of service, Nikhil Karmakar retired on October 11, 2019, as the headmaster of Kartimari Vivekananda Middle English School (class VI to VIII) in western Assam's Kokrajhar district.

Unlike teachers in government schools, Karmakar did not get any money, be it salary or any other benefits because the school he joined as an assistant teacher in 1984 is a "venture" school. He did not find a place in the list of 16,400 teachers, whose service was provincialised by the BJP-led state government on February 5 this year.

"I would have got a little satisfaction had I got salary even for a month," Karmakar told DH from his native village Kartimari. His school was established in 1981 with about 90 students.

With no hope left for any financial benefit, Karmakar, a graduate, now hopes the state government would provide some financial aid on "humanitarian grounds" keeping in mind his years of service to the society. A little assistance will help Karmakar run his family and continue the education of his only daughter.

The venture schools were started years ago by unemployed youths across Assam, mainly during the 1980s when insurgency was at its peak. Since there were very few private schools and the government hadn't established a sufficient number of schools, these "venture" schools provided education. The teachers in these schools — Assamese, Bengali and Bodo medium — have been agitating for years with a demand for provincialisation of such schools and recognition of their jobs.

"There are many such teachers in our district, who waited for years for their service to be recognised. But they retired without any financial benefit due to delay in provincialisation by the government," said Buddhiram Brahma, Kokrajhar District Secretary of the Asom Shiksha Karmachari Oikya Mancha, a forum of venture school teachers.

Although an official survey on the number of such retired teachers hasn't been done yet, Sabed Bhuyan, the working president of the mancha, said not less than 500 teachers like Karmakar across Assam retired before their schools were provincialised. "We demand that the government should provide some financial assistance to such teachers on humanitarian grounds as they spent their lives educating children in the society," Bhuyan said.

The BJP-led government in the state claims that they fulfilled a long-standing demand by provincialising 16,484 teachers and non-teaching staff in such venture schools. The state government, however, said the services of many teachers could not be provincialised due to non-fulfillment of eligibility criteria under the Right to Education Act or the Act enacted by the state government for such schools.

"There are nearly 50,000 teachers and non-teaching staffs, from lower primary to middle, High Schools, higher secondary schools and junior colleges, working in such venture educational institutions but only 18,000 have been provincialised. Also, the teachers have been appointed as tutors on a fixed salary. Reducing the teachers as tutors is an insult to them," said Bhuyan, whose job as a teacher in a junior college in Barpeta district was provincialised recently at a fixed salary of Rs. 20,700 only.