Things in Haryana have taken a dramatic turn as teachers wrote Prime Minister Narendra Modi a letter in blood, for being made to wait two-and-a-half years without jobs.
A statement released by the JBT teachers (those who have completed their two-year junior basic training), says that 12,731 of them – of which 7,000 are women – have been waiting since August 2014 to start working. They have raised concerns not just about the issue of their own unemployment, but the fact this massive lapse is negatively affecting the primary schools where they should be teaching.
The statement also mentions how raising their concerns in a public way has led to them being lathi-charged by the police, not just once or twice, but five times. This is reminiscent of when 500 primary-school level computer teachers were lathi-charged in Panchkula back in 2014.
In fact, the drastic measure of using their own blood to write letters is one that teachers have had to resort to in the very recent past as well. It was in October last year ad-hoc teachers had been taken to a camp jail in Ranchi, where they wrote 10,000 letters such letters (again addressed to Modi) to regularise services.
According to a report by the District Information System for Education, there were 6,00,000 vacant teaching posts at the primary level in government schools in 2015. So one really has to question why 12,731 trained primary school teachers have been left by the wayside, in Haryana alone.