Unwanted ‘guests’ or burdensome ‘guests’

The plight of the over 12,000 guest lecturers in government colleges across Karnataka continues to be miserable despite a new government in the saddle for the last six months.

A majority of these teachers have served the colleges ranging from five to ten years on a petty honorarium, hardly sufficient to make the two ends meet.

Several first grade colleges— there are 430 of them in the state—have more than half their faculty hired on a temporary basis. They however serve as full-time lecturers but receive petty wages.

The Siddramaiah government has not heeded their demand to recruit them as permanent staffers.

A dharna launched by them in Bengaluru twenty days ago has continued without their pleas drawing any sympathetic hearing.

While these teachers have been waiting for years, the ultimate losers are students most of whom hail from underprivileged classes and do not afford paying high tuition and capitation fee in private institutions which have been thriving precisely due to dire state of the colleges run by the Department of Collegiate Education in the state.

In the backdrop of the negligence, it appears the officialdom is pursuing the policy of washing its hands off the state’s role in providing higher education and entrusting it lock, stock and barrel to private sector where profiteering takes precedence over empowering the masses.