Murder of Guru-Shishya Parampara

With the announcement of Janta Curfew, the dress rehearsal of a long chain of lockdowns that followed due to the universal Covid19 pandemic posed serious threat to our lives and livelihood in many ways. Almost all spheres of lives came to a standstill and adversely affected, be it industry, market, education, health, agriculture, transport or administrative functions.

As School Principal, I too faced different challenges which I had never faced before. 

In CBSE schools, new session begins in the month of April, as principal I had to make all necessary arrangements but in changed situation it was not as easy as before. The biggest challenge was to keep school vibrant and alive for all its stakeholders. I worked day and night with all possible positive vibes and energy to connect, coordinate and channelize all components of school( students, parents, teachers, non-teaching staffs, management) to move ahead, keeping aside the negativity that has developed around and  successfully published the result, arranged books, coordinated the much required online classes with the rigorous effort of our team of teachers, monitored these classes and arranged training session for teachers to equip them for better delivery and optimum satisfaction of students and their parents. Time and again i talked to them also for their feedback to improve further.

To meet the recurring expense of school, we entirely depend on the fee under different heads from the parents as most of the private schools are unaided schools, they do not have any other sources of income, neither they receive any monetary grant from Government nor from any NGOs. 

The response of parents when notified for payment of fee was shocking, disheartening and hostile. Most of them simply refused to recognize the contribution of teachers made through heavy toil and nightmare for uninterrupted online classes and denied to pay any fee to school. Even they are busy in organizing social media campaign for NO SCHOOL, NO FEE. This is really alarming and shameful for all of us. Where is our society heading on and what value we are inducting in our children? 

   During my childhood, i was taught by my parents that teachers are next to God and the soul of our education is based on GURU-SHISHYA PARAMPARA. I am totally perturbed and disappointed by the kind of unethical behaviour shown by parents and employers. Most of the private school owners either have terminated their few of the staffs or denied paying them any penny for the period of lockdown. Thousands and thousands of school staffs have been unpaid for last three months which have led to the struggle for survival for them and nobody is there to hold the hands of our nation builders. Many of them are now bound look for another profession just for the survival of their kith and kin. Is this new India we looking for? 

This is really a testing time for the relationship of student to their teachers, parents to their school, and employer to their employees.

 If same situation continues and no needful is done, neither school nor teachers will survive. We will no longer be in a position to boast over the Guru-Shishya Parampararather it will be butchered.

Nothing much to say, just ponder.