Lobbying for preferred place of posting
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: April 12, 2025 -

FOR years, ministers and officials concerned have been advising the teaching community to forego the habit of lobbying for posting in preferred locations but the same pattern of seeking favourable posting place seems to be in vogue in the state if One takes into consideration the same line adopted by Education (Schools) secretary Naorem Praveen during his speech at the valedictory function of the five-day 43rd Science, Mathematics and Environment Exhibition for Children 2024-25, held on Thursday.

For the past many years highlight of addresses by dignitaries at events related to teachers and education are generally centred on urging the teachers to guide their students to the right path, follow transfer order issued by the government as per necessities and serve diligently wherever posted.

While it is human nature to work closest to home, it's a fact that many government school and college teachers retire from service after serving in areas far from home throughout their entire service career.

There are also teachers who were never posted beyond his/her home district, in-spite of successive governments claiming implementation of rationalisation policy on transfer and posting, thereby underscoring presence of teachers who either have connections with ministers and bureaucrats or are very suave in inciting the students to launch protest against transfer order citing shortage of faculty members and demanding replacement before effecting transfer.

In some cases, teachers transferred to remote locations seldom report for duty by utilising service of local educated unemployed youth on the basis of sharing certain percentage of the salary entitled, a trend particularly rampant in the hill areas for ages.

On the other-hand, due to outbreak of the ethnic violence in May 2023, there might be teachers from both the valley and the hills, who continue to draw salary from the comfort of their homes but have not stepped foot in their place of posting for nearly two years now.

Thus, secretary Praveen's remarks that teachers should not lobby for posting at preferred place is unlikely to be reciprocated by the teachers, especially those who are familiar with top department officials.

The imposition of the President's Rule might have curtailed the age old practice of ministerial interventions or interferences resulting in cancellation or supersession of transfer orders.

However, effective compliance with the government directive to serve at designated location would depend on non-interference by the bureaucrats overseeing the administrative set-up and judicious implementation of the orders issued.

With significant changes affected in the education sector and curricula under the New Education Policy-2020, aimed at reforming the educational sector and system to address multidimensional challenges, it needs no reminding that fruition of the Policy's objective would rest on sincerity of the top bureaucrats as the slightest hint of favouritism during transfer and posting would not only demoralise industrious teachers but might lead to frequent disturbances to normal academic chores as and when distraught teachers incite the students to resort to agitation.

On the brighter side, teachers should take heart that as per the transfer policy, a newly recruited teacher will be posted in a remote location and then closer home after a few years, before the place of work is nearest to home when retirement is near.