DELHI: Lamentable tales of the smug self-complacency of the Education Department and the District Board authorities on the one hand, and the miserable plight of the teachers of rural schools of Delhi on the other were told by the village teachers and students to a group of press representatives, who were taken to the neighbouring villages of Delhi on a tour by the Delhi Teachers’ Association on Friday [Jan 17] the fifth day of the teachers’ strike. A drive through the villages … revealed that the teachers’ strike was much more successful in the villages than in the city due to inexplicably low scales of pay and poor condition of District schools, and one wonders why the villagers teachers had not struck work earlier.

…[T]eachers who have not received even the small salaries that they have … are determined not to call off the strike unless they get a living wage… . When [the staff reporter] asked one of these village school teachers, as to what will be their attitude if the strike continued for a long period he replied that they had already been reduced to the starvation level and it makes little difference whether they get their small salaries or not.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2022