Tamil Nadu: Teachers strike on DPI Campus assuming political contours

Chennai: An agitation by some part-time school teachers, who gathered inside the DPI premises to raise slogans demanding regularization of their services on September 25, has snowballed into a political issue as it gathered steam over the past 10 days with more groups from the teaching community joining in with their demands, leading to a round-the-clock siege that has drawn opposition party leaders in support of the cause.

The quick developments inside the DPI premises has left the government wringing its hands in despair mainly because the DMK’s election manifesto number 181 had promised to address the issue of the teachers. Accusing the government of reneging on its promise, the teachers and those trained to be teachers are now on a fast holding up placards with the number 181.

Though school education minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi announced a Rs 2,500 increase to the Rs 1000 monthly salary of 10,359 part-time teachers, who were the first to launch the agitation, the protestors rejected it on Wednesday and announced that the strike will continue till their demands were met.

Representatives of the protesting groups met Poyyamozhi for talks on Tuesday when they were told to wait for the government response. The Minister apprised Chief Minister M K Stalin of the developments on Wednesday and then announced the hike in salary for part-time teachers that was rejected by the teachers.

But pressure for the government mounted in the political sphere as Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Edappadi K Palaniswami mentioned the teachers strike when he met media persons on Wednesday and blamed the government for failing to address the grievances of the teaching community.

Visuals of the agitation, one of them showing a woman making a highly charged speech and another of Naam Thamizhar Katchi chief coordinator Seeman calling on them, went viral mainly on social media, drawing more public attention and sympathy to the agitation.

Some leaders of the State BJP and former Minister and AIADMK organization secretary D Jayakumar were among those who called on the protestors to express their solidarity, while many other political leaders like PMK president Anbumani Ramadoss issued statements expressing outrage over the government ignoring the striking teachers.

Since the protest turned into a hunger strike on September 28 some teachers fainted on the premises and had to be rushed to hospitals, which provided grist for the opposition parties to give a political contour to the agitation itself though the demands of the different groups vary.

While Jayakumar stayed in the fast venue for a long time and interacted with the protestor, many of the demands of the teachers are quite old. Primary school teachers want the restoration of the old pension scheme, while those who appeared for the Teacher Eligibility Test, a competitive examination, in the past years want to be given employment.

Those who got jobs as secondary school teachers after June 2009 are complaining of pay anomaly and the demand ‘same job, same salary’ has been raised by the associations concerned for the past 14 years, while the demand for restoration of the old pension scheme is at least 20 years old.

However, the latest agitation is threatening to assume a political contour, as it took a round-the-clock form and with more and more teachers coming in from all over the State to fill in the spaces left by those taken to hospital and the protestors insisting that the present government was obliged to honour its promise made in the manifesto.