Each year as India celebrates Teacher’s day with fanfare and epiphany by glorifying this noble profession with expressions of gratitude, I simply wonder why this admiration dies down for the rest of the year.

Poet Kabir narrated the importance of teachers in his couplet:

Guru gobind dou khade, kaake lagoon pay. Balihari guru aapne gobind diyo batay

(Guru and God both are here to whom should I first bow? All glory be unto the guru, path to God who did bestow).

Unfortunately these gurus have become the scapegoat for all lacunas that our education system is plagued with. This brings to an important question as to why teachers are not respected in India and what daily battles they wage for survival irrespective of whether they are working in a government school or an international curriculum school.

The story of teachers of JNPV is no different. For the past 2 years they have been receiving irregular salaries sometimes not being paid for as long as 3 months. They have spent 1.5 lakhs on lawyers and were unable to raise 50 thousands rupees on time to pay the lawyers fees and so missed the recent hearing of their case. Many teachers are single earning heads in their families and 3 months on the trot without salaries takes a heavy toll on their day to day lives and health due to the stress. They struggle financially to support their families in this volatile environment and uncertain future.

As ex-students it is our responsibility to see that they are not humiliated any further and get the respect they deserve back. We owe our success to the foundation they have laid through education. We are indebted to our teachers such that we can never repay them in words or material things. The least we can do for them is give them our moral support and help them get what they rightfully earned and ensure the matter is resolved amicably without further delay.

I wholeheartedly request all my friends and families to share this and raise the necessary funds to support the lawyers fees that they have already spent and create a fund for the future needs. And support in whatever means you can. Time or money doesn’t matter.