Is anyone accountable if something happens to teachers during field duties?
Delhi shuts schools because children cannot safely sit inside classrooms during extreme heatwaves.
But the same system has no hesitation sending female teachers — many aged 50+ — door to door across colonies, streets, and unfamiliar areas for census and election duties under the burning sun.
How is this considered acceptable?
Teachers are being treated like disposable field labour. Long hours, endless walking, dehydration, unsafe localities, zero concern for women’s safety, and complete administrative insensitivity have now become “normal”.
People conveniently forget what happened during previous election duties where teachers reportedly collapsed after continuous work stretches extending beyond 20 hours. Some suffered cardiac arrests. Some never returned home.
And still nothing changes.
No corporate employee, no senior bureaucrat, and no policymaker would agree to roam door-to-door in Delhi heat for hours with this level of physical strain and personal risk. But school teachers are expected to silently obey every order because refusal invites threats, memos, salary issues, or disciplinary action.
Female teachers are being sent into unknown neighborhoods, congested lanes, isolated houses, and poorly monitored areas. If harassment, assault, heatstroke, collapse, or worse happens during duty — who exactly takes responsibility?
The administration wants “data collection” and “successful elections”, but refuses to acknowledge the human cost imposed on teachers carrying out this machinery.
Public duty cannot become legalized exploitation.
Teachers are educators, not expendable manpower for every crisis the system cannot manage properly.