Karnataka betrays its teachers and students: education in crisis

 Karnataka’s government-run schools and colleges are collapsing, and the state administration’s negligence is at the heart of this disaster. Teachers are routinely left unpaid for months. Colleges and universities are denied crucial grants. Classrooms are crumbling. The state, desperate to cut liabilities, has turned to a system of guest teachers and guest lecturers—hired for barely ten months a year and dumped into unemployment once summer vacation begins. Even during those ten months, salaries are often delayed or withheld. This is not just unconventional; it is cruel.

Educators, the backbone of society, are treated as disposable. Some have even taken their own lives under the unbearable stress of unpaid work. And the government? Silent, indifferent, unmoved. Parents watch helplessly as their children’s futures are mortgaged to administrative incompetence. Students’ learning suffers, morale collapses, and the entire public education system teeters on the edge.

This is not mere bureaucratic failure—it is a moral failure. The state government has reduced education to numbers on a ledger, disregarding the human lives it impacts. Talent leaves the system, classrooms fall silent, and the promise of public education decays.

Karnataka’s rulers must answer for this. Teachers deserve security and dignity. Students deserve stability and opportunity. Citizens deserve a government that honors its duty. Until urgent reforms are enacted, Karnataka’s education system will remain a stark symbol of governmental neglect, a warning of the consequences when cost-cutting trumps human and intellectual development.

The collapse is not inevitable—it is manufactured, a result of political expediency, financial games, and indifference. The time to act is now. The time to demand accountability is now. Anything less is a betrayal of every child, every teacher, and the very future of Karnataka.