Do teachers have a right to unionise or voice their opinions? Bihar government says no

Bihar government's issuance of two notifications prohibiting teachers from forming unions conspicuously represses the freedom of speech enshrined in the Indian Constitution.

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NEOLIBERALISM manifests itself in the most autocratic manner. It unifies diverse segments of the ruling class irrespective of their political hues and colours.

In this sense, neoliberal sensibility has to be understood not in terms of policies that particular political formations implement but as ideological moorings that can manifest in policy-making and governance cutting across political allegiances and organisations. It is a sensibility that furthers interests and understanding of a particular kind.

There was an uproar when striking workers of Hero Honda were brutally beaten up by Haryana police. However, the truth is that various governments at different points in time in the last few decades have resorted to repression of protesting masses and issued diktats regarding protests.

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On the other hand, diverse political parties ruling various states have been united in their hostile attitude towards protests. The government reminds its employees not to criticise government policies and that they must have government permission to express their opinions even after retirement.

Such moves have become rampant in recent times.

The centralisation of power at the cost of democratic ethos

A November 2023 Order of the Bihar government went a step further when it asked teachers to submit completely to the state government's orders and diktats.

The state bureaucracy, under the garb of efficiency, went to the extent of violating Article 19 of the Indian Constitution to transform schooling and higher education through a disciplinarian approach.

It was rumoured that the additional chief secretary of the state education department, leading the new policy-making, had resigned and it was attributed to a collective conspiracy of different sections, as well as pressure from different political forces due to the autocratic manner in which the system was being run. However, it turned out that had merely gone on a leave and was back on duty soon.

No doubt, educational governance in Bihar has been in shambles as established by the migration of students to different parts of India. Still, it cannot be improved by either the recent authoritarian notifications by the education department or the way the unimaginative state government implements its decisions.

The state government engaged in a role-play of a good and sensitive administrator in the past when it instituted the common school system commission and did not implement even the diluted recommendations of the report.

It is also known to have insulated bureaucracy from politics, thereby giving the former the required freedom to streamline governance. 

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The spate of notifications by the additional chief secretary was being read as part of the bureaucrat's effort to put the school and higher education system on a path of improvement.

There has been a gradual buildup of opinion against dissent and protest. This has seeped into the thinking of people, as one can see the absence of resistance to any kind of rules and regulations for working and living.

Hence, a school teacher's hours of stay in school were fixed from nine a.m. to five p.m. like any other office and their vacations were reduced, among other things.

Many teachers found the new timings inconvenient for various reasons. Such policing of the educational system and sidelining the nuances of the teaching-learning process are not only unimaginative but also unheard-of measures.

The teacher becomes a nine-to-five service deliverer and not an involved, organic participant in the teaching-learning process. Developing an educational model has to go beyond the instrumentalist design that particular imaginations of teaching-learning have.

It has to be collaborative (among different constituents of the system, including communities), organic and participatory.

Office Orders violated freedom of expression

Instead of taking the approach of being collaborative and engaging dialogically with teachers, community and students, the bureaucracy came up with two notifications in November 2023.

One of them was addressed to vice-chancellors by the director of higher education dated November 28, 2023, and the other was addressed to the district education officers by the director of secondary education, also dated November 28, 2023.

The contents of both letters were similar. Two points were common to the letters:

"2) It is also noteworthy that any teacher or non-teaching staff is prohibited from becoming a member of any union. If any union is established or membership is taken by any teacher or non-academic staff, it will be considered as serious misconduct and strict disciplinary action will be taken against the said teacher/staff.

3) Any teacher or non-teaching staff will not spread unrestrained publicity through social media sites or newspapers or TV. If this is done then it will be considered as serious misconduct and strict disciplinary action will be taken against the said teacher/employee."

One way to look at this notification is through the prism of law, more specifically Article 19, to see whether a government servant joining her services implicitly surrenders her fundamental rights.

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Part III of the Constitution protects certain freedoms granted to citizens. Article 19 provides: "All citizens shall have the right— (a) to freedom of speech and expression;(b) to assemble peaceably and without arms;(c) to form associations or unions [or co-operative societies]; (d) to move freely throughout the territory of India."

It is quite obvious that the Constitution intends to protect the right of the teachers as citizens to voice their opinion about the state of things, and workings of the State.

This was considered to be a hallmark of democracy, wherein citizens keep a check on their elected representatives and functionaries.

By asking teachers not to speak against the policies of the education department is fundamentally asking teachers not to voice their concerns about something that has long been considered a public good.

However, the state government decided to take punitive action against such teachers. Similarly, the Order nullifying teachers' unions deprived their right to voice any concern about their working conditions or issues that impact them.

The Bihar government appeared no different than other governments which have been clamping down on citizen's basic rights. It, like any other government at this conjuncture, has been trying to work out a system wherein the notion of participatory democracy and a dialogic decision-making process is considered inimical to the agenda of the State.

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It is seen as hampering the working of the State and it assumes that the State is the ultimate authority, without any checks and balances, and it must be allowed to enact any policy or law howsoever anti-people it is.

Legal provisions, which emerged as a product of the welfare state, are implicitly being torn apart by the neoliberal State to give way to the new normal of neoliberal governmentality.

Neoliberal governmentality and its idea of complete control

Power must be centralised under neoliberal regimes because it facilitates neoliberal capital's imagination to be implemented seamlessly without any debate or dissent.

This movement of capitalism tries to work out ways to prevent any opposition to its crisis knowing that crisis is inevitable under this system. With its control over legislating bodies, it enacts draconian laws and, wherever possible, seeks to establish complete dominance over its implementing machinery.

Pre-neoliberal legal constitutional provisions created gray areas wherein government workers are also seen as citizens and given the right to dissent and unionise.

Though governments have created provisions such as the Central Civil Services Rules to circumvent provisions in Article 19 of the Constitution to ensure that the governments could work without much hassle, it did contradict constitutional provisions.

In hindsight, the neoliberal State has found a weapon from the welfarist era that it can use effectively to its own end and it is doing that mercilessly.

Understanding very well that it will jeopardise its agenda, which intrinsically culminates in anti-people policy making and implementation, the neoliberal governmentality seeks to establish its control over this gray area through notifications of the sort that we have seen in Bihar.

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It has been happening in other parts of the country and now it has arrived in this State, where political leadership claims to be different from other places. It cannot be blamed on one bureaucrat. 

It is rather symptomatic of the system, which believes in having firm control knowing that its governance will adversely impact people.