Protesting teachers are staging a major sit-in at India’s Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology. About 150 teachers participated in a demonstration against the government’s proposed implementation of biometric attendance tracking.
According to the Business Standard, the Guru Jambheshwar University Teachers Association (GJUTA) has called the state’s measure “anti-academic and anti-teacher,” while GJUTA President Dr. Anil Kumar Bhankhar criticized the government’s inaction in replacing top academic managers, implying the move to implement biometric attendance tracking is hypocritical. The protest comes at a bad time, given the central government’s recent judicial setback in its efforts to expand its Aadhaar program as a vehicle of access to government services.
The teachers’ resistance echoes that seen in other areas where the government has implemented biometric attendance tracking via Aadhaar ID card, with the central government having seen foot-dragging from the Defence Ministry in actually using the system. Still, Aadhaar-linked biometric attendance tracking has rolled out more successfully elsewhere, and government plans for its implementation in schools are long in the making, which suggests that the state won’t easily back down in the face of this opposition.
Source: Business Standard
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October 9, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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