Appointed, ignored & unpaid: Meet India's 'invisible' teachers

In 1983, Md Aftab Alam was hired as a regular college lecturer - on paper. Forty-two years later, he's still waiting for his first salary. The appointment letter, issued by Sanjay Gandhi Mahila College in Gaya, promised pay and service conditions on a par with university faculty. What followed was four decades of unpaid teaching, no employee ID, no pension - just a man showing up to class every day with a PhD and no payslip.

"I taught, I evaluated papers, I invigilated exams," he said. "But officially, it's as if I was never there." His only proof is a fading sheet of paper from 1983 and a lifetime of unacknowledged labour.

Last month, in a sharply worded verdict, Supreme Court ruled that 18 assistant professors in Gujarat - hired on contract and paid far less than their regular colleagues - had been denied basic constitutional protections. The bench, led by Justice Abhay S Oka, invoked a line familiar to nearly every Indian classroom: "Guru Brahma, Guru Vishnu, Guru Devo Maheshwara ." The words, the court said, mean little if teachers are paid a pittance. Alam and thousands of haplesss teachers like him would know.

The truth is harder than what the verdict suggests: in places far from Gujarat, and in classrooms that do not appear in affidavits, teachers still work for Rs 3,000 a month. Or Rs 1,000. Or nothing at all.

Alam lives in a rented two-room flat in Gaya, where the plaster peels and the only reliable light comes from a window that faces the street.

Every morning, Alam folds his PhD certificate back into a drawer, picks up the same well-thumbed books he has taught from for years, and steps out toward a college that never recognised him as its own. His wife, Shamsun Nisa , said the only income now comes from occasional evaluation work during university exams. “Even private tuition stopped after Covid,” she said. “People think he’s too broken to teach. But he still reads. He still steps out in the morning dressed for work.”

He began teaching English there in 1983, just after completing his master’s from Magadh University. Though formally hired under university-approved terms, the college denied him regular employee status. “When I asked for a salary,” he said, “they told me I was just a part-time teacher.” Magadh University, in response to an RTI application, confirmed Alam had indeed been appointed as regular faculty. In 2023, the state’s higher education director directed the university registrar to take necessary action. Nothing changed. “I couldn’t afford lawyers,” Alam said. “Sometimes I couldn't afford two meals a day.”

India’s education system — vast, decentralised, often romanticised — rests on people like Alam. People who carry attendance registers without knowing whether they’ll be compensated for it. People who prepare lectures, invigilate exams, sign logbooks, evaluate answer sheets, and still have to take private tuition just to afford a sack of rice. Alam is not the only one

The numbers alone tell a story that’s difficult to look away from. There are more than 10,000 teachers in 220 unaided affiliated degree colleges across Bihar. At Banwari College, commerce lecturer Deepak Kumar Singh teaches every day. His salary last year was Rs 9,000. In 2022–23, it was Rs 21,000. Before that, for four consecutive years, he received nothing. “No holidays, no leave. We come, we teach,” he said. “We mark attendance on the biometric machine like everyone else.” The biometric scanner at the entrance does not care whether its data leads to a pay slip.

Others never got even that far. Shankar Bhagat , who taught ancient Indian history in the same college, died of liver cirrhosis without treatment. Another colleague, Mukesh Kumar Mishra , is battling cancer in Muzaffarpur. His salary wasn’t enough to even consider a private hospital. “These are PhD holders,” said Arun Gautam, a senior teacher and media-in-charge of the Federation of Affiliated Degree College Teachers’ Associations of Bihar.

This neglect, over time, has ossified into routine. A 2013 policy promised performance-based grants to unaided institutions — linking funding to student outcomes. But funds were never consistently released. Today, teachers are paid, if at all, from the internal revenues of their colleges: exam fees, certificate charges, hostel deposits. Many have no formal employment letters. Some earn barely Rs 1,500 a month.

In Gujarat, the disparities played out on official contracts — but the outcome was no less punishing. Between 2008 and 2014, over 450 engineers were hired as assistant professors on fixed-term contracts. Some were placed in govt engineering colleges, others in polytechnics. They were paid Rs 30,000 or Rs 25,000, and told their tenure would end once Gujarat Public Service Commission filled the sanctioned posts.

Naitik Gor was among them. He joined a govt polytechnic institute in 2013 and worked 32 hours a week — nearly double the regular load — and took on the full slate of responsibilities: practicals, examinations, even election duties. “There were no vacations, no earned leave. Same job, half the pay,” he said. In 2020, he walked away and took a position at a private firm in Ahmedabad.

In 2018, over 300 contractual faculty like him went to Gujarat HC. They argued the disparity in pay violated Articles 14, 15, 16 and 19 of the Constitution. In 2023, a singlejudge bench agreed, calling it a “crying shame” that qualified lecturers, appointed by due process, were still kept on ad hoc contracts. The state appealed. Two division benches rejected its argument. A third overturned the decision. The matter reached SC.

The apex court has now ruled in the petitioners’ favour. Gujarat govt has been ordered to pay arrears with 8% interest from 2015, and to align these teachers with the pay scale of regular assistant professors. But much of damage is already done. Gor said most of the original petitioners had left teaching.

The erosion is not just economic — it is emotional, generational, institutional. Siksha Mitras — guest teachers recruited in large numbers in the early 2000s — were briefly regularised in 2015, drawing salaries of Rs 50,000. Two years later, the decision was reversed. Their salaries dropped back to Rs 10,000. “We were promoted, then demoted,” said Meenu Goswami , a Siksha Mitra in Bulandshahr, UP, who lives with a leg disability. She recounted at least a dozen suicides among demoted teachers in her district. “Some had loans, others lost homes. The salary cut killed them.” Shaily Sharma spent five years teaching at a small school in Amroha. She holds a postgraduate degree and a BEd. By 2015, she had become principal. Her salary was Rs 4,500 a month. “I loved the work,” she said. “But love doesn’t pay rent.” She left teaching in 2016.

Teachers in Lucknow’s top-tier schools might earn Rs 60,000 or more. But those are few. Most private school teachers, even at well-known institutions, are paid Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000. “Even the fancy schools don’t offer more,” said Atul Srivastava, president of the Association of Private Schools, UP.

The longer-term effects are showing across Uttar Pradesh. Since 2021, there has been no recruitment of govt school teachers. Thousands of schools now run entirely on guest faculty. “There’s no pipeline anymore,” said Dinesh Sharma, president of the Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association. “People are migrating to other states.” The National Education Policy 2020 promised to restore dignity to the teaching profession. It called for better pay, regularisation, and a clear career path.