“When a teacher travels 150 kms every day, he doesn’t just measure the road—he also measures his age, his relationships and his dreams.” The transfer system in Haryana is like an old alarm clock in a house—it rings correctly once or twice a year; the rest of the time it just keeps ticking. The only difference is that if the alarm rings by mistake here, the government gets shocked and says—”Oh! This happened on its own. Next time, we will be careful not to hurry.”
In Haryana, teacher transfer has become such a disease for which the government has no cure, and perhaps it is not even trying to find one. This disease is not only in administrative files, but is also spread in the hearts, minds and homes of thousands of teachers. For the past nine years, its symptoms have been the same: promise, date, excuse, then a new date, and then another excuse. Governments kept coming and going, faces kept changing, but the habit of this disease did not change.
For the government, it is just a process—a click on the computer’s MIS portal, moving a file from one table to another. But for a teacher, a transfer means the end of a journey of 80-150 kilometres every day, returning to ailing parents, hearing the laughter of children, or holding the hand of an ailing spouse. It may determine the course of his life, but in the eyes of the government, it is just a “pending case” that will be settled someday.
Instead of finding a cure for this disease, the government has opened a permanent shop of excuses. Sometimes a glitch in the MIS portal, sometimes anomalies in the data, sometimes a process being postponed, sometimes the election code of conduct, sometimes the excuse of mid-session, sometimes the tests of Model Sanskriti Schools, and then forgetting them. This list of excuses has become so long that now there is no need to find a new excuse—the old excuses are presented in a new pack, like sticking a new label on old grains.
When the new government came in last December, a flame of hope was lit among the teachers. It was said, “Transfers will be done in a few weeks.” Teachers breathed a sigh of relief. March came – “Wait a little”. May – “Now we will do it soon”. June, July, August – every time a new promise, the same excuse. The new government sold the same old excuses in new packaging. Only the dialogues changed; the intentions remained the same.
Perhaps the government officials believe that teachers who travel 80-150 km daily are part of some “fitness mission”. Leaving home at 5 am, BLO duty, PPP update, mid-day meal calculation, teaching three classes simultaneously – this is “work” in the eyes of the government. It is a different matter that in this workout, the teacher’s waist and knees give up first, then the mind and soul.
Home has now become a Sunday destination. Children’s laughter, mother’s medicine, small and big responsibilities of the house – all remain only in “thought”. When a teacher stays away from his children and teaches the children of others, is this a sacrifice or compulsion? The government pats its back by calling it a sacrifice, but it is a life of compulsion that breaks someone’s heart.
Perhaps no one remembers under which ministry sensitivity comes. In government files, transfer is just a change in a data column, but in reality, it is the basis of a person’s mental peace, family stability, and professional performance. But there is no column for these things on the MIS portal, so they have no importance.
The government’s answer is always fixed—”It will happen soon; the system is being worked on.” This is the same “hurry” in which a child is born in 9 months, but the transfer file does not come out of the portal. The truth is that the transfer button is pressed only when it benefits politics. When elections are near or a particular vote bank has to be appeased, only then the process suddenly speed up. The rest of the time, the teacher’s life remains imprisoned in the lock of “technical reasons”.
It has to be understood that a teacher is not a machine. He too, has emotions, fatigue, family, and dreams. When the government dismisses his problems as “personal”, he not only gets discouraged—he slowly starts breaking down. And a broken teacher not only loses their morale but also weakens the dreams of the coming generation.
Transfer is not a “favour” but a right. It should be done in a transparent, time-bound, and sensitive process. Family, health, and social circumstances should be given priority. This old habit of technical glitches and excuses must end.
The transfer system in Haryana is like an old hand pump, which sometimes gives water and sometimes does not. When water comes, people say – “Look, it is working.” And when it does not come, they say – “The pipeline is being repaired, wait.” The question is – how long will teachers spend their lives depending on this dry pipeline?
The delay in transfer is not a technical fault—it is a lack of sensitivity. Until the government understands that teachers are also human beings, this disease will remain immortal. New governments will keep selling the old treatment under new names, and the patient—the teacher—will keep getting weaker day by day.
The position of a teacher is respected, but this respect should not be seen only in speeches on stage, but also in their lives. Only when teachers can return home and eat with their children, take care of their sick parents, or hold their spouse’s hand and stand by them in difficult times, will education have real value. Otherwise, we will just keep writing “teacher satisfaction” in statistics, and in reality, they will be empty from within.
Now the government will have to change not just its policy but also its intentions. The system will have to accept that teachers are not a resource but the soul of society. And when efforts are made to keep the soul alive by tiring it, breaking it, and keeping it away every day, then neither the society nor the education survives.
