Murky business

Delayed law-making or making laws to please vested interests is a breach of public trust.

The continued delay in the parliamentary endorsement of the School Education Bill is emblematic of the faulty way our executive and legislative branches deal with vital national problems. Often, it all starts with one or the other group of people hitting the street, demanding a change in this or that legislation. When it’s not the medical doctors who are doing so, it’s the teachers or jewelry businesses. After this happens for some time, the government calls the protesters for talks and agrees to address some or all of their demands. But then nothing happens and the protesters again take to the street. Back in March, the chief whips of the ruling parties had pledged to pass the School Education Bill by June 29. The deadline has come and gone and there has been zero progress in its passage. The bill has some problematic provisions that were included after continued pressure from the protesting teachers, for instance those related to automatic promotion of temporary teachers to permanent positions and fewer entries of outsiders into such positions. These provisions stifle meritocracy. Yet the representatives of the ruling parties promised the bill would nonetheless be passed, pronto. Now that it hasn’t, the teachers are threatening to take to the street again.