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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | ‘Where Does All the Grief Go?’ 1,621 UP Teachers Die In Panchayat Polls -Aliza Noor

‘Where Does All the Grief Go?’ 1,621 UP Teachers Die In Panchayat Polls -Aliza Noor

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published Published on May 27, 2021   modified Modified on May 28, 2021

-Article-14.com

Despite appeals not to deploy them for election duty in the midst of a  pandemic, teachers were made to work, as the government went back on promises of safety. We spoke to families of nine dead teachers, dealing with the loss of wage-earners, grief, anger and fear

Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh): “I lost my wife and my baby, who would have come into this world soon.”

The voice of Deepak Agrahari, 30, was distraught as it came over the phone from the eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) town of Jaunpur. Currently unemployed, Agrahari is among 1,621 families of teachers who either lost a mother, a father, wife or a husband to Covid-19 infection during the UP panchayat or local council elections in April 2021.  

Unfolding in four phases over 15-29 April, the panchayat polls to elect over 800,000 rural representatives were criticised (here and here) for being held amid a worsening pandemic and spurring, as Article 14 reported on 12 May, a deadly second wave of infection and death.

Among the dead teachers are 1,181 men and 440 women, according to a list provided by the Uttar Pradesh Prathmik Shikshak Sangh (UP Teachers’ Federation) or UPPSS and its affiliated unions. UP has more than 800,000 teachers, about 300,000 of whom were deployed as election officials. About 100 million voters in India’s most-populous state cast their vote.

We spoke to families of nine teachers across eight UP districts—Hardoi, Lakhimpur Kheri, Lucknow, Gonda, Raebareli, Jaunpur, Unnao and Ayodhya—and found families dealing with the loss of wage-earners, grief, anger and even fear of their government, which has frequently criminalised appeals for help, complaints of poor healthcare, criticism and assistance to Covid-19 patients.

Common to all the stories is the lack of government communication, compensation or acknowledgement of loss. As a teachers’ union said in a 16 May letter to chief minister Yogi Adityanath: “It is unfortunate that neither the Basic Education Department, nor the government of Uttar Pradesh, has till now expressed any feeling of grief at the deaths of teachers in such a large number.”

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Article-14.com, 27 May, 2021, https://www.article-14.com/post/where-does-all-the-grief-go-1-621-up-teachers-die-in-panchayat-polls


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