A System That Educates, Then Abandons!!

Majid Marouphay

 

“The silence of recruiting bodies is not mere administrative delay; it is emotional violence. When posts are not advertised and files refuse to move, it is not paper that stagnates—it is human lives.”

There are moments when words collapse under the weight of reality. What I witnessed recently was one such moment. A moment that exposed the cruelty of a system and the silent suffering of our brightest minds. Last week, I was invited to be part of an interview panel at a private school. It was meant to be a routine exercise – selecting a few teachers. But as I turned the pages of the application files, my hands trembled. Out of 34 aspirants, eighteen were PhD holders. Many had cleared SET. Few had qualified NET twice. A few even held the prestigious JRF. And they were all there… for nine posts. At a monthly salary of ₹16,000.

 

That room was heavy with unspoken pain. These were not ordinary candidates. These were scholars who had sacrificed their youth to books, research, libraries, and laboratories. Years of struggle, sleepless nights, financial hardships, and endless hope had led them to this chair, not to be celebrated, but to be reduced. When their turn came to face the panel, I found myself unable to ask questions. What question does one ask a PhD scholar fighting for survival? What test can measure a person whose dignity has already been tested by life itself? My silence was not ignorance – it was shame.

 

Across our Union Territory, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such scholars are living the same nightmare. After completing their doctorates in different streams, after clearing the toughest eligibility exams like SET, NET, and JRF, they sit unemployed, waiting endlessly. The Public Service Commission and State Service Selection Board remain silent. Posts for higher secondary schools and colleges are not advertised. Files move nowhere. Lives stand still.

 

This silence is not administrative delay. It is emotional violence. These youth now live in mental trauma. They curse their fate, not because they failed, but because they succeeded in a system that had no place for them. They feel cheated. Broken. Betrayed. Many of them now call themselves ‘handicapped’. Not because their bodies failed them, but because years of higher education left them without technical skills, without alternative livelihoods. They cannot do manual labour. They were trained to think, to teach, to research. Today, they remain imprisoned inside their homes, staring at walls that echo one cruel question: Why did we study so much?

 

The pain has now spilled onto the streets. In South Kashmir’s Shopian district, a sight pierced the collective conscience. PhD holders and NET-JRF qualified scholars selling dry fruits, used clothes, and household items on roadside carts. These were once college teachers. They taught graduate students. They shaped minds. But they were only guest lecturers, hired temporarily, paid poorly, dismissed quietly. Their honorariums were too small to feed families, too uncertain to plan lives. Years passed. Age limits closed doors. Today, they are officially ‘overage’ – unwanted, unaccounted for, forgotten. Most of them are married now. They have children who ask for school fees, books, clothes. They have ageing parents who look at them with hope and silent worry. Inflation rises daily. Kitchen expenses soar. But income remains zero.

 

Imagine the agony of a father with a doctorate who cannot buy milk for his child. Imagine the humiliation of a scholar who avoids social gatherings to escape one question: ‘What are you doing these days?’ Imagine the despair of a mother watching her educated son sink into depression. This is not unemployment. This is slow suffocation.

 

A society that abandons its educated youth is not just failing them, it is committing a moral crime. Every ignored file, every delayed recruitment, every unadvertised post pushes another young mind towards despair. If this continues, we will not lose jobs. we will lose faith, sanity, and an entire generation. Education should have been their strength. Today, it has become their curse. And the most painful truth is this: They are not asking for luxury. They are only asking for dignity.

 

Ultimately, these highly educated youth look towards the government with the last flicker of hope in their tired eyes. Perhaps, just perhaps, something still remains for them. But with every passing day, circumstances slip from bad to worse. They are trapped in a suffering they never chose, punished for no fault of their own. They did everything society asked of them. They studied. They struggled. They excelled. Yet today, society itself seems to have turned its back on them. Friends move on. Relatives fall silent. Invitations stop coming. Their presence becomes uncomfortable, their achievements inconvenient.

 

They feel suffocated, not by lack of ability, but by neglect. Ignored by institutions, overlooked by policymakers, and left behind by a system that once celebrated their merit. Their degrees, earned through years of sacrifice, sleepless nights, and borrowed hope, now lie like lifeless paper sheets – unable to fetch even a modest livelihood, unable to secure dignity.

 

Every unanswered application,every unadvertised post, every closed door crushes another fragment of hope. Dreams that once soared now crawl. Aspirations that once inspired families now haunt them. All hopes stand dashed. And yet, painfully, they continue to wait, because when everything else collapses, hope becomes the last and most cruel habit to let go.

 

 (The author is a teacher, can be reached at khanmarouphay@gmail.com)