Contractor Shahid: A Short Story

Meeting Shahid

Filled with excitement, I entered GDC Khilotran’s premises for the first time. After walking a few steps through the main entrance, I met a faculty member named Shahid. He has been working as an assistant professor (contractual) for the last fifteen years. As I approached him, he closed the piece of paper he was reading, folded it, and tucked it inside his pocket. Luckily, he’s been working in the same department I was supposed to join. That way, he is my senior.

I began talking to my senior about the college, the student responses, our respective career trajectories, and much more. Shahid is calm and composed, but it looks like there is a tempest going on inside him—one he has learned to control.

As days passed, we met and talked during our commutes to and from college, as well as whenever we found spare time in our busy schedules. I was learning from Shahid. We developed a solid rapport over a short span of time. At times, we’d share personal matters too.

It was Sunday when Shahid called and asked me to come over to his rented room for lunch. The combined cost of room rent and cooking comes to approximately ₹13,000 per month, not including personal expenses. I readily accepted the invitation and arrived on time. That day, Shahid discussed in detail the “system,” slowly unravelling the cause of the tempest inside. The following section is Shahid’s account, presented and told by the author. Over to Shahid.

The System

You know, the system largely depends on a group of “contractors” whose appointments are frequently delayed. I would prefer to call us contractors. The system has different names for us, though—“contractuals,” “need-based,” “lecturers,” “teaching assistants,” or “guest faculty,” for that matter.

Many of these contractors possess doctoral degrees and have cleared national eligibility examinations. Despite their qualifications, these contractors are hired on short-term agreements, renewed annually with little job security. They are hired for not more than eight months and disengaged quickly in winters. The contractors are made to go through very tedious background verification as if the system were hiring national security officers. Each year, contractors are required to complete a new round of verification, which often spans several months.

These contractors manage full academic workloads but without corresponding pay scales. I had applied for a permanent post as an assistant professor at a private university. I submitted a fifteen-year experience certificate to the recruitment committee, which they refused to consider because, according to them, the work had not been done against the basic pay. This implies that the present system hires Class-V contractors who work for years and do not move even a single inch upwards toward the A-Class level.

The Plight

These contractors work in a state of chronic uncertainty. Not only are their salaries significantly lower than those of their permanent counterparts, but they also face regular delays in payment. Contractors often go unpaid for extended periods, pushing them to take loans, reduce essential expenses, or take on secondary jobs just to make ends meet.

This economic precarity also affects their personal lives. Many find it difficult to start families, plan for the future, or offer stability to their children. Despite their high qualifications, they are often viewed by society as “unsuccessful” simply because they lack a permanent government position, which remains a key marker of social status and respectability.

This session, the system has reduced contractor intake by nearly 45%, meaning those who were selected will have to manage an increased workload of up to four classes per day. Moreover, the High Court has issued a judgment to put a stop to hiring fresh contractors and ordered the recruitment of permanent ones. How serious the system has been about the court’s judgments is an open secret.

There are already various cases of contractors pending in the court. Each party claims to be aggrieved, but the system does not care; nobody cares. The system has conducted numerous hearings, yet they have yielded no results.

Of late, we have seen former contractors selling stuff on roads as street vendors. Many would invoke the “dignity of labour” argument to contend that all types of jobs should be respected equally. But the question here is: if a contractor served the system for fifteen years, that too on a meagre salary, what did the system give him in return? It just threw him out because there is now another contractor ready to work for the same pay scale. That person’s services are not required anymore. They have been left to fend for themselves.

We concluded this discussion and were about to have tea when I asked him, “Can you please tell me what you were reading from the piece of paper when I met you for the first time?” Shahid replied, “My father was diabetic and died two years back due to multiple organ failure. I am the sole breadwinner for my family now. That day I was reading medical reports of my mother sent to me by my wife. The reports showed my mother’s HbA1c had crossed over 6.5%. That’s why I was a bit stressed. My wife is very strong; she takes care of both my mother and our three-year-old daughter.”

I left his place without having tea. I could well understand Shahid’s distress.

(Views expressed are the author’s own.)