Every year, thousands of young men and women wait for one notification from the Directorate of Higher Education, J&K. It is the advertisement for engaging contractual teachers in Government Degree Colleges. For many, it is more than a temporary job. It is a chance to teach, gain experience and remain connected with academics while waiting for permanent opportunities.
For years, the recruitment process had one major problem. It was simply too slow.Those who have gone through the old system will remember it well. Applications were submitted physically. Candidates travelled to offices carrying files full of certificates. Weeks passed before merit lists appeared. College allotments took more time. By the time teachers reached their colleges, classes had already begun. Students lost teaching days and teachers lost a part of their already short service period. The delay affected everyone. Colleges struggled without teachers. Students waited for classes to become regular.
Applicants kept making phone calls and visiting offices just to know where the process had reached. Things have changed.This year’s recruitment process was completed in about twenty days. That may not sound extraordinary to someone outside the education sector, but for those who have witnessed the earlier system, it is a remarkable improvement. The biggest change is not only speed. It is the confidence that comes from a transparent online process. Applications are submitted online. Fees are paid online. Merit lists are prepared digitally. College allotments are generated through the system.
Every candidate follows the same procedure. Technology alone cannot solve every problem, but when used properly it removes unnecessary delays and reduces the scope for confusion. It also saves candidates from repeated travel, unnecessary expenditure and endless waiting.The real winners are the students. Government Degree Colleges cannot function effectively when teaching positions remain vacant for weeks.
Every lost week affects classroom teaching, practical work and internal assessments. When teachers join on time, the academic session also begins on time. That is perhaps the biggest achievement of this reform. The Directorate of Higher Education deserves appreciation for making this possible.
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 “True administrative reform often comes through quiet, efficient processes rather than grand announcements. By completing recruitment in a timely and transparent manner, the Directorate of Higher Education in Jammu and Kashmir reduced lost working days and got teachers into classrooms faster. Acknowledging this success encourages public agencies to maintain these improved standards across the region.”
Under the leadership of Prof. Sheikh Aijaz Bashir, the department has shown that a recruitment exercise involving thousands of applicants can be completed quickly without compromising transparency or merit. That is no small achievement. Besides this, applicants appreciate a live application tracker, SMS/E.mail alerts at every stage and an online grievance portal where genuine concerns were addressed quickly.
Essentially, this year Jammu &Kashmir higher education department (J&K HED) through its Directorate has fundamentally accomplished annual recruitment calendar on time. Â There is another lesson here.People often say government procedures are bound to be slow. This recruitment shows that they do not have to be. If one department can complete a large exercise within three weeks, other recruiting agencies in Jammu and Kashmir can also examine their own procedures and identify delays that serve no real purpose.
Government departments are frequently criticised, and rightly so when they fail to deliver. But reforms that make public services faster and fairer should also receive public appreciation. Encouragement matters because it motivates institutions to continue improving. The success of this recruitment is not measured by how quickly files moved inside an office. It is measured by something much more important, a teacher entered a classroom earlier than expected, students found someone waiting to teach them, and a college lost fewer working days than it once did.
Sometimes reforms do not arrive with new laws or grand announcements. Sometimes they arrive quietly, through a process that simply works better than before. The Directorate of Higher Education has shown that timely, transparent recruitment is possible. The hope now is that this becomes the new normal, not just for higher education but for every public recruitment agency in Jammu and Kashmir.
(The author is Assistant Professor Design Innovation Centre –DIC Islamic University of Science & Technology (IUST) Awantipora, J&K. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
