Karnataka lockdown: From English & science lessons to rolling beedis for Rs 1,000 a week

MANGALURU: Between her modest earning as a guest teacher and her husband’s food vending business, Chitralekha managed to run the household and put their three children through school. She first lost her job as schools shut during the pandemic and with the lockdown, her husband’s vend in Puttur shut down.
Now, Chitralekha and her husband, Sundar Naik, both roll beedis to put food on the table. Their eldest son is a firstyear PU student, followed by a daughter in SSLC and a boy in Class 2 in a government school. The family lives in small house some 50km from Puttur.

The 37-year-old says she never imagined she would be rolling beedis after nine years of teaching English and science to young children. “Soon after completing DEd in 2012, I joined the education department as a guest teacher. I worked in many government schools in Puttur taluk, and thereafter at the government school in Balmatta, Mangaluru. I started working for an honorarium of Rs 2,500 per month in 2012 and my final salary after revisions was Rs 7,500. The first lockdown made me jobless with no salary thereafter,” says Chitralekha.
Her husband’s idli-dosa cart barely got back on track when the second wave struck. “Though he resumed food vending in August last year, sale was limited due to restrictions in business hours. The second lockdown shut down his business again. Now we have no source of income other than rolling beedis,” she says. “We make Rs 1,000 a week. It’s barely enough for food,” she says.
Chitralekha, who is also the district secretary of the Primary and High School Guest Teachers Association, recalls that protests for hiking pay went unheeded. And guest teachers are not eligible for the relief package announced by the state government either, she points out. “We had also demanded that guest teachers working in government schools be made permanent staff after three years. We have no job security and no benefits.”