Hurdles in PPP data collection, parents uncooperative: Teachers

GURGAON: Educators from schools and colleges across the state are raising issues involved in the process of data collection for the mandatory Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP).
The higher education department had originally involved college students in the process to help the teachers expedite the process. However, now that the students are on their vacations, teachers are forced to do the same alone.
Teachers say that the parents, who are the source of the data for the exercise, are uncooperative. Parents are apprehensive of sharing personal information like Aadhaar and PAN (Permanent Account Number), income status, as well as caste with the schools and colleges. This has led to several impertinent encounters between the parents and teachers, both over phone calls and during the door-to-door collection of data.
Furthermore, teachers are asking that the government remove them from this non-academic job, which the minister of education Kanwar Pal Gujjar had promised during an interaction last month.
Parents do not want to provide their personal information to the government because they are not yet sure if their privacy would be maintained, an assistant professor at Government College in Sector 14 said.
Principal of Government College in Jind, Wazir Dalal, said, “Teachers were promised that they would be relieved from the non-academic duties since it was consuming time and energy which should otherwise be utilised in teaching the students. Despite the announcement, this is still going on and it is affecting our teachers.”
“Parents from rural areas are as apprehensive as those from urban areas about sharing their personal details. They do not trust the teachers and professors with their data so they misbehave. Nor do they trust the government. They believe that if their data is out on the public forum, they would be scrapped of the meagre benefits they are getting from the government schemes,” he added.
Praveen Tyagi, father of a second-year student in Government College, Sector 9, said, “It is an infringement on our privacy. Nobody should be required to submit their Aadhar and PAN details to an authority that provides no guarantee of the security of our data. Without laws in place, we fear the potential abuse of the data.”
The portal states, ‘data (is) to be taken with consent’. However, the government has now made it mandatory for all educational institutions to make family ID a requirement during the admission process.