Why has teaching historically struggled with social prestige in India despite its centrality to human capital formation? Discuss with reference to colonial and contemporary contexts.

In 1926, addressing the Teachers' College Teachers' Association at Saidapet, Dr. B.B. Dey observed that teaching had come to be regarded as a "dull and dreary" profession and teachers as "prosaic people" [1]. A century later, UNESCO still records the profession's social status in India as only "average" [2] — evidence that the prestige deficit is structural, not incidental.

Colonial roots of the deficit

• Colonial schooling was instrumental — geared to producing a clerical and examination-passing workforce — so the teacher was valued as a transmitter of prescribed text, not as an intellectual [1].
• Pedagogy carried less prestige than subject scholarship: it is telling that the reform critique came from a Professor of Chemistry at Presidency College, addressing a teacher-training body [1].
• Teacher-training institutions existed, but reform discourse was driven by self-organised professional associations rather than the colonial state, leaving the profession without institutional backing for its status [1].

Contemporary continuities

• Service conditions: within a workforce of nearly 9.7 million, private-school and early-childhood teachers remain highly vulnerable — contractual tenure, low remuneration, weak professional protection [2].
• Dilution of professional identity: non-teaching duties, shortages and uneven training quality reduce teaching to routine work rather than expert practice [2].
• Quality of entry: NEP 2020 itself acknowledges the erosion of teacher status and of teacher-education quality, making teaching a fallback rather than a first-choice career [3].

Corrective architecture

• Statutory regulation of teacher education under the NCTE Act, 1993 [4].
• NEP 2020 measures: four-year integrated B.Ed. as the minimum qualification, extension of the Teacher Eligibility Test, National Professional Standards for Teachers, and merit-linked continuous professional development [3].

Prestige follows autonomy, rigorous entry and dignified service conditions — the very elements colonial schooling denied and reform is now restoring. If NEP 2020's standards framework is matched by fair pay and reduced non-academic burden, teaching can regain the esteem its role in human capital formation warrants.