From 1 Lakh Monthly Salary To Rs 500 A Day: Professors In Telangana Turn Delivery Boys After ...
Hyderabad, Telangana: The sharp decline in the number of seats in Telangana engineering colleges has led faculty members out of their profession, leaving them in a dire situation of unemployment and opting out to be part of unskilled jobs despite having professional expertise and years of service. It is reported that over 70 percent of the seats in engineering colleges were cut since 2020, leading to a series of layoffs and pay cuts for the professors.
The layoffs were triggered by the shift in students’ choice of taking admission away from the traditional engineering disciplines, opting for courses such as artificial intelligence, data sciences, and cybersecurity instead. As a result, the seats of the core engineering branches, such as electrical and electronics branches, remain vacant each year, forcing the layoff of faculties in the areas. Approximately 25 percent of these seats remain vacant each year, according to a report by the Economic Times.
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The professors who were affected by the layoff have started looking for other options to make ends meet, as many of them are the sole breadwinners of their families. While some opened roadside shops, others started working as delivery boys, taking food items and groceries from house to house. The ill-fate of the professors with expertise in their fields began to resonate with their lives when at least 175 B tech colleges from Telangana cut core engineering seats by around 50 percent.
Talking about the situation, Achyuth V, a former mechanical engineering professor, says he quit when she was asked to take a 50 percent cut on his salary, which was already hit by the layoff. He said he is now working as a delivery boy, earning around Rs 600 a day, and takes on additional work as a two-wheeler taxi driver. Notably, he was earning between Rs 40,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh a month previously, which was sharply decreased, forcing him to find alternative sources of revenue.
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The plight of the faculty members has been raised within the Telangana Technical Institution Employees Association, and the organization’s general secretary, D Srinivas Varma, has voiced the issue, noting that other educational institutions and the industry are not willing to hire them. “Faculty, who are in their forties and fifties with years of experience, are struggling to survive as neither academia nor industry is keen on utilizing their services,” Economic Times quotes Srinivas as saying.
