Impostors taking education for a ride

As many as 1,400 teachers of primary schools in the state of Bihar in neighbouring India opted to quit job in a single day. No, they did not do so in protest of any injustice to them. They simply had to. They got the teaching job on production of fake academic certificates. The High Court of the state of Bihar issued an order for fake certificate holders to quit jobs before July 8 or face legal action. In order to avoid government action, the fake degree holders have tendered their resignation. More are expected to follow before the deadline.
The complainant who lodged a public interest litigation there alleges that there are about 25,000 such teachers citing a report, '25,000 fixed-pay teachers face axe for forged paper' in a leading English newspaper in India. Verification of 7,000 teachers earlier found 800 other fake teachers and terminated them. What a gargantuan problem for an Indian state that is lagging behind on many counts! When people in teaching profession resort to such blatant cheating, the less said about the quality of education they impart the better. Then there is no reason to think that the rot is limited only to the primary education, higher levels are naturally not immune to the duplicity.
Not surprisingly, the vice is not a monopoly of the Indian state of Bihar alone. Nepal reported a similar 'flash out' programme under which nearly 1,800 teachers of government primary and secondary schools resigned between September, 2014 and February, 2015.
In fact the entire South Asia is a flash point for similar aberration in education. How deep the problem is in Bangladesh is yet to be known. If the Modi government in India is embarrassed by the controversial academic qualification of a minister, Bangladesh's judiciary was earlier rocked by the reported fake law degree of a High Court judge. Existence of fake certificates surfaced from time to time. At some point, foreign universities even sent quite a good number of certificates to Bangladesh for verification of their authenticity.
Nowadays, such issues are rarely reported. But at times, the aberration is unearthed in medical profession. In recent years, a so-called professor of a reputed private medical college and hospital proved to be a poseur without any valid academic qualification. Then a couple posing to be medical surgeons had continued their practice for some years before they were arrested in Chittagong. In another startling case, a clinic owner passed his brother-in-law, a layman from village as a qualified surgeon in Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka.
Impostors such as these have brought challenging professions like teaching and healthcare to disrepute. But forgery of documents like certificate is none of their business. There are gangs who are engaged in such criminal acts to produce look-alike papers. How they avoid detection is not a mystery either. Unless different other quarters are involved, it is impossible to continue such a malpractice.
The quality of education in this country demands that certificates of teachers were verified. It will not be surprising if some of the teachers at different levels are found to possess certificates that are not genuine.