In Gujarat, unlike other states, government primary school teachers are trained at Primary Teacher’s Certificate (PTC) colleges, which provide a two-year post-HSC course of study. Once beacons of hope for rural Gujaratis, now PTC colleges have become nightmares featuring episodes of mental, physical and sexual abuse.

The February gang-rape incident in Patan is only the tip of the iceberg. Recently, 70 young women ran away from one PTC college and 23 from another, after allegedly being harassed and tortured by administrators and other officials of the institutions.

Such incidents signal fundamentally flawed policies that underlie the state’s PTC system. The proliferation of self-financed institutions (SFIs), compulsory hostel stays, internal marking systems and legal battles have all contributed to the deterioration of these institutions. “The recent incidents can be pinned down to two things: compulsory hostel stays mandated by the state Government and the large number of people with no background in education who have started PTC colleges,” says D G Gohil, managing trustee of the Vision Education Trust, which runs a PTC college here.

The present mess in PTC colleges has its roots in a decade-old solution to an education crisis. In 1998, a shortage of 20,000 primary teachers forced the then BJP government to announce the Vidya Sahayak scheme that provided five-year fixed-salary contracts to PTC teachers. Massive recruitment drives made the popularity of PTCs soar. More than 90,000 appointments have been made so far. Eager to capitalise on the surging demand, self-financed PTC colleges opened across Gujarat. By 2008, there were 450 PTC colleges, 134 exclusively for women.

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