The recent controversy surrounding remarks by Karnataka Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and his daughter Aishwarya regarding the quality and accountability of government school teachers has once again exposed a deep-seated administrative fault line. Their comments on the gap between state-funded salaries and actual classroom performance sparked immediate pushback from teacher representatives and public sector advocates. However, rather than viewing this incident as a isolated political dispute, it serves as a critical trigger to examine the broader structural failure that plagues public-private partnerships across the state’s social sector.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in public governance, whether in government schools or Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs), continually run into the same structural wall: the split between operational management and administrative control.

Core Paradox: Power Without Authority

When private players or trusts adopt government institutions under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or PPP frameworks, they are expected to improve outcomes, modernise infrastructure, and raise standards. However, they possess zero supervisory control over permanent government employees.

Permanent government staff derive their security from civil service rules, state appointment frameworks, and powerful employee unions rather than performance metrics. Private partners cannot hire, fire, transfer, dock pay, or issue formal disciplinary notices. External management interventions are often viewed as unsolicited oversight rather than support. Without administrative teeth, external partners can only persuade, which fails when absenteeism or lack of accountability is already habitual.

Why ITIs and Schools Share Same Failure Pattern

This phenomenon is not unique to school education and follows a predictable path across sectors. CSR initiatives frequently turn into cash injections for infrastructure, such as smart classrooms, machinery in ITIs, bus services, or toilet blocks. While physical assets improve, pedagogy and operational rigor remain unchanged because the human capital layer is untouched.

Government staff are evaluated, if at all, on administrative compliance like census work, election duties, record keeping, and scheme rollouts. Reality is that appraisal and growth is time based nor performance based in Government Institutions. On the other hand, Private partners evaluate them on output quality such as student pass rates, skill employable ratios, and daily classroom hours.

Structural Hesitation: Infrastructure Capital vs Human Capital

This systemic lack of operational control explains why private entities and corporate foundations deliberately limit their involvement to physical infrastructure. Donating smart boards, renovating laboratory facilities, building sanitation blocks, or gifting school buses allows corporate donors to achieve visible, measurable outcomes without entering administrative conflict. High-value physical capital creates immediate visual impact for corporate social responsibility metrics while insulating the private entity from the friction of staff absenteeism, union pushback, and entrenched workplace culture.

True institutional reform and modernisation cannot occur through hardware upgrades alone. Operational success depends entirely on human resources. When management frameworks lack the authority to enforce daily accountability, performance tracking, or pedagogical standards, institutional staff revert to established habits. Infrastructure improvements without corresponding authority over staff management yield minimal long-term change, leaving structural reform unrealised despite substantial private investment.

Ground Reality: Lessons From ITI Interventions

Direct experience in ITI interventions across various models confirms that collaborative operations succeed only when complete management control, including staffing, is handed over to the private partner. While augmenting existing institutions by retaining incumbent government staff carries long-term merit on paper, it often remains a good intention defeated by a total lack of accountable participation. During an Industry-Government meet on PM-SETU, a renowned industrialist repeatedly pressed government officials on whether operational management control included staffing control. The policy representatives offered no convincing answer beyond stating that they would cross that bridge when they come to it. Leaving such fundamental rules of engagement unaddressed guarantees friction. Clear frameworks on staffing governance, measurable outcomes, and enforced accountability must be defined well in advance rather than deferred to post-implementation crisis management.

Structural Solutions for Functional Co-Management

To make public-private adoption work without stripping public servants of their statutory protections, systemic governance changes are necessary:

• Statutory Delegation of Supervisory Powers: Adopting entities should receive formal, delegated authority to sign off on performance-linked incentives, daily attendance logs, and internal quality appraisals.
• Non-Teaching Duty Relief: As highlighted in defense of public sector staff, teachers and instructors are often burdened with non-educational administrative duties. Public policy must ring-fence their hours purely for instruction before enforcing strict attendance standards.
• Third-Party Metric Auditing: Independent state-sanctioned bodies—rather than internal department heads or private adopters—must handle attendance tracking and performance audits to bypass union pushback and institutional apathy.

Confronting the Human Element in Public Education

The controversy surrounding the statements made by Aishwarya and DK Shivakumar brings this long-evaded reality into sharp focus. When the state provides substantial salaries to public school educators, expecting proportional commitment and outcome delivery is not an unreasonable corporate demand, it is basic institutional governance.

This core issue is often obscured by defensive rhetoric, such as the pushback from JD(S) MLC A P Ranganath (representing the Bangalore Teachers’ Constituency), who claimed that questioning teacher performance “insults” them because they clear rigorous recruitment exams. This argument fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of public service: clearing a competitive test is merely the entry ticket, not the end goal. Recruitment exams test potential at a single point in time, but daily performance and classroom engagement decide the future of lakhs of children. Similarly, accusations from groups like the Save Public Education Committee, claiming the government is passing the buck onto teachers, ignore the reality that teachers remain the single most critical factor in learning outcomes. Shielding staff behind past credentials or union solidarity ensures educational reform remains a distant dream.

If the goal is truly to safeguard accessible, quality education for underprivileged students, a pragmatic economic model must replace political posturing. The government can continue funding base salaries according to existing public remuneration scales, while private partners fund performance-linked top-ups and resource gaps. In return, teachers must commit to strict, enforceable standards of discipline and measurable student outcomes. Without this balanced accountability framework, no amount of public funding or private goodwill can fix the system.