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The work just doesn’t stop: Inside a teacher’s exhausting days as a booth level officer
The work just doesn’t stop: Inside a teacher’s exhausting days as a booth level officer Premium
Kusum (name changed on request of anonymity), a Mathematics teacher at Government HSS Dudhia, Indore, lives in Saket area with her husband and mother-in-law. Ms. Kusum's husband has taken early retirement from a government job, she has no children and has lived for several years with chronic vertigo.
Every morning, she rides her scooter for half an hour to reach her school in Dudhia, where she teaches Mathematics to Classes 10 and 12. But for the past month, her daily routine has been completely changed, due to her role as a Booth Level Officer (BLO) at Booth No. 95, Saket.
Since November 4, when the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) work began across Madhya Pradesh, Ms. Kusum has not stepped into her school. Every morning, 9 - 9.30 a.m., she used to leave for school and come back around 4:30 p.m. Now, though she leaves at the same time every day, she stays in the booth till 10 or 11 at night, sometimes more.
I spent a day with her to see the conditions BLOs go through in a day — to see how teachers juggle a dual life.
As recorded on November 30, 2025, Ms. Kusum's day began at 6 a.m. She had chai with her mother-in-law, and cooked breakfast and lunch. With winter deepening in Indore, mornings are darker and colder. By 8:30 a.m., she completed her household chores. It took her another 30 minutes to get ready and leave. She left home around 9:00 a.m. and reached the Saket BLO office, set up inside an old Public Works Department (PWD) building, by 9:30 a.m., the latest allowed arrival time.
9:30–11 a.m.: I joined her at 9:17 a.m. at the building gate. When we entered the office together, most BLOs had arrived.
This is not the first time I visited the office; everyone is familiar with my presence. This time, however, they were sceptical and scared that the article in the media might take away their jobs.
Ms. Kusum and everyone's job is to scrutinise nearly 700 forms and check for incomplete details, missing photographs, unreachable phone numbers, and incorrect entries. She processes about 50 forms a day.
She tells me Saket, being a posh area, is “the toughest zone” because residents ignore calls, don't open doors, block numbers, and often refuse to cooperate. She is nowadays busy with digitising the forms and getting the faulty ones right.
Mr. Chiranjeev told me 80% of the work is done, and they are just “winding up” these last days. He said it is not as much pressure as it used to be when the BLOs had to go to colonies and distribute the forms. But the WhatsApp reporting cycle is relentless — from 8 a.m. to the next day's 8 a.m., even during nights. He often stays up working till 1 a.m.
12-2 p.m.: By noon, BLOs stand in the sun in the corridor to escape the cold indoor rooms; it is a long corridor, and the rooms are old and chilly. Everyone has made a fixed place for themselves, with their papers and belongings scattered. Some sit in the outer corridor, some inside the rooms, some at the special computer desk. I saw a few roaming around, too.
Ms. Kusum's phone data pack had just reached its limit; the building has no WiFi. All the BLOs use their own internet data to digitise the forms. She asked a younger colleague to recharge her regular ₹299, which is a 1.5 GB daily plan.
2-4 p.m.: I noticed no one has had lunch yet, and thus I asked if there is a designated time slot given as a lunch break. There were five people in the room, excluding me; they all said there is no assigned time for lunch, and they eat lunch whenever it is convenient.
I saw Ms. Kusum had a tote bag with two water bottles, a three-box warm lunch, and a small sev packet. There is a saying that even if they want to eat poison to die, the Indoris will eat it with sev (a crispy snack made from gram flour).
The floor's five to six rooms were all busy, tables stacked with forms, phones, laptops, tablets. Around 3 p.m., some BLOs stood in the sun chatting, while others were on calls or helping visitors with queries.
Ms. Kusum finally said she can take time to have lunch and talk to me. She took out a china cup, poured warm water, added her medicines, and joined the room's laughter. She added she needs to take these medicines all her life; if she skips them or sits too long in one place, her vertigo flares up, triggering nausea and spinning.
While sipping her warm water, she stepped outside to make a quick call. She returned after ten minutes — she had been checking whether her mother-in-law had eaten and the whereabouts of her husband.
Meanwhile, a confused resident with his scanned papers in hand was speaking to a BLO in the outer corridor. I immediately went to see him, and he told me he is searching for his form; his wife's form was completed, but his own has not reached his house, as he had shifted from Durg, Chhattisgarh, to Indore in 2002.
The case boiled down to sending the man back because his form “might have come to the old Durg office”. Despite trying multiple databases, the BLOs could not find his EPIC number. He was eventually told to contact the Durg office. He left anxious, after 20 minutes of uncertainty.
4-6 p.m.: We had lunch with fellow BLOs at just another table. When asked about her schoolwork, Ms. Kusum said “phase hue hein (we are stuck).” She teaches Mathematics to Classes 10 and 12, and pre-boards are around the corner for Class 10. For one month, she has not gone to school or taught online. She thought she would make videos of herself explaining the lectures, like in COVID times, but she does not really get time for that.
Maths and Physics are difficult subjects and take a hit due to a teacher shortage. Her school principal had sent three applications from September to November to exempt Ms. Kusum from BLO duty, citing Class 10 board exams and her role as exam in-charge. The Election Commission acknowledged receipt but never responded. Finally, she was forced to join BLO duty on November 2.
She said her students still call her seeking help with syllabus doubts; she helps them over the phone, but she regrets missing regular classroom teaching. In her school, six teachers have been pulled into SIR work as BLOs or supervisors.
This is Ms. Kusum's first time as a BLO. She doesn't know what compensation, if any, they will receive; she simply had no choice but to do the duty.
6-8 p.m.: Around 6 p.m., a well-dressed man wearing a kurta-pyjama and a Nehru jacket, smelling strongly of itr, walked in. He turned out to be Nitish Jain, Indore BJP's ‘mandal adhyaksh' (board president) for the area. He interacted with BLOs, asking about their issue, such as people not answering calls, half-filled and pending forms to be collected from houses.
When introduced to me, he urged me to write about “Bangladeshi infiltrators.” We spoke for about 40 minutes about the “infiltrator” and “migration” issues in the country. Though he avoided the core issues of overwork, tech and health strain, saying, “It's a matter of country interest… It's just a matter of a month.”
Mr. Jain, after one hour of being in the office, asked my name and learned that I have a Muslim name, he abruptly ended the conversation and left, saying his father was hospitalised.
The sixth round of the chai started around 7 p.m. Some BLOs were again out, in fog this time; some were busy with papers; some were with people who had come regarding their forms; some were chatting or busy with the digitisation; others were gone to the Collector's office to submit the forms.
By 8 p.m., the sixth round of the WhatsApp reports was also done. Mr. Chiranjeev avoided detailing the WhatsApp reporting chain but confirmed there's a mandatory report at 11 p.m., which forces everyone to stay till late. He shared an incident where the SDM called him at 11 p.m., asking why he wasn't at the office even though he had just gone home and started to eat dinner.
8-11 p.m.- Ms. Kusum had her second batch of medicines, one tablet and warm water with a few drops. She looked exhausted but kept working silently. I had spoken to almost everyone in the office by 8 p.m., and they are all tired of the process that goes on all day.
I asked Ms. Kusum if she was planning to go home or have dinner. On the family front, she said her mother-in-law is unhappy with her long work hours since dinner gets delayed. Her husband, however, is supportive — he helps digitise forms at home, occasionally drives her to school, and now picks her up from the booth office. “If he didn't come on time, I would be here all night. The work just doesn't stop,” she said.
I saw most of the people having dinner at around 9 - 10 p.m., wearing more woollens than before. Most had their boxes packed from home; a few did not eat. I am assuming a few even went out to a restaurant or their homes to have dinner, mostly male BLOs.
Everyone was sorting papers into bundles of filled, faulty, unfilled, problematic, and completed forms, tying them with a rubber band and handing them to Mr. Chiranjeev. “I even remember the names of everyone assigned to the BLOs,” he said as he took the stacks.
By 10:30, nearly two hours had passed without Ms. Kusum and me speaking. I didn't want to interrupt her, and I sensed others were a bit cautious talking around me. When I finally asked if she would have dinner, she immediately stood and asked me to join her at another table where several women were seated. She reopened her lunch box. She saves some for dinner, so she doesn't have to carry extra. We ate her leftover chapati, bhindi, and pulao; she shared a chapati with me, and another BLO offered me namkeen.
We ate till 11 p.m., and Ms. Kusum then wound up her papers. Others were winding up too. They chatted for another 15-20 minutes while making bundles. Mr. Chiranjeev was tired and wanted to speak to me separately.
Around 11:30 p.m., Mr. Chiranjeev, Ms. Kusum, and another male BLO stood outside the office, chatting as they wrapped up the day. Mr. Chiranjeev shared an honest thought, almost like feedback, that instead of assigning election-related duties to everyone, the government could deploy newly appointed staff on probation for tasks like electoral roll revision, to relieve people of the burden.
We spoke for about 20–30 minutes. By 12 a.m., Mr. Chiranjeev had to send another update on the WhatsApp group. Ms. Kusum left in her vehicle, and I left soon after.
Today, on December 4, I am still thinking of gifting each BLO a pen, a small gesture to acknowledge the exhausting work they do.
(Mantasha Ahmed is an independent journalist based in Indore with five years of experience. She reports on the critical intersections of education, civil rights, social issues, and culture.)
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Published - December 05, 2025 06:05 pm IST
education / teachers
Source: The Hindu
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