India’s population census will finally be held in 2027 — six years too late. The mammoth exercise will require an army of temporary staff — officers, enumerators, supervisors. Once again, the government’s go-to workforce will be schoolteachers.

Under Section 27 of the Right to Education Act, 2009, teachers can be deployed for “non-academic” purposes, but only for elections, census, and disaster relief. The law was meant to be narrow. In practice, it has become a catch-all excuse to saddle teachers with administrative chores. The result is that teachers (overworked and, often, underpaid) are being forced to do the State’s paperwork at the expense of their students’ right to learn.

In Manyar Hasina v. Election Commission (2024), a parent complained that election duties were disrupting her child’s education because teachers were absent. The Bombay High Court merely........

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