Prior to the introduction of the Konkani medium, most secondary schools which had primary schools associated with them conducted their primary classes in English. There were also a few secondary schools with associated primary schools in Marathi.
Now the crux of the problem is that the secondary sections of the schools were fully grant aided while the primaries were not aided at all and depended wholly on the fees collected from the students. So the salaries of the teachers depended upon the fees the schools collected. Usually the fees were divided among the teachers over a period of twelve months with a little kept for a 'christmas bonus'. How ever, when signing for their salaries, the teachers would be made to sign for the full amount as per the prescribed scales of pay but in reality collect a meager amount as actual salary. Some teachers objected to this and since the primary schools were private unaided schools, it became a practice then to sign for the amounts they actually drew. Things continued this way till two teachers from Margao decided to take their managements to court for non payment of salaries as per their scales. After a long drawn court case, the teachers won the case. Now since among the private primary schools, most were diocesan schools, there were brainstorming sessions as to how to pay the teachers. Finally it was decided to appeal to the Government to give grants to the Primary Schools. This is when Tai (Shashikala Kakodkar) played her trump card: No grants for primary if the MOI is non-vernacular. In the case of Konkani the additional restriction was the Devnagri script. This is the true -- ** "Tony de Sa" < tonydesa at gmail dot com > **
