Posted on: Mar 20, '09
Ragging--- a menace
It was heart wrenching to see a medico Aman Kachroo's life cut short and a 20 year old agricultural major student struggling for life due to vile
ragging incidents.
A research (link below) by the anti-ragging body CURE has found that 62% of the ragging was physical while 20% was sexual ragging and 13% was physical and sexual. Only in 5% of the cases, ragging was found to be verbal. All this inspite of ragging being outlawed in India in 2001.
http://www.noragging.com/analysis/CR2007_05-16_RaggingInIndiaSummary.pdf
"Society Against Violence in Education" (SAVE), the country's only registered anti-ragging NGO, calculated that nine teenagers are killed every year due to ragging while hundreds of them get seriously injured, hospitalised or disabled or scarred psychologically due to ragging by their seniors in colleges.
Inspite of Supreme Court's directions and R.K. Raghavan committee's recommendations, only six states have formulated anti-ragging laws and other states have just looked the other way till now. In Tamil Nadu, anti-ragging law was enacted in 1997 after unforgettable death of Pon Navarasu who was tortured and cut into pieces in 1996 in name of ragging. Though severity has come down in Tamil Nadu, still the menace continues in lesser intensity. Mohan kartik (committed suicide after forced bathed with his own urine in 2004), deepa (set herself ablaze after ragging in 2000) lost lives in Tamil nadu after this law came into existence. This problem is so acute a nuisance that a voluntary organisation EXNORA instituted an award for ragging-free college.
Educational institutions are places of learning and not places to show off perversions. Even premier institutions like IITs, IIMs, NITs etc. aren't free from this scourge, and far worse sometimes deaths due to ragging are passed off as deaths due to academic pressure. This worst form of human rights abuse prevalent in student community must be curbed for healthy education system. Ironically some juniors who suffered ragging in their junior years try to defend this on name of interaction between juniors and seniors (this argument is a great farce anyway) when they become seniors. This darker aspect in human psyche that leads to this human rights abuse may be better studied with psychological models like Stanford Prison experiment and Milgram experiment.
Installing CCTVs in hostels, random policing inside hostels and campuses by teachers and students, weekly/fortnightly anonymous survey of the entire first year batch to find out if any sort of ragging is taking place, installing statewide helplines for victims of this menace to seek help with anonymity, providing counselling for aggressors and providing support for the silent victims-- have been suggested in various quarters. Apart from stringent laws and prevention measures as above, cooperation from civil society and a greater awareness campaign among the student community are necessary to minimise and if possible to eliminate this menace.
An Update as on 21 June 2009:
Anti-Ragging helpline 1800-180-5522, a round the clock, toll free helpline has been launched by Human Resource Development Ministry of India for distressed students to register complaints with relative anonymity. Complaints can also be written to helpline@antiragging.net. This is a very positive step coming from the Government.
Tags: academic, ragging, suggestions to prevent ragging, anti-ragging, colleges, ragging deaths
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