End the mindless menace of ragging

The new academic year will commence soon. Many youngsters with sanguine faces and lofty dreams will embark on a new phase in their lives. It might be a college offering either general education or professional education. It’s the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream to be in college. College stands for youth and vitality. It’s the very seat of learning and scholarship. That is where many lives blossom, and the young ones make their foray into the wider world of real life.

Everyone enters the portals of a college with lots of dreams, hopes, and aspirations. The academically bright ones will have nurtured many glorious dreams. They start with resolutions about how well they will behave and study. They vow to do their best and reach the pinnacle of success.

Professional education often involves a stay in hostels. It is believed that hostel life prepares students to face life with all its diversities. Hostel life helps them shed their rough edges and teach them how to get along with people of different temperaments, beliefs, and backgrounds. One learns to cope with the demands of future life, become more sociable, and learn many life skills that are of supreme important for success in life. One learns to be a team player in that melting pot.

Also Read: MP: Three senior students of Bhopal NLIU expelled from hostel for ragging son of Indore police chief

A lot of excitement is in the air when one joins a college. However, it is a dampener when they think about the possibility of seniors bullying or ragging them. One has heard of gruesome stories of ragging. Meanwhile, the college assures the parents that it has put in place various measures to prevent ragging. One tends to believe such assurances from the college authorities until reality bites.

In spite of assurances to the contrary, it is a known fact that ragging does happen in most colleges, whether willingly or unwillingly. The authorities either wink at it or are unable or unwilling to nail it. Some students want to have some fun at the expense of the juniors, regardless of the consequences.

Ragging is defined as ‘abuse, humiliation, or harassment inflicted by seniors on their juniors’.  Ragging, with all its attendant brutality, is seen mostly in India and a few Asian countries. Though some minor forms of ragging do exist in western countries, they do not take the ugly form they do in our country.

Often, what starts as innocent fun takes an ugly turn, sometimes bordering on very harsh physical abuse. Some seniors become sadistic enough to even physically torture the youngsters. We hear about brutal ragging and cases of serious injuries or even fatalities. Suicides are also reported at times.

Why do the youngsters resort to such ‘fun’? There are many possible reasons. It might be that they themselves underwent ragging and want to inflict the same on their juniors. Some think differently. They take a different approach, deciding never to engage in ragging after having endured it themselves. It’s a matter of perspective.

There are youngsters doing what they do under the influence of alcohol or drugs. This is a very serious matter because they act irrationally when they are not normal. Regardless of whether it is sadism or irrational behaviour under the influence of intoxicants, it is absolutely unacceptable. The authorities have the moral responsibility to clamp down on such individuals and rusticate them from the institutions forthwith, with no quarter for remission under any circumstances.

The UGC has issued strict guidelines to prevent ragging. Colleges are expected to implement them. The unfortunate part of it is that the guidelines are observed more in their breach than in their actual implementation.

UGC regulations stipulate that students can be expelled from an institute and debarred from taking admission to any other institute for a specified period after being found guilty of the offence.

As per the regulations, a student can be fined up to Rs 2.5 lakh if found guilty of ragging. Rustication of a student for a period of one to four semesters is also stipulated.

When it comes to irrational behaviour, the only deterrent is rustication and criminal charges. There should not be any leniency in the case of such criminals. This must be made known to the students and their parents or guardians. We need to sanitise our institutions of higher education and eliminate bad elements, regardless of their status or background. That is the only way to stop this barbaric practice of bullying or ragging that has corrupted the institutions of higher education in our country.

(The writer is the Director of Little Rock Institutions, Udupi)