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Nearly three months after a 17-year-old boy died due to ragging in West Bengal’s Jadavpur University,
A second-year undergraduate student of the PSG College of Technology in Tamil Nadu has been left brutalised, physically and mentally, for refusing to yield to monetary extortion by his seniors.
Persistent issue of ragging on college campuses
Multiple pieces of legislation and regulations prohibiting ragging on campuses have failed to end the dehumanising ordeals to junior students.
A 17-year-old boy died due to ragging in West Bengal’s Jadavpur University and A second-year undergraduate student of the PSG College of Technology in Tamil Nadu has been left brutalised, for refusing to yield to monetary extortion by his seniors.
Both States were among the earliest to enact legislation banning ragging.
That students undergo such traumatic experiences despite civil society being rudely awakened by spine-chilling cases of brutalization.
Even the murder of victims of ragging, exposes the gaps in the system that allow a vicious cycle where victims one year become perpetrators the next.
From bullying and harassing freshers to ensure subservience to seniors, acts of ragging have taken perverse and cruel forms, including through sexual abuse, intended to dehumanise victims.
An act of indiscipline has evolved into one that involves elements of criminality.
While unlike earlier, ragging is no longer a given on campuses, it is evident that victims are not just the freshers and the harassment extends beyond the initial months of a new academic year, as seen above.
Findings of the R.K. Raghavan Committee
The Supreme Court-appointed R.K. Raghavan Committee to capture the causes of ragging.
2007 Report suggested actionable remedies,
The Menace of Ragging in Educational Institutions and Measures to Curb It’.
The panel rightly categorised ragging as a form of “psychopathic behaviour and a reflection of deviant personalities”.
In 1999, a UGC Committee had recommended a “Prohibition, Prevention and Punishment” approach to curb ragging.
The Raghavan Committee pointed out, many State laws only seek to prohibit, and not prevent, ragging.
In its words, “while prevention must lead to prohibition, the reverse need not be true.”
Institutions must create an encouraging atmosphere where teachers and hostel wardens, and not parents living in a distant place, are the first point of contact for victims.
There must be greater accountability by educational institutions to prevent ragging.
As the Raghavan panel recommended, regulatory authorities must ensure a ragging-free campus.
This has a direct bearing on the maintenance of academic standards in individual institutions.
Governments too must be earnest in implementing regulations, failing which campuses would not be safe for students.
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