CURE Editorial :: The Menace of Ragging

Revamp the Education Machine

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:59:00 +0530

by Harsh Agarwal

Last year I attended a lecture, delivered by Prof. Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University on India’s emergence as a key player in the global economy. In his lecture, Prof. Varshney drew an interesting comparison between the gilded age (1865-1900) of the United States and the present economic boom in India. He spoke of myriad issues including corruption, economic divide, growing resentment among poor, people’s distrust towards government and political class along with rapid economic development and sharp rise in per capita income witnessed in the past few years in India and how this cocktail of events is similar to what happened in the US during the second half of the 19th century when America saw the greatest period of economic growth in its history and went on to become the economic superpower thereafter. Prof. Varshney’s layer by layer analysis made me ecstatic and highly optimistic of India’s forthcoming economic success. However I know there is a caveat, sustained economic growth in any part of the world depends on constant supply of two critical factors – capital investment and quality human resource- and deficiency of any of these factors could prove this comparison wrong. And, two experiences since that lecture made me realise that India’s ‘gilded age’ is strewn with several obstacles and it is a tough road ahead for us before we actually see ourselves as an economically developed nation.

First- I work on the issue of ragging prevalent especially in professional colleges, which also attract the brightest students of our country. Last year I went on a nationwide tour and visited MBA, Engineering and Medical colleges in over 20 cities across India and interacted with students to find out the reason why they indulge in ragging. On my interaction with students I failed to find any logic in what they said in support of ragging as I firmly believe that torture or humiliation of even slightest form can never be justified. When I asked them if they have heard of ragging in other countries, several students spoke of racists attacks on Indians in Australia as incidents of ragging abroad. It appeared from these interactions that students lacked their own opinion and reasoning and were speaking the age-old myths of ragging ingrained in them by their seniors. In these interactions I was not disappointed so much by the display of students support to ragging as I was to the display of lack of mental independence and individual thinking by these bright young minds.

Second- I recently attended a conference at Mahamaya Technical University on the issue of growing divide between the industry and academia and thus poor placement trends in professional colleges. Prof. Kak, Vice-Chancellor, MTU in his keynote address said that every year approximately ten lakh students passing out from professional colleges in India fail to find a suitable job. He added that if each student spends an average of Rs. Four lakh to obtain that degree then we can imagine the huge sum of national income (roughly Rs. 40,000 crore) that fails to achieve the objective for which it was spent and goes waste every year. During the discussion people from academia blamed poor English speaking ability and weak personality of these students as the main reason for poor employment. It was amusing to hear this as I could not comprehend how good English and good personality would make an engineer useful to the industry but the core engineering skills for which he paid the tuition fees has no significance whatsoever with industry’s requirement. It was strange to see that except one gentleman, who subtly talked about the poor quality of education in our country, everybody else found fault only with the soft skills of the students. In that meeting I felt we are perhaps living with denial and not acknowledging that with time the need of the industry has changed manifolds but our education has failed to keep pace with the changing need. It is time we must accept that only the core skill and not soft skill can fill this academia-industry gap.

It is ironical but true that man faces toughest competition from the machines he himself creates. This phenomenon is inevitable and an integral part of the evolutionary process that we all have to go through. To overcome this problem man has no choice but to keep evolving with time and make education his greatest tool to help him stay ahead in this man versus machine race. Early industrial development saw the advent of machines that replaced human beings in areas where human intervention for physical activities was required and was once seen indispensable. In future, with industrial development moving to next level, human beings who are considered skilled for merely possessing knowledge would start losing their significance once machines with artificial intelligence and knowledge database start encroaching this territory too- which is already happening and is only going to escalate with time. Classic example of this is a computer playing game of chess. Today we can programme and feed all possible chess moves in a computer and it can easily defeat even the best chess player of the world. Recently IBM proposed to launch computer that will be capable of 20,000 trillion calculations per second - a feat which even the entire human population on this planet if put together can never achieve. With time machine will be able to defeat us in many more spheres however it will never be able to go past us in our distinctive ability to think and ideate.

Modern education therefore has the task to produce students who are ‘sophisticated thinking gadgets’ with advance ability to co-relate and process information and produce newer information and ideas. Conventional education system that churns out students who are merely ‘memory devices’ and capable of only performing menial knowledge based assignments involving basic level of thinking has no future but will soon be redundant. Today with emergence of various sources of information and communication channels and their access becoming simpler and widespread, professors in US universities have already started talking about the redundancy of orthodox lecture system and contemplating of newer ways to keep the meaningfulness of student- teacher interaction alive. Sadly in this paradigm shift taking place in education, India seems to be lagging far behind in not even able to produce enough quality workforce to suffice the demand of the industry ushered by the current economic growth let alone gearing up for the future need.

In India whenever we discuss reform in education unfortunately our focus gets fixed on augmenting number of schools and colleges, increasing enrollment rate, providing more money for better infrastructure, more facilities for research and higher funding by the government. But we never talk of the fundamental changes needed in the way we impart education, methods used by teachers in teaching students, examination system, and admission to colleges by way of entrance exams and designing of curriculum. When we critically evaluate our education we become too defensive on the issue of quality of our education. According to the Global Competitive Index of World Economic Forum (2005), India ranks at the top in terms of the availability of science and technology personnel and yet we don’t figure anywhere in rankings for research and innovation. This highlights an important fact that problem is not with the quantity but with the quality of our education.

The most important prerequisite for research or innovation is not money but an environment to encourage inquisitive mind and original thinking right from the school level. Unfortunately we have a culture in our schools where teachers intimidate and ridicule students who ask questions. As a result students develop tendency to start accepting things without questioning or analysing them. Moreover we have the culture whereby students are rewarded if they are able to replicate matter from the text books into the answer sheet. This not only leads to rote learning habit among students but also leaves them with poor articulation ability. Our examination system is another area that needs massive redesigning. Competitive exams, especially the ones based on multiple choice questions, are doing more harm than good. Most of these entrance exams in India simply test the memorizing ability and how much effort student has invested in practicing questions from competition guides. We also have the problem of students being made to go through number of exams in a year that only keeps them engaged in the preparation and eventually makes them develop aversion to studies. Prof. C N Rao, scientific advisor to the Prime Minister’s Council recently said that in India we have examination system rather than education system. Lastly, we need to give serious thought to the syllabus we design for different courses. We not only need to keep outdated and irrelevant content out but also make sure that syllabus does not become bulky. It is important that students have enough space to assimilate what they learn and co-relate this learning with the real life experiences.

Today when I analyse Prof. Varshney’s comparison of gilded age in light of the two experiences I have had, I see two possibilities emerging from here on, either our orthodox education system will fail us and stall the development process or with time and accumulation of bad experiences, economic development itself will push us bring much needed qualitative reforms in education. HRD Ministry in recent times initiated some right reforms but still a lot needs to be done.

So, how will India’s ‘gilded age’ unfold in near future? Only time will tell.

Three Stages in Ragging

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 11:36:00 +0530

-Harsh Agarwal

In last ten months I have visited over 40 Universities and Colleges in different parts of India to conduct anti-ragging workshops and got to interact with several thousand students and hundreds of faculty members. The experience so far has been enriching and has helped me realize that even after the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict in 2007 myths about ragging are still deep-rooted in the minds of the people across the length and breadth of the country.

At the beginning of every workshop, the first question that I ask students and teachers is how many of them think ragging is bad? Within no time almost every hand in the audience goes up. Next question is, is ragging necessary for friendship? There would be complete silence. I have to make the atmosphere light and assure that that I am not doing any investigation and students can express their views freely. Then some hands gradually go up and soon many more get the courage and majority of hands are up. Then I ask third question – how many of you think that mild ragging should be allowed? Since I become little friendly and informal with my audience by now so the answer comes faster and again majority of hands go up condoning mild ragging.

I then try to engage students in a slightly humorous conversation and make them think on what is friendship? How did they make friends in school where there was no ragging? Is friendship a natural phenomenon or it needs a catalyst like ragging? Does ragging happen across the world? During my interaction with the students I have to make sure that I keep their interest alive and bypass their conscious mind to make them listen to me and think on this issue. I then proceed to show the documentary Anarth which has some gory scenes of deaths, suicides and sexual abuses that resulted from ragging. When the documentary ends there is absolute silence for a minute. Students and teachers don’t know how to react as they fail to establish connection between ragging they are familiar with and what they saw in the documentary.

In my last session of the workshop I become a little serious and explain the relation between those gory scenes and the so called ‘friendly’ or mild ragging and that how dangerous this method of inorganic friendship is. In the end, I tell the students about the interest International media has been showing lately in highlighting India’s ragging culture and how it is causing a big embarrassment to the country. With this I finish the workshop and leave onto the students to ponder on the subject. However I know even if I continue visiting colleges for the rest of my life it will never be possible for me to cover 20,000 odd colleges in the country and interact with millions of students and teachers who harbor similar misunderstanding about issues that eventually give birth to ragging.

Today major hurdle in eradicating ragging is the dichotomy that exists in the understanding of this issue. After the Supreme Court guidelines nobody disputes that ragging is bad but interestingly, majority still feels that it is an indispensable tool in making friendship. Both students as well as teachers, think that it is fine to have a mild or toned-down level of ragging and it is only rogues and hooligans who make it nasty and are giving bad name to this traditional method of initiating friendship. When any death or serious incident of ragging is reported, students and teachers perceive it as a different ‘form’ of ragging practiced in ‘notorious’ colleges.

If I have to explain the phenomenon of ragging in the simplest possible way then I would classify different aspects of ragging into three stages, with one stage followed by the other and finally leading to unfortunate consequences.

Stage 1 is the stage of myths and ignorance. As mentioned earlier, people have wrong notions that (a) ragging helps in friendship (b) is practiced across the world (c) helps in personality development (d) mild ragging is good and can be kept under limits (e) ragging is an old practice and we have to keep this tradition alive. These myths sow the seed of ragging.

For some students ragging does give opportunity to interact and make friendship and also provide an informal platform to display their talent if they have, in certain fields, limited to, singing, dancing, acting and mimicry. For these students ragging not only helps in winning friends and becoming popular in college but it also becomes the only mode of entertainment in otherwise dull college life, not offering much extra-curricular activity to students. It is therefore not a surprise to later see these students becoming strong proponents of ragging. However, several others lacking talent in singing and dancing or not comfortable with the idea of forced and speed friendship find ragging humiliating and an invasion on individual’s liberty and choice. Most of these students quietly suffer the agony so as not to jeopardize their career and shatter dreams of their parents. Many such cases gradually fall into the trap of stage 2 and ragging starts taking dangerous turn from there.

Unfortunately, our effort to act at stage one is limited to creating deterrence among raggers. When I visit any college the first thing I notice or drawn attention to by college management is the large number of posters and standies warning students of the consequences if they indulge in ragging. Similarly I regularly see government advertisement in national newspapers warning students not to indulge in ragging. I wonder is deterrence the right antidote to bust myths or is logical reasoning and debate better way to address it?

Stage 2 is when socio-economic complexities that exist in our country start influencing ragging subtly. A slight variant of these complexities could also be found responsible for the problem of bullying in schools. Once the concept of ragging gets legitimacy it becomes impossible to ward off the influence of various prejudices and socio-economic factors from ragging. Soon the so called mild ragging starts getting caste, regional, class, gender, sexual, campus politics, etc color to it. Visit to any professional college can show us how students are divided into groups based on these social, economical and regional identities. These identities decide the nature and severity of ragging and from here ragging starts treading the path that leads to violence and abuse.

Given the enormous diversity we have in our country, stage 2 is the most complicated stage in ragging and very difficult to address or even acknowledge. Currently we don’t have any mechanism in place to deal with stage 2. The only way to get rid of it is to impart school education that inculcates feeling of brotherhood and encourages school children to appreciate diversity in our society and think beyond social identities.

Stage 3 is the final stage of ragging that often makes newspapers’ headlines. Once stage 2 gets out of hand it results in violence, hospitalisation, sexual abuse, physical assault, death and suicide. When these cases are reported in the media there is hue and cry and strong appeal from all corners for stricter laws against ragging. Anger at this point is so high that we want nothing less than death sentence for ragging. However because of our myopic approach our focus gets fixed on stage 3 and we tend to overlook the bigger picture how everything started at stage 1 in the form of small prank for speed-friendship and personality development.

Taking action at stage 3 is too late and doesn’t help much in preventing future incidents of ragging. There is no doubt that due to deterrence created by the government in recent time ragging has come down to some extent however this is also true that the effect of deterrence is reaching its saturation. We must not forget that ragging originates at stage 1 from a set of illogical reasons and therefore perfect prescription to cure this problem is to attack those reasons right at the inception stage of ragging.

Lastly but most importantly, policymakers in education need to revamp the curriculum and method of teaching by infusing critical reasoning and encouraging individual thinking among students to not only spur creativity, innovation and research in the country but also to ensure that irrationalities like ragging are not able to conquer educated minds ever again.

Associate Program Coordinator, CNA (CURE NoRagging Ambassador) Program

editorial@noragging.com (Varun Aggarwal) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:13:00 +0530

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Internship: Associate Program Coordinator

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CURE: Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (www.noragging.com) is a non-profit organization dedicated solely towards the elimination of ragging and promotion of more positive ways of interaction among seniors and freshers in Indian universities. CURE is a research, awareness and advocacy body and is run by alumni of IIT, MIT (USA) and those with experience in Planning Commission of the Govt. of India. CURE acted as a consultant body to the Supreme Court-appointed Raghavan Committee, provided research input to the Govt of India and was cited several times in the Raghavan Committee Report. In 2007, CURE launched the first song and video on `Ragging' (www.noragging.com/video) which was featured on MTV, NDTV and Aaj-Tak. CURE has been quoted and featured by leading national and international media including BBC, The Economist, The Washington Post, TIME Magazine etc. You can follow us on facebook by visiting www.facebook.com/noragging for regular updates about ragging.

Associate Program Coordinator: CNA (CURE NoRagging Ambassador) Program

CURE is making the largest network of NoRagging Volunteers across the Country under the branded program of CURE NoRagging Volunteers. These volunteers work as work-from-home volunteers for CURE, help us in creating awareness about CURE and ragging through online and offline channels. They participate in activities such as promoting CURE on facebook, sending awareness emails, distributing fliers, etc.

We are looking for an individual seriously interested in helping us develop and manage this network across the country. The candidate shall work as Associate Program Coordinator, CNA Program. His/her responsibilities shall include:

- Getting sincere individuals to register in the CNA program from across the country

- Provide work allocation, guidance and do proactive follow-up with CNAs.

- Develop innovative ideas for spreading awareness about ragging and implement them through CNA network.

- Provide operational support from head-office whenever required for CNA program.

We plan to hire only 2 individuals, who are very serious, enthusiastic and committed to run this program with us. The position will require minimum 5hrs of work through internet and telephone every week. It can be done from your home/college/dorm. Apart from that two meetings on weekends every month will take place in NCR. More than counting time spent, we are looking for an individual who is passionate about the program and strives to make it successful. We are looking at a minimum commitment of 3 months, though enthusiastic individuals may continue to work beyond that.

Why you should apply:

* If you want to take the challenge of building a pan-India voice for a social cause

* If you want to take the challenge of channelizing the energy of multiple people across the Nation positively

* If you want to make an impact

* Do not apply to us for just a certificate, a mention in your resume or at impulse. We are serious about this

Stipend:

We do not think you should apply to this, if you are doing it just for the money. We understand money is important to all of us and we need to pay if we get some work done by an individual. However we wish that you apply to us only if you are passionate enough about the cause to think of this as *your own work* and not as being done for us. We will provide a token stipend.

How to Apply:

If you are interested, please send us the following at kanupriya.singhal@noragging.com Cc: cna@noragging.com:

- Your updated resume

- Make sure you go through the following in detail: www.noragging.com // www.facebook.com/noragging

- Answer the following questions. Put them in a single well-formatted document with your name

-- Why you want to be Associate Program Coordinator: CNA Program? (250 words)

-- Why do you think you should be chosen for this position? (250 words)

-- Tell us 2 things you have found on CURE's website, facebook page or wall which you think shall be most effective to make people aware about ragging. Why do you think these two things are important? Also point out if you find anything to be completely ineffective!

Your application will be rigorously scrutinized by our team and shortlisted candidates will be invited for an interview

Ragging - An insane practice in Higher Education

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:37:00 +0530

(Interview of Harsh Agarwal by an education magazine)

1.Do you think the incidents of ragging have fallen in 2010? If yes, will you attribute this to presence of a stringent and in a sense a deterrent law or awareness as a result of intense media focus following some cruel incidents?

It is very difficult to say whether incidents of ragging have increased or decreased in any particular year. We keep a track on cases that are reported in English media across India and based on that we compile our annual statistics. Total number depends on how actively media reported incidents of ragging in that particular year. Nevertheless this is a good indicator to understand how rampant and widespread ragging is, its severity, and to study various sociological aspects associated with it. But this doesn’t necessarily give a good trend of annual rise or fall in incidents. However if we compare present situation with what it was 10 years ago then certainly there is a slight decrease in the overall trend. Colleges are a little scared now or are at least forced to show that they are concerned about it. Ten years ago ragging was considered a normal phenomenon, nobody used to talk about it, today it is a social issue.

Yes stringent laws have definitely played a role in reducing the incidents and degree of ragging in recent years. But I think that effect has somewhere reached its saturation as well. Too much focus on deterrence alone and our failure to punish the offenders (colleges and students involved in ragging) is setting a bad example and soon this deterrence would also fade way.

2. Do you feel, incidents are still under reported and the tradition or malaise of ragging is so deeply entrenched that it will need more time and effort to end it from campuses?

Incidents of ragging are highly underreported. We don’t get to hear even a minute fraction of the actual number of incidents taking place- which is for obvious reasons. Ragging is done in an organised manner under extreme secrecy. There is tremendous fear in the minds of freshers in filing complaint. They know that the consequences of compalint could put their career and life at stake and thus prefer to bear the torture. College authorities also try their best to suppress the incidents to save the reputation of the institution. Moreover, ragging has a general acceptance on the campus. People have been seeing this for past several years and thus don’t find anything wrong about it. This acceptance and psychology behind ragging is so strong that victim himself becomes a perpetrator in a short span of twelve months.

Laws have been made and ragging has been banned but the practice is still rampant because the concept continues to exist in the minds of the people. We therefore need a comprehensive awareness and education to change the thinking of the people. We have to engage our students and faculty in debates and seminars on ragging to make them think and understand the insanity behind this concept. Only then we would be able to wipe out ragging. Yes this would be a gradual process and would take time and effort and I don’t see any short cut solution to this problem.

3. You have met and spoken with many heads of institutions in various parts of country, could you summarize the attitudes, impact of no-ragging campaign and their knowledge about ragging in their campuses?

In my interaction with the heads of institutions I have felt that their general attitude is to avoid any discussion or activity related to ragging. Because of the strong laws, it is now a taboo to talk about ragging. On the other hand, college-heads don’t take no-ragging campaign seriously. This attitude is generally shown by heads of government-run and established colleges. They find themselves in safer position and are perhaps not concerned about the Supreme Court guidelines and not worried about getting into trouble in case they fail to check ragging in their institution. Also I have come across principals who condemn ragging in any formal conversation but inside their mind they are ardent supporter of it. But there are also principals, who are genuinely worried about ragging in their institution and make all possible efforts to curb it. I have met some such principals and professors who are sincerely making efforts to prevent ragging. I think we need to highlight their efforts and inspire others by this.

4. Is it true that hostels are places that breed the menace of ragging? Are there any historic, societal or psychological reasons? Is there any program that sensitizes wardens?

Yes hostels are places that mainly breed this menace. In fact worst cases of ragging usually take place inside hostel premises or in paying guest accommodation around campus areas. It is so because ragging inside the four walls of a hostel room provides a general sense of security to seniors. Moreover, students in hostels have strong bonding and are organised in group, which ensures that nobody would raise voice against ragging. Intrestingly freshers are ragged badly in hostels on pretext that this would help in developing bonding with their hostel mates. Also during my visit to colleges across India I saw hostels in deplorable condition. Students don’t get basic amenities in hostels, food served in the mess is of poor quality, there are no facilities for extra-curricular activities for the students and now we have so many new colleges which are situated on highways, far away from main city. I believe all this somewhere does affect the psyche of the students and they then think of seeking entertainment from ragging.

Wardens are aware about ragging in hostels but generally don’t take action because like the freshers they are also scared of the consequences. Raghavan Committee has made several recommendations to improve hostel administration and tackle ragging but those recommendations have not been implemented by colleges.

5. Discrimination is practiced even in ragging, does it reflect social bias and inequality?

Ragging is an excellent example that highlights how deep-rooted the practice of discrimination is even among the educated class of our society. In majority of professional colleges across India, students are discriminated and are ragged on the basis of which region or state of the country they come from or the caste or religion they belong to. Students with characteristics (language, caste, region, religion, economic background, etc) that are in minority in a particular setting are worst victims of ragging. They feel extremely suffocated and low and because of this they are often not able to perform well in studies.

Given the extent of diversity we have in our country, I think it is imperative for us to have school education that inculcates feeling of unity and brotherhood in our youth.

6. What kind of support is offered by your group and how do you plan to take your work forward?

CURE is primarily a research and advocacy group trying to establish public opinion against ragging. We regularly publish research reports, produce audio-visual content and use them to create awareness and educate masses to change the mindset towards ragging. We also conduct seminars and workshops in colleges across India. CURE is soon launching a ‘CURE Ambassador’ programme which would encourage students to take up awareness programme in their college. We are planning to expand our reach and activities to more number of colleges in India. We also do media advocacy and work with the government bodies to bring effective policy change to address this menace.

7. Some people are of the opinion that bullying in schools is the early signs of ragging leadership, have you come across any link?

Bullying is an act of teasing or humiliating someone mainly based on the person’s characteristics such as physical features, accent, ethnicity, religion, ability, gender, economic background, etc. I feel that bullying is a milder form of ragging and it won’t be wrong to say that it is like a seed that germinates into ragging. However we don’t need to go to a school to see bullying. We can experience bullying and find bullies in our daily life. Bullying can happen at home, school, college, workplace, or any other public place.

Bullying is a primitive human behaviour in which you humiliate someone to establish your supremacy. Advance societies look down on bullies. Several countries in the west have made bullying a serious punishable offence. This tendency can be best curbed at young age.

8. Not many people are coming forward to lend support to this campaign, your comment.

There are several reasons behind this. Firstly, people don’t consider ragging as a serious issue and have a tendency to compare it with other bigger problems in the country and find ragging trivial.

Secondly, there is a strange paradox in ragging. Victims of ragging who are expected to join anti-ragging campaign and raise voice themselves become perpetrators and supporters of this menace. I blame the education system of our country for this anomaly. Our education is based on rote-learning rather than on reasoning and discussion. This dull method of education leads to lack of individual thinking and strong thought process in students, and encourages herd-mentality and makes them susceptible to brain washing. It is for this reason that students so easily get influenced by their seniors and never question the illogical reasoning given to justify ragging. Violence and humiliation are so contrary to education. It is shocking to see educated youngsters involved in something which is irrational and gross. Perhaps our model of education is failing to serve the purpose what education is actually meant for.

9. Lastly, could you summarize your personal story that led to your initiation into this cause.

In the year 2000 I qualified 4 All India/State level medical entrance exams and joined MLN Medical College in Alllahabad. For a month, I was ragged so badly that I was left with no other option but to leave the college. Later I pursued government ministries for two years to get transfer to any other medical college that I had qualified. But this never happened. My case was even taken up by NHRC but that too was of no help. It was a rude shock to me as I had never heard of such a phenomenon (ragging) before it actually happened with me. More shocking was the casual response of the people whom I came across during those two years. It was difficult for me to comprehend that something like this exists in our higher education and that most educated people like doctors and engineers are involved in it. I started looking for an organization working on ragging but was disappointed to find nonet. Then one day in July 2002, while surfing internet I came across two students, Varun Aggarwal and Mohit Garg who were running a website and a yahoo group against ragging and we soon joined hands to work for this cause Today after 10 years of journey with CURE when we see activists coming forward to take up this issue, media writing about ragging, movies being made on this issue, court taking serious view of it and society condemning ragging, we feel happy to see this change but at the same time we know that a lot still needs to be done to eradicate this menace from its roots.

CURE’s Month-Long Nationwide Anti-Ragging Tour

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:51:00 +0530

Traveled over 12,000 kms, visited 28 Universities and Colleges and

interacted with more than 5000 students across India.

A Summary Report of the Tour

Recently, Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (CURE), did a month long (from February 7th to March 7th, 2011)nationwide tour to conduct anti-ragging workshops in campuses across India. During this tour, Harsh Agarwal, Co-founder, CURE traveled over 12,000 kms and visited 28 Universities and Colleges in different parts of the country. In this tour he gave 30 presentations and interacted with more than 5,000 students mainly from Engineering and Medical Colleges in 16 districts across India and explained various issues related to ragging. Each presentation was of one hour duration in which a 23 min long documentary (Anarth in the name of education) on ragging was screened along with series of interaction with the students.

Places visited during the tour are: Nagpur, Nasik, Pune, Surathkal, Mangalore, Trivandrum, Chennai, Bangarapet, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Anakapalle, Visakhpatnam, Kolkata, Shibpur, 24 Parganas (South), Kanchrapara and Kalyani.

Following are some analysis on ragging based on the experiences and observation from this tour:

(i) Before setting out for the tour CURE wrote to more than 100 Universities and 700 Colleges regarding this tour and sought approval for conducting anti-ragging workshop but received less than 10 responses.

Most Universities and Colleges are still in denial and hesitate to openly talk about ragging and are afraid that by conducting such workshop they would invite controversy and bad name to their institution. When such institutions were approached personally, most of them made various excuses to avoid such activity. Most interesting response was from a Vice Chancellor of a prestigious University in Karnataka who wrote that there is no ragging in the University and in fact by conducting such seminar students would get involved in ragging.

(ii) On interactions with college heads over e-mails, phone and personally, it was felt that Government Colleges were more non-serious and evasive on the issue of ragging as compared to private ones. Among private colleges non-seriousness was more from old and established colleges and ones that have achieved Deemed University status.

Heads of Government and established private colleges perhaps find themselves in comparitively safer positions and are not concerned about the Supreme Court guidelines and not worried about getting into trouble in case they fail to check ragging in their institution. Staraight forward reply given by them is that University/College has taken all preventive steps, there is no ragging in the institution and there is huge acedemic pressure thus no need and time for the workshop.

(iii) Regionalism plays a significant role in ragging. Students are discriminated and are ragged on the basis of which region or state of the country they come from. Students who are in minority in any region or state would have to get ragged by the senior students of the same region to gain acceptance in the respective regional group to feel safe and protected in the college. When these freshers become senior they have to follow the tradition and rag their juniors from their state to show loyalty to the group. Lot of students said that they dislike ragging but have to get involved in it due to peer pressure.

Students with characteristics (language, caste, region, religion, economic background, etc) that are in minority in a particular setting are worst victims of ragging. They feel extremely suffocated and low and wanted to speak privately after the presentation.

(iv) Though ragging is rampant across India and people have strong opinion supporting it however discussion and debate on this subject is a taboo in colleges. College Heads, Faculty and Students don’t want to talk much on this issue.

(v) During interaction with the students it was found that they have several misunderstandings about ragging. They think that ragging is practiced across the world, it helps in their personality development, helps them to become strong and face difficult circumstances in life, it helps in bonding between the students and that ragging to some limit should be allowed. Understanding on this issue is so poor that in several colleges students talked about the racial attacks on Indian students in Australia as ragging in Australia. Lot of students said that ragging is a sort of fun, an easy way to become popular among girls and also to get elected in the Student’s Union.

There is also an unnecessary apprehension among students. They feel that without ragging they would never be able to interact with anyone. They think that the kind of ragging they are involved in is ‘safe and friendly’. It was seen that Girls were far more logical and sensitive on the issue of ragging. It was easier to convince and explain the irrationalities behind ragging to girls than to boys.

Even some College Heads and Faculty, though spoke cautiously but expressed that ragging has various positive effects as well. Like the students, they also quite strongly believed in various misunderstanding associated with ragging.

(vi) Colleges feel that putting up anti-ragging posters on campus and taking affidavit from the students would make their institution ragging-free. Colleges still don’t understand the importance of awareness workshops and the need of conducting debate and discussion on ragging on regular basis. Focus of the colleges is to prevent ragging by deterrence alone. It seemed that there is very little emphasis at college level on changing the mindset of the students.

Since, students as well as faculty have strong opinion supporting ragging. Punishment alone would not work in this situation. A comprehensive awareness to systematically address these misunderstandings is imperative to eradicate the menace of ragging.

(vii) Also came across some Professors and College Heads who were extremely sensitive and serious about the issue of ragging. They have been making all possible effort to prevent ragging in their college for past several years. Two such excellent examples are Prof. S N Murthy of NIT Surathkal and Dr. Sandhya Avadhany, Vice Dean of St. John Medical College in Bangalore who are extremely dedicated to this cause.

(viii) A lot can also be said and analysed about the education system and the state of higher education institutions – infrastructure, remote location, hostel, food, strict restriction on interaction between girls and boys, lack of avenues for extra-curricular and recreational activities, etc - in the country. Education is heavily based on rote learning rather than involving reasoning and discussion thus making it dull and mechanical and making students vulnerable to brainwashing. These could perhaps be the reasons behind problems like ragging, campus violence, eve teasing, poor innovation, research and academic standard, etc.

Bigger picture that emerged from this tour was that Ragging is not just a problem in itself but more importantly a symptom indicating serious problems and gaps in the higher education system of our country.

(From July 2009 – June 2010, 164 cases of ragging have been reported in English media. There have been 19 deaths and 56 students have been hospitalised due to ragging during this period)

For more details on this please write to us at cure@noragging.com

Hostel - A Film on Ragging

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 16:41:00 +0530

Hostel, a bollywood film on ragging is releasing on December 31st, 2010. The film is perhaps the first commercial bollywood film based on the issue of ragging in college hostels.

After Munnabhai MBBS and 3 Idiots glorified ragging by showing its funnier side, this film is claiming to show the darker side of the ragging menace. However, CURE is yet to watch 'Hostel' and judge how successful the film has been in showing the real life ragging on reel.

We wish the director of the film and his team all the very best and hope the film will be able to portray ragging in its real sense.

For more details about the fim and to watch its trailer, please visit the website http://www.hostel.in.com/

CURE interacts with students in Chandigarh

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 15:18:00 +0530

On Saturday, August, 14th, 2010, CURE visited Chandigarh and showed the documentary 'Anarth' and interacted with students in Chandigarh Institute of Hotel Management, S.D. College and Chandigarh Engineering College. The idea behind visiting colleges across the country is to make students think on the issue of ragging and create ‘young ambassadors’ who would talk to their peers about it and thus change the mindset of the youth involved in ragging.

If you want CURE to visit your college to screen the documentary on ragging and interact with students, then do write to us at cure@noragging.com

Helplessness of anti-ragging Helpline number (1800-180-5522)

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Mon, 2 Aug 2010 10:51:00 +0530

Harsh Agarwal

It will be shocking to know that there are perhaps more digits (11 in total) in this national anti-ragging helpline number than the number of ragging complaints on which helpline system has achieved any success in last thirteen months. And if we talk of the colossal publicity that this helpline received and the tremendous hope it generated then there is no comparison with the little or no utility that this number has shown so far. Or this may be my illusion. But what can I do, I have read so many media stories on how this helpline would help eradicate ragging, but I am yet to come across even a single success story. And on top of it helpline people never share their internal information with us citing confidentiality as the reason. Confidentiality in helpline- Strange isn’t? If everything is going well as it was anticipated, then I don’t understand the reason to hide anything especially from a voluntary group which is pioneer in anti-ragging campaign in India and running it for almost 10 years now.

Just to make things clear, I am not opposed to the idea of running an anti-ragging helpline. Anti-ragging helpline is indeed important for students who wish to report the incident but do not know where to complain. However I am vehemently against excessive expectation from this helpline number. We are treating helpline number as if it is elixir to the problem of ragging. I wonder if social problems could be solved so easily by starting helpline numbers then India would have got rid of dowry, caste discrimination, and several other social maladies long ago simply by starting helpline numbers.

What is disappointing is that we have suddenly transferred the entire burden of the anti-ragging campaign on this helpline number. We don’t see it as merely one of the ways of lodging complaint against ragging but as a cure to ragging. Our too much optimism from this helpline would only lead us to disappointment. And I am saying this because our hope is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption that ragging victims have the courage to register complaint Here we are ignoring the immense role of fear involved in ragging and the pressure on students to anyhow survive in college as the stakes are very high- in term of getting admission and money and hard work invested on it.

If I recall my days in medical college, which I left 10 years ago because of ragging, I remember I didn’t share my torturous ragging episodes even with my parents for a month. I was afraid if my parents went and complained to the principal, what will be the consequences. And re-imagining the terror that I lived with during ragging day, I can say that 999 out of one thousand freshers in that situation would prefer to endure the torture and take injury on their body than think of lodging any complaint. The terror of ragging is so severe and the fear of consequences of complaining so threatening that the victim doesn’t want to confide the ordeal to anyone. If there is anything that can support my argument then there is nothing better than the revelation made by the government itself. This year in March, government on the floor of the parliament, admitted that helpline received 1.6 lakh calls but could register only 300 complaints. This skewed ratio might be surprising to many. However if we think little practically and understand the fear that a ragging victim has in giving sufficient information (name, name of the college, name of seniors, etc.) to lodge a complaint then we can easily understand why several thousand calls could not be registered as complaints.

The reason for my dissatisfaction is therefore simple. In May 2007 when Raghavan Committee made exhaustive recommendations to address ragging, I was extremely happy. I was full of hope because the committee had recognized all different aspects behind ragging- sociological, psychological and law and order aspect- and suggested appropriate remedies to cure them. But today we don’t know the fate of those 50 odd recommendations that were made in the report after so much deliberation? Today from media reports we hear only about the technical problems that helpline is facing and how we are busy solving them. It seems that our focus on helpline is paramount and we are fighting the entire battle against ragging with this 11 digit number.

Our focus on the battle against ragging is lost so must so that recently even the news that 19 students died due to ragging in last one year, didn’t make national headlines; Even news of Nayan Adak who 10 months ago tried twice to commit suicide because of ragging and died in the second attempt- the most shocking case of suicide I have heard in my life- didn’t make national headlines. Are we too busy rectifying the helpline? Sigh!

I am deeply saddened. I really don’t know when would we finally dial the right number to solve this menace? Is there a helpline for that?

Ragging uncontrolled: National Report Card 164 reported cases, 19 deaths and 4 attempted suicide

editorial@noragging.com (Mohit Garg) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:57:00 +0530

Press Release

Ragging uncontrolled: National Report Card

164 reported cases, 19 deaths and 4 attempted suicides

Sub: Annual Status Report on Ragging in India

Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (CURE, Estd in 2001) has once again come out with its statistics to highlight the ragging scenario in higher educational institutions in India. According to CURE’s latest analysis of ragging in

India

, the academic session 2009-10 registered highest number of ragging deaths in recent times. In the last 12 months, 19 cases of deaths and 4 cases of attempted suicides allegedly due to ragging were reported in English media. The year also witnessed a marked increase in the number of ragging incidents involving girls, including 4 cases of deaths and 2 cases of attempted suicides by girl students.

Year	Reported Ragging Incidents	Ragging Deaths	Attempted suicides
2007-08	89	11	5
2008-09	88	12	5
2009-10	164	19	4

In the academic session 2009-10 (July, 2009 – June, 2010) a total of 164 cases of ragging were reported in English media from across the country. This shows that ragging cases reported have doubled this academic year. Whereas this increase could be due to wider coverage of ragging incidents by the media, the substantial increase in number of deaths is concerning. The figure for number of deaths is less influenced by reporting asymmetry.

The highest incidents were reported from Uttar Pradesh (26), Andhra Pradesh (18), Tamil Nadu (14), Kerela (13) and West Bengal (11). In comparison to last year, Tamil Nadu is a new entrant to this list, whereas Punjab has exited the list. It is important to also study, which states registered the maximum number of ragging deaths. Maharashtra (4), West Bengal (4) and Punjab (3) registered maximum deaths due to ragging. It is alarming to observe that 4 states comprise to 57% of the total ragging deaths across the country.

There were 56 cases of ragging that led to major and minor injuries to students including several incidents leading to hospitalization and even permanent disability to young students. 22% of the total cases involved sexual abuse of freshers. 24 cases of ragging led to serious group clashes, protests and strikes and violence between students. Element of drug abuse, alcoholism, extortion, caste difference or regionalism was noted in 19 ragging cases.

Cases leading to injury	56
Cases comprising of sexual abuse	36
Cases leading to group violence	24
Cases involving drug abuse, casteism/regionalism	19

However the most shocking case this year was that of Nayan Adak, a 19 year-old first year student of Calcutta Institute of Pharmaceutical and Allied Health Sciences in Uluberia. During ragging Nayan was asked by his seniors to dance, strip and smoke. When he refused, the seniors slashed his hands with a blade and injected something into his body. Later Nayan tried to commit suicide at home by drinking pesticide but was timely hospitalized and rescued. But Nayan was so traumatized by the ragging incident that after a month when his father wanted him to rejoin classes, Nayan hanged himself from the ceiling fan and died on October, 8^th, 2009. This shows a gross societal failure, wherein after intervention of family and social security institutions, the victim could not be saved from death.

Like the previous years, this year also, high percentage of cases were reported from Engineering and Medical Colleges with a total of 68 cases (42% the total cases). Hostels and paying guest accommodation for students still remain to be the breeding ground for ragging as 91 cases or 56% of the total cases were reported from these places located in and around the campus area.

On the positive side, in 2009-10 academic session was the increase in police involvement and registration of FIR in ragging cases. Police intervention was noted in 66% of the total ragging incidents reported during the last 12 months as against 59% in academic session 2008-09.

“With so much fear, mystery and secrecy associated with ragging the only way to analyse the situation of ragging in the country is to track media reports and explore the trends and nature of this evil. Number of unreported incidents of ragging are much higher, nevertheless media reports are an important indicator on how widespread the phenomenon of ragging is still existent in our country.” says Harsh Agarwal, Co-founder, CURE.

“Our analysis states the obvious: Ragging is still widespread and its social impact is non-trivial. We are not happy with the steps the government or the educational institutions have taken. There is a lot of talk, but little work. A simple question to ask is how many educational institutions were fined or deaffiliated for breeding ragging, The unfortunate answer is 0.” says Varun Aggarwal, Co-founder, CURE.

About CURE

Established in 2001, Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (www.noragging.com) is

India

’s foremost anti-ragging non-profit organization. CURE is a research organization dedicated solely towards the elimination of ragging and promotion of more positive ways of interaction among seniors and freshers in Indian universities. For more details, please contact: Email: cure@noragging.com,

Psychology Behind Ragging

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:39:00 +0530

Psychology Behind Ragging

( Speech by Harsh Agarwal at a seminar organised by DLSA on 20.03.2010)

Ragging has been debated and discussed for ages now but we always ignored to understand the hidden psychological mysteries associated with this menace. It has been almost two decades since we started to recognize ragging as a problem and hunt for a solution. But we have not moved much from the point, where we were 10 or 20 years back.

In our attempt to look for a quick solution we perhaps focused only on the law and order aspect of ragging but ignored to probe its psychological side. I find it extremely difficult to comprehend, that though ragging has taken so many innocent lives, ruined so many bright careers; it is perhaps the only social and human rights problem in the world in which the victim himself/herself becomes the perpetrator of the crime and yet nobody got interested to study and understand this mysterious phenomenon. We never bother to unravel the mystery that how a victim who is tormented badly makes his abuser his best pal in a short span of time and starts to believe and practice the same custom on his juniors.

We never bothered to question the ‘Whys’ of ragging. Why ragging is being practiced? Why does it get mass support? Why do people believe in such a custom? May be exploring answer to these questions and awareness of these answers could help us eradicate ragging forever.

In the absence of any scientific study on ragging, I would therefore start with the myths, mindset, brainwashing involved with ragging and try to explain how all this translate into a strong belief system which you can call as a psychology behind this evil and I would also try to draw similarities with other proven scientific concepts.

My understanding of this psychology behind ragging is not based on any scientific study but largely on my personal experiences of last 10 years. First as a fresher who was ragged badly in a medical college and had to leave it, then as a victim who ran from pillar to post and struggled for two years to get justice and now finally as an anti-ragging activist closely observing, researching and thinking on this issue for the past eight years.

Starting with the myths and misunderstanding, which I call as the pillars that support the concept of ragging, are (a) Many believe that ragging helps in breaking the ice between the seniors and freshers; it helps in making friendship; some say it helps in emotional bonding between the students (b) many believe that ragging helps in personality development of the students; helps them getting rid of their shyness; prepares them for the real world. And it is not only students studying in college believing in such concept but many teachers teaching in universities and colleges, people who went to college several years ago or even people who never went to college but just heard about the virtues of ragging blindly believe in such myths.

We can easily find people around us from all walks of life who strongly believe in such myths. Though because of the Supreme Court guidelines and tragic cases of ragging reported in recent times they will hesitate to openly show their support. However on talking to them, they would first segregate ragging into mild and severe and then gradually start justifying its need for the initiation of a long lasting camaraderie among students and its need to prepare the youngsters for the 'real world'.

And I see a major mindset problem whenever we try to define and draw the limits of ragging. We argue a lot over mild versus severe ragging. Any discussion on ragging eventually turns into a debate on mild versus severe ragging. And I see even today majority of people are in favour of mild ragging. But we need to think, can there be anything like mild ragging? What may be mild for someone may be severe for others. We must not forget that all tragic cases of ragging started only in their milder forms or it was fun for someone. We need to understand that it is impossible to draw a line once ragging starts.

Then there is another problem, many of us who went to college several years ago though condemn ragging but we have a tendency to cherish our ragging days. Recently I met a very successful and a ‘learned’ gentleman. We met for some work purpose and after our brief introduction he came to know that I run an organization which opposes ragging. This was quite interesting for him because during his engineering and management studies he was ragged and he ragged as well, which he enjoyed a lot. He soon started justifying that why ragging is good for youngsters and how it helped him in making friends and how much fun he had those days and that Aman Kachroo’s case is an exception and it shouldn’t have happened. Soon our business meeting turned into an hour long debate on ragging and finally ended on that. And this is not the only example, I have seen whenever there is discussion on ragging we become nostalgic about our own ragging time. How good it was; how much fun we had with our seniors and juniors and it is only now that ragging has deteriorated.

When we make such comparisons and suggest others that my ragging was healthy and now it has turned ugly then aren’t we somewhere in a subtle way justifying the concept and need of this evil practice? Aren’t in some way we are asking only for reform in the menace but not the complete eradication of it? Next time before we do this again, we need to think about it.

Recently I visited a prestigious medical college in Bangalore and I was told that after strictness against ragging on campus, senior students have boycotted their juniors and there is confusion. There is confusion as to what amounts to ragging and what doesn’t; what will happen to the senior–junior interaction in the absence of ragging. Can seniors now talk freely to their juniors? And, this confusion exists not only in this medical college in Bangalore but in of colleges and universities across the country. Strictness alone cannot solve this problem but will lead to confusion.

Another strong reason behind ragging is our failure to inculcate in our youngsters a feeling of respect for people from different backgrounds. As a result when youngsters go to college, ragging becomes a soft tool to manifest that hatred ness they nurtured against people from other communities. It is a bitter fact to accept but across the country ragging is mainly done on the lines of caste, region, language, religion, economic background and all other different diversities that we have in society. I remember just this week only a ragging case was reported from Andhra Pradesh in which seniors ragged their juniors because the juniors belonged to the Telangana part and seniors were from different region of the state.

Here I would briefly touch upon the subject of bullying, especially bullying in schools. I believe to some extent bullying in school is the seed that germinates into ragging in college. Across the world, people bully others to establish their supremacy by making fun of someone’s background or certain traits which might be in minority or some traits which are considered 'funny'. It could be on someone’s accent; it could be on someone’s physique; it could be on someone’s native place or it could be on someone’s economic background. Schools in the western countries have started to take bullying as a serious offence and sensitizing their students against it. However given the enormous diversity that we have in our country, bullying in school is on a much larger scale in India but the problem is yet to be recognized.

It is all this that has gradually transformed into a psychology; it is this which influences not only young minds but society as well.

Talking about the society, I see a strange paradox. Whenever there is a death due to ragging we come on the streets to show our anger against this menace. But when movies like 3 Idiots and Munnabhai show ragging scenes, then inside the theatre we find those scenes humorous and forget the protests that we participated in the past.

I sometimes ask myself, when the society hasn't accepted ragging as a social evil but still seeking humor in it then how will we implement the anti ragging laws? After all implementation has to be done by the society, on the society and this is possible only when there is conviction and consensus on that issue, which seems to be currently lacking with regard to ragging.

When ten years ago I was affected with ragging and later when I started working as an anti ragging activist, I always believed that law needs to be strengthened to curb this menace. However in the last 4-5 years I have come to the conclusion that ragging is more of a mindset problem than anything else. Though it looks simple to solve it by making strict laws but we can never solve it unless we change the mindset as well. This can be done best by going into the roots of this problem. Though no specific study has been done on ragging, however I find certain western psychological concepts like Stanford Prison Experiment, Miligram Experiment, Stockholm syndrome, having close similarities with ragging and can help us broaden our understanding.

Amongst these three concepts, I find Stockholm syndrome to be most closely related to the phenomenon of ragging. Some of you might already know what Stockholm syndrome is. For others I will give a brief introduction.

In August 1973, two bank robbers, in Stockholm held 3 women and a man hostage for a period of 6 days. In those six days the hostages developed emotional bonds with their captors and exhibited shocking attitude. They not only resisted the attempt made by the police to rescue them but one of the woman hostages later got engaged to one of the kidnappers and another arranged fund for the legal defense of the kidnappers. This incident baffled many across the world.

Psychologists later tried to study the behavior shown by the Stockholm hostages and termed this phenomenon as 'Stockholm Syndrome'. Psychologists believe that hazing, child abuse, pimp-prostitute relationship, battered spouses’ relationship, etc work on same psychology and call them 'Societal Stockholm Syndrome'.

According to evolutionary psychology, capture-bonding, or social reorientation after capture, was an essential survival feature for millions of years. The captives who reoriented survived, and those who did not form social bonds with captors were killed. Psychologists say that anyone can become a victim of Stockholm Syndrome if the certain conditions are met: (i) Perceived threat to survival (ii) The captive's perception of small kindnesses from the captor (iii) Isolation from perspectives other than those of the captor (iv) Perceived inability to escape. And it is said that it takes as little as 3-4 days for this psychology to take hold of the victim.

When I recall my ragging days in Medical College at Allahabad, I find close similarities with Stockholm syndrome. Each time during ragging, my seniors used to first beat me recklessly for hours without any provocation then show act of kindness by offering me tea, samosa, cold drink and promise me of helping me later with notes. Perhaps unknowingly they were applying this same psychological technique; trying to break me psychologically. Same pattern can be seen in ragging across the country. Most of the victims just give in to this strong psychological technique. Fortunately this phenomenon did not work on me; however, now I feel that if little less torture had been applied or my parents had not allowed me to leave the college, I would have easily become a victim of it and would have happily bonded with my tormentors.

Here is another example of this psychology. Recently I saw a similar situation in an award winning Polish film ‘Your name is Justyna’. This film almost brought tears to my eyes and on several occasions even forced me to change the channel. This film shows a pimp who uses similar strategy to convince Justyna, the lead character in that film, into prostitution. His strategy was to psychologically break her down by using torture and kindness alternately. The director of this Film, Franco De Penn, while doing research on this subject found that using this psychological tactics, more than one hundred and fifty thousand girls in Europe were taken into prostitution. He says that this experience is so shocking that it takes away individual's whole personality.

People who have worked on Stockholm syndrome agree that it does help in establishing emotional bonds but they call it 'traumatic bonding' and a manipulative behavior. If this is the same psychology that helps in establishing bonds between the students during ragging then we need to ask ourselves. For the sake of bonding, is it justified to go this far and try destructive methods at the cost of one’s liberty, dignity and personality or even life? I am sure none of us would agree.

So now we come to the question how do we solve the problem of ragging? Where does the solution lie? Today Laws have been made, ragging has been banned by the Supreme Court, 24 hour helpline number has been started but it seems that the problem just refuses to die down. Did we ever question why this is so? It is so because the pillars that support the concept of ragging are still intact. We have not yet tried to address the fundamental reasons which are given to justify ragging. Real problem is that we have done everything we could do but we are yet to make our students think on this issue. Solution lies in thinking. We have to give students a chance to think and question the reasons that support this menace.

And not only students but we all need to introspect and realise, isn’t ragging like a mass friendship crash course? Does friendship require any artificial mechanism? All friends that we have are because of ragging? Can we make friendship only by dancing and singing? What if I don’t know to dance or sing but I am good at painting? Then I can’t make friends?

To my knowledge ragging is not prevalent in western countries, does that mean people there don’t make friends, don’t have good personality; they can’t face the real world?

Today we have created lot of awareness about the ill effects of ragging, about the ban on ragging, about the toll free number, which I think is good but we also need to create awareness about various other important aspects of ragging. There is still a very little knowledge about the origin of this sort of tradition, why is it irrelevant in today’s time, Where did it come from? How and when it came to India? Which other countries in the world follow this practice? Spreading awareness of these aspects can play an important role in weakening the mass support, which ragging currently enjoys.

In the end, just summing up my points and re-highlighting them again I would say that along with strict laws we need to create comprehensive awareness, we need to dispel all the misconceptions about ragging, we need to intelligently break the belief system that supports ragging, we need to instill in our youngsters a sense of respect and sensitivity towards the differences and diversity that we see in our society.

I am sure after introspection on ragging, we would just hate to be identified with it, we would be forced to rethink about the virtues of ragging we believe in, we would be forced to rethink the justifications we give to support ragging and this would eventually lead to its natural death simply by the way of thinking and application of logic.

'Society has not accepted ragging as a social evil'

editorial@noragging.com (Mohit Garg) — Mon, 8 Feb 2010 08:05:00 +0530

Published in the Times of India, by Jyoti Punwani, 13 January 2010

The ragging incident involving 18 students attached to KEM Hospital's prestigious G S Medical College has shocked Mumbai. Mohit Garg, co-founder of Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education (CURE) and the website noragging.com, tells Jyoti Punwani that ragging can be eliminated:

Q: What do you think of the action against the accused students?
Filing the FIR against them was swift and appreciable, and in keeping with the Supreme Court guidelines. But the chief minister's statement that their careers should not be affected does not help. A crime is a crime and should be handled as such. Careers are not more important than the dignity of life. Another issue here is that those who were ragged should not be ostracised. Typically in such cases, freshers are blamed for spoiling careers, which is another deterrent against complaints.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was far severe ragging happening in other professional colleges in Mumbai. As per a CURE study, the number of media-reported cases in Maharashtra is low compared to Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. This does not imply less ragging, since reported cases would be a tiny fraction of the incidents happening on the ground.

Q: Are there any support systems or networks for victims?
Unfortunately, no. I have seen cases of very severe ragging victims trying to contact one another but either people wish to forget and don't connect with other victims or their own fight is so time-consuming that they are unable to give anything beyond sympathy to others. Another perspective against such a network is that instead of victims carrying the scar throughout their lives, the best remedy is to help them get back to normal as quickly as possible.

Q: Some students feel ragging can never end because its victims want to avenge their humiliation on their juniors.
This is a vicious circle - the victim becoming the perpetrator. We can break it by ensuring that two or three batches are not ragged. This would eliminate the revenge feeling. In fact, most colleges that have successfully eliminated ragging have done this.

CURE advocates a three-pronged approach. One, monitor ragging and mete out strict punishments. The victim cannot be expected to complain. Offenders should be punished strictly according to law, since whatever is inflicted in the name of ragging is a criminal offence. Two, create social awareness. In every ragging death, it emerges that the victim informed his parents, who took it lightly. Whenever one talks to friends about ragging, they think that only cowards are scared of it. Society has not accepted ragging as a social evil. It's regarded as a necessary initiation ritual, a joke. Ragging is not fashionable, please! Three, alternate means of interaction for breaking the ice.

We should have a college-ranking system that includes ragging as a criterion. Only this will make reputation-conscious colleges improve their efforts to eliminate ragging.

Is it really funny?

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:56:00 +0530

I came to know that recently released movie 3 Idiots has a scene on ragging, shown in a lighter sense. This is director Raj Kumar Hirani's second film, first being Munnabhai MBBS, where ragging has been used as a theme to make the audience laugh.

Today I tried surfing on net to find the details of this ragging scene and came across several hundred blogs and websites where this scene was immensely appreciated and was considered one of the most humorous scenes in the film.

I find this extremely shocking as hardly 9 months back, when a medical student died because of ragging, the entire nation stood as one and we all condemned this menace. However today it seems we have forgotten the tragedy perhaps too soon that we are trying to find humor in that same tragic issue.

This not only shows the insensitivity towards the issue but more importantly such acts significantly add to the confusion already existing in the society vis-a-vis ragging. Millions of people, who don't know anything about ragging but have watched Munnabhai MBBS, still remember the scene from this film and believe that ragging is all about dance and fun.

This act of glorifying ragging by showing it in lighter way in films, newspapers, etc. does nothing but strengthens the justification, which students give to support ragging.

Here I am not suggesting of censorship usually advocated by social activists. I believe that censorship must come from within, by the call of conscience. Nevertheless, we all know that film is always considered as reflection of society and what film does reflect in this case is our poor understanding and thus lack of sensitivity with regard to the issue of ragging.

I remember, in June this year I was watching We the People on NDTV 24X7, the discussion was on evils of ragging. However, as usual the discussion soon turned into a debate on mild ragging versus no ragging and surprisingly majority of the participants justified mild ragging for ice-breaking between students.

It is needless to explain here that all the tragic cases of ragging started only in their milder forms. We cannot define what is mild ragging. Stripping or dancing in public may be fun for someone but extreme trauma for others. Moreover I fail to understand the logic of holding a week long ragging mela to facilitate mass friendship-something which is extremely amusing and sounds like a forced friendship crash course.

I doubt we would even think of having a debate on mild terrorism or mild caste system. Similarly I doubt any film director would be so insensitive to try to extract humor from sensitive social issues like Sati or Dowry.

We need to ask ourselves that why there is still so much ambiguity about social issue like ragging. Why does the society still see ragging as fun? Have we made enough efforts to sensitize people about the evils of ragging?

I strongly believe that we are yet to establish ragging as a social evil and unless we address this fundamental problem, we will always find it difficult to implement the laws framed to contain ragging.

Ragging at JNU: Close your eyes and say there is no evil

editorial@noragging.com (Varun Aggarwal) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:47:00 +0530

Recently, several newspapers reported how JNU which has been ‘ragging-free’ for forty years registered the first complaints of ragging in August this year. Calling JNU ragging-free for forty years is like closing your eyes and saying there is no evil.

No, I do not have any evidence to say that ragging existed in JNU before this incident occurred. However, at CURE, we have received ragging complaints from many students who study at so-called ragging-free campuses. Why do these college do not know about this?

Firstly, even if they knew they would do their utmost to hide this and protect the image of their college. Secondly, why should they look for something they do not want to find in the first place! If they find it out, then they will have to make efforts to solve it and hide it. Ragging is a severely complicated issue and its readdressal has led to violence and unrest in campuses, like the recent hunger strike at JNU. Why to try to detect something which will cause you undue trouble?

Thirdly, colleges lay the onus of reporting ragging incidents on freshers. We, at CURE, have several times stressed, that the fresher cannot be expected to report ragging incidents. He/she is under tremendous fear and pressure not to report ragging incidents and get himself/herself in a worse situation. Most cases show that when ragging incidents are reported, not only the senior batch ostracizes the fresher, in many cases, the campus also tries to hush the case and further victimize the victim.

Thus my question to JNU is whether they were proactively monitoring to detect any ragging incidents at campus? Were they doing surprise rounds in hostels at odd hours in a bid to detect ragging? I guess not. They were probably expecting that the fresher would come and complaint that he had suffered ragging. This is what I call close your eyes and say there is no evil. I reiterate: the onus of reporting ragging incidents cannot be on the victim.

I have nothing against JNU or their administration. My objection is to the reactive attitude of campuses, which should rather be proactive. Only then would they actually detect and clean ragging. On the contrary, I am impressed with the JNU administration in the way they took strong measures against the perpetrators of ragging, when the first fresher mustered the courage to complain in the last 40 years. I hope this shall set a strong detterent against ragging in future batches.

JNU’s case remains exemplary in depicting the complexity of ragging. As I already mentioned, it depicts that our classification of ragging-free campuses is wrong. Without proactive monitoring in place, there is nothing which confirms that the campus is ragging-free. On the contrary, there are umpteen reasons to believe that a campus claimed to be ragging-free is not so. So stop calling campuses ragging-free till there is a proactive manner to detect ragging implemented in them.

Secondly, what is very interesting is how the drama unfolded after the expulsions were made. The senior students started a hunger strike, Gandhian-means for probably the most anti-Gandhi-ends. This shows how any action on ragging leads to arm-twisting from student-mobs and undue disciplinary problems in campuses. Also, what is not surprising is how junior students denied that they were ragged and one of them joined the hunger strike. This brings to light the other problem with action against ragging: Sympathy for the punished students. I do not see any reason for sympathy for the guilty; they require punishment and reform, not sympathy. And of course we know that the freshers who are claiming the seniors to be innocent, were indeed ragged.

Frankly, I am for punishment against ragging, but against the particular punishment meted out by JNU, i.e., rustication of the students for two years from the campus. I believe that for an offender which may show recovery, the punishment should make sure that he/she has a chance to recover and return to the mainstream. In case this does not happen, we encourage formation of an outcast group of losers on the sidelines of a vibrant society. A six-month or one year suspension would have done the job and helped these guys both taste punishment and eventually return to normal life.

My advise to campuses: Open your eyes, See the evil and Remove the evil!

Is it Ragging or Stockholm Syndrome in our Campuses?

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Wed, 5 Aug 2009 16:24:00 +0530

Is it Ragging or Stockholm Syndrome in our Campuses?

Ragging is debated and discussed for ages now but we always stopped short of understanding the hidden psychological mysteries behind it. It has been more than a decade and a half since we started to recognize this problem and hunt for a solution but we are still far way from our goal. At the outset the problem looks very simple but as one enters into it and tries to understand, it becomes more complicated than unfolding the Bermuda triangle mystery.

In our attempt to look for an early solution we perhaps focused too much on the law and order aspect of ragging and ignored to probe on the psychological front. We didn’t bother to unravel the mystery that how a victim who is tormented badly makes his abuser his best pal in a short span of time and starts to follow the same strategy on his junior. May be exploring answer to these questions and awareness of these answers could have led to a better understanding of this problem and have sorted it by now.

In August 1973, two bank robbers in Stockholm held 4 hostages, 3 women and one man, for a period of 6 days. In those six days the hostages developed emotional bonds with their captors and exhibited shocking attitude. They not only resisted the attempt made by the police to rescue them but one of the woman hostages later got engaged to one of the kidnappers and another arranged fund for the legal defense of the kidnappers. This incident baffled many across the world. Psychologists later tried to study the behavior shown by the Stockholm hostages and termed this phenomenon as 'Stockholm Syndrome'. They say that this is a common behavior seen in hostage situation. Psychologists believe that hazing, child abuse, pimp-prostitute relationship, battered spouses’ relationship, etc work on the same psychology and call them 'Societal Stockholm Syndrome'.

In evolutionary psychology, psychologists explain that capture-bonding, or social reorientation after capture, was an essential survival trait for millions of years. The captives who reoriented would survive, and those who did not form social bonds with captors would be killed. Psychologists believe that anyone can get Stockholm Syndrome if the following conditions are met: (i) Perceived threat to survival (ii) The captive's perception of small kindnesses from the captor (iii) Isolation from perspectives other than those of the captor (iv) Perceived inability to escape. Psychologists believe that it typically takes about three or four days for this psychology to take hold of the victim mentally. A more in depth information about the psychology that works in such situations and the effect it has on one's personality can be read in the book 'Psychology of torture' by Dr. Sam Vaknin

Now, when I look back to my ragging days in Medical College, I can easily understand why my seniors, each time during ragging, used to first beat me recklessly for hours without any provocation then show act of kindness towards me and offer me tea, samosa, etc. and promise me of helping me later with notes. Perhaps they were applying this same psychological technique of torture by playing the good guy and bad guy at the same time, trying to break me psychologically- an art they learnt from their seniors. Same pattern in ragging can be seen across the country. Most of the victims just give in to this strong psychological tactics. Fortunately this phenomenon did not work on me; however, I feel that if little less torture had been applied, I would have easily become a victim of it.

Recently I saw a similar situation in an award winning Polish film ‘Your name is Justyna’. This film almost brought tears to my eyes and on several occasions even forced me to change the channel. The film shows a pimp who uses similar strategy to convince Justyna, the lead character in that film, into prostitution. His strategy was to psychologically break her down by simultaneously using torture and kindness. The director of this Film, Franco De Penn, while doing research on this subject found that using this psychological phenomenon, more than one hundred and fifty thousand girls in Europe were taken into prostitution. He says that this experience is so shocking that it takes away the individual's whole personality. Psychologists who have worked on this phenomenon believe that this is not only harmful to the individual who goes through it but also to others around him/her.

This psychology is so long lasting that we can find people around us who went through ragging decades ago but are still under the influence of this psychology. Though because of the Supreme Court guidelines and tragic cases of ragging reported in the recent times they will hesitate to openly show their support. However on talking to them, they would first segregate ragging into mild and severe and then gradually start justifying its need for the initiation of a long lasting camaraderie among students and its need to prepare the students for the 'real world'. Psychologists agree that this phenomenon helps in establishing emotional bond but they call it 'traumatic bonding' and a manipulative behavior which has harmful effect on victim’s personality. We need to ask ourselves that for the sake of bonding, is it justified to go this far and try destructive methods at the cost of one's liberty, dignity and personality. I am sure none of us would agree.

Students are so blind folded by the virtues of ragging that they are not aware of the destructive psychology behind it. Understanding and awareness of this psychology could help in weakening the mass support that ragging enjoys and can gradually put a psychological taboo on it. I believe that asking the students and faculty to do some Google search on such psychological phenomenon might prove more useful than various methods of awareness that we are currently following. After knowing that this is a psychological disorder, many would just hate to be identified with it, many would be forced to rethink about the virtues of ragging they believe in, many would be forced to rethink the justifications they give to support ragging and this might eventually lead to its peaceful and natural death by the simple method of thinking and application of logic.

Ragging- Why the problem still exists?

editorial@noragging.com (Harsh Agarwal) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:15:00 +0530

In July 2008, CURE analysed ragging incidents of past the 5 years and did a comparative study with the cases reported after the Supreme Court judgment in May, 2007. It was shocking to know that even after the SC judgment, 11 cases of death due to ragging and 5 cases of attempted suicides were reported by the media and there was no significant decrease in ragging. After making so much effort to curb ragging, why is the government still not able to successfully deal with this menace?

Let us understand some of the important fundamental issues associated with ragging which need to be addressed if we want to get rid of this social menace. These are the issues which have been ignored or have not been addressed with the right spirit.

Anonymity of the Complainant: This is the first step to solve the menace and one of the key elements if we want to encourage the fresher to report any incident of ragging. There is tremendous fear in the minds of the freshers and huge possibility of backlash because of which the fresher decides to tolerate ragging and as a result almost 99.99% of the ragging cases go unreported and problem remains suppressed. Provisions like putting a compliant box/ setting up helpline number or expecting the fresher to report the incident to anti ragging cell/committee don’t work because such provisions fail to convince the fresher of complete anonymity and his /her safety.

The best possible way to tackle this problem is by making it mandatory for every college in the country to do a weekly/fortnightly anonymous survey of the entire first year batch to find out if any sort of ragging is taking place in their college. The idea is to encourage the students by approaching the entire batch and maintaining absolute anonymity rather than waiting for a whistle blower to come forward and report the incident. Unless we make this important provision, the college authorities will continue to live in oblivion and feel that ragging is not a problem in their institution.

Awareness: This is another key element in solving the problem. Though ragging has been banned but since the time it has been banned there is an atmosphere of confusion prevailing in the campus. There is confusion as to what is ragging what is not; what will happen to the senior–junior interaction in the absence of ragging. Reason as to why ragging has been banned, what are the ill effects of ragging, what is its origin? Where did it come from? – These questions have not been answered. Colleges are unaware as to what awareness on ragging means. Distributing contact numbers of faculty members or information that ragging has been banned is certainly not awareness on ragging. It is very important to disseminate right information about ragging, about its origin, highlight its ill effects, where all it is prevalent, why is it irrelevant in today’s time, etc. Also, we need to introduce alternative and healthier methods of interaction to replace ragging to break the ice between the seniors and freshers.

Psychological Menace: Ragging is more of a psychological problem than anything else. Ragging is perhaps the only Social and Human Rights problem in the world in which the victim himself/herself becomes the perpetrator of this crime in a short span of one year. This problem can best be solved by going into the roots of this menace and understanding its psychology. Psychological concepts like Stanford Prison Experiment, Miligram Experiment, Stockholm syndrome, which have close similarities with the psychology of ragging need to be studied carefully to understand this problem and look for appropriate solution.

Role of Media: Be it publishing a front page picture of a Delhi University boy giving rose to a girl to portray ragging or writing only about the provision of FIR or quantum of punishment with regard to ragging, media has failed to disseminate the right information and essential knowledge about ragging. Since the Supreme Court judgment in 2007, the role of the media with regard to ragging has been more to spread sensation. Though there is a long list of guidelines made in the Raghavan Committee report but media chose to highlight only a few sensational ones. Today all that the country knows about the Raghavan Committee report is about provision of filing an FIR or about provision of sending director of a college to jail but is completely ignorant about the dozens of other important recommendations/guidelines which can be key to solve the problem of ragging.

Hard Approach: This provision should be used as deterrence and as the last resort when all the other softer efforts fail to curb ragging. Firstly, we need to look from a 17-18 year old fresher’s point of view and understand that a young student who joins the college with a dream to become a doctor or an engineer will be extremely scared to use the provision of FIR and later get involved in a court case. Secondly, gathering evidence to prove any ragging incident has always been very difficult as nobody comes forward to testify. Thirdly, we need to ask ourselves that is it easy to de-recognize an institution or stop its fund if it is several decades old and there are several hundred students studying in it? What will happen to the future of those innocent students who were not involved in ragging? Fourthly, successful implementation of hard approach depends largely whether various stakeholders of ragging are convinced that it is bad.

Presently ragging is seen as an age old ritual by the college community, there are conflicting views about ragging, for some it is a painful torture whereas for others it is a healthy interaction or a personality development exercise. When knowledge about ragging is so low then how will we be able to implement these harsh measures?

Unless and until we act on the above issues seriously, college authorities will continue to label ragging deaths as suicides due to academic pressure; majority of the ragging incidents will continue to go unreported; seniors and teachers will continue to believe that ragging is a healthy interactive and personality development exercise; media will continue to report only sensational stuff about ragging; parents, relatives and society will fail to understand the pain of the ragging victim, and as a result of all this, the harsh provision to curb ragging might soon loose its deterrent effect and we may never be able to solve this problem.

Missing Pappu, Missing EVMs, Missing Impact

editorial@noragging.com (Varun Aggarwal) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:00:00 +0530

The ‘Pappu’ and the EVMs are missing for the ragging campaign

Today, the HRD Ministry launched their ‘Ragging-Rodhi Toll Free Number’. This is a much awaited measure, long advocated by CURE, prescribed by all anti-ragging organizations I know of and more recently by the Raghavan Committee.

But given the little experience I have fighting the menace of ragging, I am far from convinced that this would help.

Why?

Simple. The ‘Pappu’ is missing and so are the EVMs.

When I heard the ‘Pappu vote nahi daalta…’ campaign, it immediately made an appeal to me and to all my friends; all in the age group of 17-25 years. We liked it, it attracted our attention and without having any statistics to claim how much effect it had on actual voting, I am sure the popularity of the campaign was huge. It had reached out and caught the imagination of everyone.

We need the ‘Par pappu ragging karta hai’ campaign for ragging, which is completely missing. It is what will catch the attention of the youth, not the ‘Ragging Rodhi Toll Free Number’ and all the bureaucratic details around it. A sensitization jingle, imagery or a video together with the toll-free number is what is going to work. Till we cannot reach out to people, it is failure to start with.

In our small ways, CURE launched a ragging song and video last year which became immensely popular. It can be seen at www.noragging.com/video. The key point in the video is that it connects with the youth and has a great emotional appeal. I do not think that in the current format, i.e. the medium, language, duration, it can be retrofitted to the Toll-Free campaign. But it is close to some thing we need and with some work, it can be customized and adapted to to become the ‘Pappu’ of ragging campaign. We need the Pappu!!!!

So, this is my first point, no Pappu means no attention, no attention means we lose on the first step itself!

Secondly, do a thought experiment: the whole country goes out to vote, but the counting agents are corrupt! Is there any meaning to such an election? Without the EVMs, I will not trust the elections.

In my best knowledge, the current format of the helpline is that the complaint with the name of the complainant will be sent to the college principle. It is a no-brainer for any ragging-activist that in more than 80% cases, the ragging victim is victimized further by the college authorities for his/her crime of spilling the beans. Don’t we read in four out of five ragging incidents, the claim of the college authorities that the ragging victim was characterless, he had a personal fight with the seniors, was academically dull or that he/she is just lying! In a most disgraceful case from South India, which CURE closely monitored, the college authorities repeatedly failed the ragging victims for filing a police complaint!

My point is simple; my trust in college authorities is zero. Sending the complaint to the college authorities is the worst you can do to the victim. As my co-founder at CURE, Harsh always say, “If we reveal the name of the candidate or the details of the incident to the campus, the victim is going in for the worst. As soon as they identify the complainant, the authorities and the seniors would harass the person, probably, till he/she leaves the college”. This is not an exaggeration. It happens every now and then, in a way similar to women abuse, which happens all the time but is not reported.

So, what to do on getting a complaint? In my current best knowledge, the government has no clue as to what to do after the complaint is received apart from sending it back to the college and may be the university. Without a water-tight process of relief and justice, a toll free number is useless and could be suicidal for the complainant.

Thus, I see that the EVMs are missing. There is no process to deliver on the complaint. If you go out and complain, there is no trustworthy process which will deliver justice in all fairness.

Without pappu and the EVMs, the Ragging Toll Free Number is a faceless and a spineless move.

A badly thought out plan meets one of the two fates: After a year they will realize that it does not work and scrap it off or they will realize that they have pumped enough resources in it and they need to make it work. Then they will call in Mr. Pappu and the EVMs. I hope against hope, the latter happens.

- Varun Aggarwal
20 June 2009