A recent conversation with a former Vice Chancellor invited back to institutionalize gender equity with our University system led to this article. The conversation extended to the menace of ragging including sexual overtones directed at victims.
Ragging becomes news randomly though an ever present phenomenon in seats of higher learning. Bullying in school is the seed that germinates into ragging in colleges. Some schools have rightly outlawed bullying with severe consequences for offenders.
During the financial year 2015-16, Ministry of HRD allocated a sum of Rs. 5 crore for Media Campaign to UGC for undertaking a publicity campaign against ragging in Higher Educational Institutions in the country on various activities, including preparing and broadcasting of TVCs on Anti-Ragging by Doordarshan, making of films by NFDC, coverage through FM Radio and printing and mailing of posters by DAVP and broadcasting on All India Radio by Prasar Bharati.
The UGC had also announced a competition for students, teachers and general public for wide publicity and promotion of anti-ragging measures which include poster designing, logo/icon/slogan designing and essay competition. Three hundred and ninety cases of ragging, including death or maiming of students, were reported in different colleges of the country during the last year, including the States of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh which have reported higher number of cases.
Report of the Supreme Court
The Raghvan Committee constituted by the Indian Supreme Court has, mentioned the following types of ragging :-psychological, social, political, economic, cultural, and academic dimensions; acts that prevents, disrupts or disturbs the regular academic activity of a student; acts of financial extortion or forceful expenditure burden put on a junior student; physical abuse; act or abuse by spoken words, emails, snail-mails; incidents of ragging are low in institutions which promote democratic participation of students in representation and provide an identity to students to participate in governance and decision making within the Institute bodies.
Order of the Supreme Court
Primary responsibility for curbing ragging rests with academic institutions themselves since this impacts the standards of higher education, incentives should be available to institutions for curbing the menace and there should be disincentives for failure to do so, enrolment in academic pursuits should not immunize any adult citizen from penal provisions of the laws of the land.
Ragging needs to be perceived as failure to inculcate human values from the schooling stage, behavioural patterns among students, particularly potential ‘raggers’, need to be identified, measures must deter its recurrence, media and the civil society should be involved in this exercise.
Recommendations to implement without delay
Punishment to be exemplary, justifiably harsh to act as a deterrent against recurrence. Any failure on the part of the institutional authority or negligence or deliberate delay in lodging the FIR with the local police shall be construed to be an act of culpable negligence on the part of the institutional authority. If any victim or his parent/guardian of ragging intends to file FIR directly with the police, that will not absolve the institutional authority from the requirement of filing the FIR.
Courts should make an effort to ensure that cases involving ragging are taken up on a priority basis to send the correct message that ragging is not only to be discouraged but also to be dealt with sternness.
In the prospectus to be issued for admission by educational institutions, it shall be clearly stipulated that in case the applicant for admission is found to have indulged in ragging in the past or if it is noticed later that he has indulged in ragging, admission may be refused or he shall be expelled from the educational institution. The committee constituted pursuant to the order of this court shall continue to monitor the functioning of the anti-ragging committees and the squads to be formed. They shall also monitor the implementation of the recommendations to which reference has been made above.
Status in Sri Lanka
Since 1975 so far nine deaths of students have been reported due to the ragging cases in universities. The Act No. 20 of 1998 (Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act) has given the legal powers for the relevant authorities to take actions against cases of ragging. It classifies ragging as, “Any act which causes or is likely to cause physical or psychological injury or mental pain or fear to a student or a member of the staff of an educational institution.”
The Act specifies the relevant Higher Educational Institutions coming under the Act and that includes all the Higher Educational Institutions established under the Universities Act, No. 16 of 1978. In addition to this, in 2010, the University Grants Commission issued Circular No. 919 in 2010 as “Guidelines to be introduced to curb the menace of ragging in universities or higher educational institutes”.
Our Universities must be sued by victims in instances of failure to prevent resultant torture and breaches of acts prohibiting criminal acts. Waiting for complaints to act should not be an alibi. It is incumbent on the UGC and its subsidiary bodies to act in terms of the law to protect the students in their custody. In every institution of higher learning this menace survives in different avatars. The current chairman of the UGC must be applauded for bringing an active focus and strengthening the institutional resolve of the administrators.
The context must also be understood where greater number of girls enter than boys. If sexual predators were to be active the issue is compounded further though it seems Universities are still male chauvinistic bastions with very few women in Councils of administration or heads of units. We have much to learn from the Order and actions of the Indian UGC which I believe is ongoing.
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