Ragging takes on a cruder hue - DH News Service, BANGALORE

Ragging takes on a cruder hue
DH News Service, BANGALORE

From what was simply “time pass” and “getting to know juniors”, ragging across colleges in Karnataka is slowly becoming a more crude and dangerous form of sexual and physical harassment. The absence of effective mechanism to check ragging has only helped spread the menace to hitherto unviolated non-professional colleges.
A survey on ragging in a cross-section of colleges in Karnataka, commissioned by Deccan Herald and conducted by Research International, has revealed that sexual and physical harassment in the name of ragging is rampant in colleges and more so in non-professional colleges.
Also, shattering the common notion that ragging is confined only to professional colleges, the survey has revealed that ragging in non-professional colleges is as prevalent as in medical and engineering colleges throughout the state.
The survey was conducted with a base of 300 students and to get a fair representation of the state, five centres were selected - Bangalore, Gulbarga, Hubli, Mangalore and Mysore. Juniors (freshers) as well as seniors from different educational streams of engineering, medical, BSc, BA and BCom were interviewed for their feedback on ragging.
As many as 17 per cent of the freshers interviewed admitted that they were either sexually or physically harassed by their seniors on the college campus. The coursewise break up reveals that a cruder form of ragging is more prevalent in non-professional colleges (26 per cent), followed by medical colleges (16 per cent).
In case of males, the incidence of physical and sexual harassment is much more (28 per cent) than in case of females (7 per cent).
It is of no surprise then that freshers are not all that forgiving after being traumatised by abusive situations. Asked what happens post-ragging, 20 per cent students in non-professional colleges said they were physically and mentally affected, while 30 pc felt ragging resulted in strained relations with seniors.
Basically, absence of any measures to check the menace has resulted in ragging raising its ugly head in hitherto uncharted areas. Lack of any deterrent measures has also resulted in ragging continuing for more than three months in non-professional colleges as compared to an average of two weeks in engineering and one month in medical colleges, the survey revealed.
Meanwhile, in engineering colleges, considered the hotbed of ragging, students said they only underwent the milder form of ragging like seniors having fun at their expense such as making them sing a song (80 pc). Their post-ragging response too is different from students studying in non-professional courses, with as many as 86 pc of engineering and medical students saying seniors became friendly and helpful post-ragging. This indicates that juniors do accept a milder form of ragging to get to know the seniors, but when ragging takes an ugly dimension as in the case of students in non-professional colleges, they tend to develop fear psychosis. However, not all juniors are happy with anti-ragging mechanism in place in their colleges, a mandatory requirement as per a recent Supreme Court order. Only 25 pc of the students felt that the anti-ragging committees were actually functional.
Is there a way to root out the menace ? The overwhelming response from juniors (58 pc) was that colleges need to encourage more interaction with freshers. As many as 38 per cent felt that separate hostel facilities for freshers and seniors would go a long way in checking ragging. When the same students were asked whether they would rag their juniors next year, 70 pc of engineering and medical students replied in the negative. However, their under-graduate counterparts in BSc, BCom and BA courses were only too eager to subject their juniors to the same treatment that they had received, sending a clear enough warning to the government and universities to weed out this dangerous reality.

Link to Report : http://www.stopragging.org/2005/11/29/ragging-takes-on-a-cruder-hue/