Ragging- Result of a Diseased Mindset

Insight Bureau: Ragging has been debated and discussed for ages now but we always ignore to understand the mysteries associated with this menace. It has been almost two decades since we started to recognize ragging as a serious offensive and hunt for a solution.

Silver screen has also portrayed the ragging in a number of movies in the past. The best example is “Table no-21” starring Paresh Rawal which shows ragging as destruction in the film with a nerve racking story line.

A mindset problem

Ragging is more of a mindset problem than anything else, if we can say. Though it looks simple to solve it by making strict laws but we can never eradicate 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 the sick mindset of a ragger is the only reason, ragging happens.

 

Many of us though condemn ragging now but we have a tendency to cherish our ragging days and laugh at the memories.

 

Ragging in India

Several highly reputed Indian colleges, especially medical ones have a long history of ragging. Not only highly reputed ones, ragging is there in every college, sometimes it is even considered to be a college tradition. It has become increasingly unpopular these days due to several complaints of serious injury to the victims, violence in the name of ragging, torture and stringent laws pertaining to ragging. At the national level, ragging is currently defined as: “Any act of physical or mental abuse (including bullying and exclusion) targeted at another student (fresher or otherwise) on the ground of colour, race, religion, caste, ethnicity, gender (including transgender), sexual orientation, appearance, nationality, regional origins, linguistic identity, place of birth, place of residence or economic background.”

Where is Odisha in the list?

Third from the top from last two years. Yes you heard it right. In a recent report by the anti-ragging helpline of the University Grants Commission (UGC), informed, in the current academic session of 2021-22, Odisha has reported 21 cases till April 3 this year. The number of cases was 39 in 2020-21 taking the total tally to 60 in last two years. Most of them have come from medical and engineering colleges though.

If we look into some of the recent ragging cases of Odisha, Balangir Medical College’s medico Nishant Kumar’s story will strike to the mind first. How a highly ambitious Haryanvi guy came to Odisha to pursue his career in Medicine and ended up touching death, reason? Ragging. The matter came to light after his family complained about his seniors who were allegedly ragging the poor boy and made him fall to death from the hostel roof. Now in the latest development, a Whatsapp chat between Nishant and his friend went viral in which Nishant was talking about how his seniors were ragging him.

Unfortunate, but this is not just Nishant. The list is quite long where a thousands of such names are written, their lives have ended like Nishant only.

Not just in Bolangir, it is all over the state, slowly eating the youngsters. Its not like, there are no laws for ragging. Anti ragging squads, anti ragging campaigns and so on are trying real hard to eradicate the misery. But before we talk about eradication, we should find out the reason.

 

Possible reason

What could be the main reason behind ragging is our failure to teach the youngsters a feeling of respect for people from different backgrounds. As a result when youngsters go to college, become senior, 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 happens mainly for caste, region, language, religion, economic background and all other different diversities that we have in society.

 

One of the top neuropsychiatrist Dr. Suvendu Narayan Mishra says, “ragging is completely a mindset problem. The ragger often does ragging out of frustration. Sometimes ragging is a factor of relaxation to them. Sometimes they torture innocent juniors just to have fun. Because they were ragged by their seniors in the past days, they rag their juniors to enforce bossism”.

 

Impact on the victim’s family

The most affected is the victim’s family. A family knows how it feels to lose their son or daughter in the name of ragging. They have so much in their mind. They accuse themselves, they grieve for the rest of their lives, they feel like they are the one responsible for the misfortune. After a victim dies, its family is the one suffer more than the victim itself. Its the victim that leaves, but the pain stays with them forever.

 

A Myth

Many believe that ragging helps in breaking the glass between the seniors and new comers; it helps in making friendship and creates bonding, many believe that ragging helps in personality development of the freshers; helps them getting rid of their shyness; prepares them to see the real world. And it is not only students 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.

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

 

Girija Mishra, a local resident of Bhubaneswar says, “ragging was different before. Ragging to us was only to interact with seniors, do some cool and easy tasks to have fun. It was not violent or abusive then. These days, students are dying. This is not ragging anymore, this is crime. And we can never eradicate ragging. We can create awareness but it is someone’s own mindset that turns the person to a ragger. Its the victim only who can stand for itself”. 

 

Even today majority of people are in favour of mild ragging.They think, mild ragging is okay. But we need to think, can there really be anything like mild ragging? What may be mild for us 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.

Ragging can never be acceptable. Neither it should be promoted or supported. Parents should teach their kids about the horrible saga of ragging and its consequences from their early age. We cant kill a ragger, but we definitely can stop a person from becoming one.