Hyderabad, July 18: Former CBI Director P K Raghavan today said the law of the land should be applied mercilessly to combat ragging in educational institutions.
Delivering his key note address at the Hindu Round Table on ‘Beyond Raghavan Committee Report, How to Stop Ragging’ organised by the Hyderabad Branch of English Daily ‘The Hindu’ here today, he said ragging had become far too serious to be swept under the carpet or handled with kid gloves.
He said ragging was a barbaric and uncivilized act and the sole purpose was to inflict on the victim unmitigated pain, both mental and physical. The law of the land should be applied mercilessly to deal with it. Any lenience or misplaced sympathy would only lead to its aggravation, he added.
He said the committee appointed by the Supreme Court, headed by him, had made several recommendations last year. The court had endorsed all the recommendations and directed the Union Human Resources Development Ministry and the State governments to implement them to curb this menace.
Mr Raghavan said many state governments had done commendable follow-up of the Apex Court’s directive and expressed the hope that other governments too would follow suit.
He said the current form of ‘ragging’ reflected the general permissiveness in society and in family. Neither leaders nor parents consider it worthwhile to raise their voice against the evil. He said ragging was also relflective of the growing propensity for violence in public life and a lack of fear for the lawfully established authority.
He opined that venality associated with those setting up higher institutions of learning, particularly professional colleges was another contributing factor. These indiviuals by themselves do not promote raggging but they were guilty of apathy or looking the other way.
They were conscious that frequent occurence of such incidents in the campuses brought them a bad reputation, affecting their ‘business’. “I use the word business deliberately because it is an open secret that many medical and engineering colleges have become a flourishing industry for personal gain” , he added.
He called upon the political leaders, administrators, law enforcement officials, educationists, students and parents to strive hard to make the institutions of higher learning friendly, peaceful and orderly centres of learning, which would attract the best of talent in the country and contribute to effective national building.
—–Agencies