Tamil Nadu-Persistent initiation rite

Despite a stringent law against ragging in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) and a slew of directives issued by the Supreme Court to state governments and educational institutions countrywide to curb the practice of ragging, this pernicious campus initiation ritual has not been eradicated. Persistent fear, threat of violence and abuse continue to stalk school-leavers entering Tamil Nadu’s 69 universities and over 2,000 undergrad colleges. On August 20, second year students of the School of Excellence in Law (SOEL), Chennai — a premier government law institute affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University (TNDALU) — were allegedly ragged and assaulted by third year students. Parents of one of the students K.K. Prasanth whose shoulder was dislocated in the incident, filed a police complaint against six students for assault and bodily harm. Moreover, a separate complaint was filed by a second year student against a senior who had forced him to drink urine from a beer bottle. The ragging incidents also brought to light the torment second year students were subjected to from the time they joined the college in 2017. Following the assault not only on freshers but also second year students, a five-member inquiry committee headed by Tamma Suryanaryana Sastry, vice chancellor of TNDALU, was constituted on August 24. The committee recommended suspension of the two senior students who had assaulted Prasanth and establishment of a five-member permanent disciplinary committee within SOEL to adjudicate student and teacher complaints. Narayana Perumal, director of SOEL who claimed the incident was a scuffle between student gangs, and not ragging, resigned his office on September 3, following allegations of bias in his preliminary report. Moreover, responding strongly to the incident at SOEL, an anti-ragging committee meeting convened by Tamil Nadu governor and chancellor of TNDALU, Banwarilal Purohit, which also included state higher education minister, K. Anbazhagan and other top-level government officials, discussed sterner measures to punish students guilty of ragging. The pros and cons of penalising offenders by declaring their involvement in ragging incidents in their degree and transfer certificates was also discussed. Other recommendations of the Sastry Committee were that all higher education institutions should establish anti-ragging committees and send compliance reports to a state-level monitoring cell; inclusion of the regional joint director of higher education in district monitoring committees; ensuring that every district cell headed by the collector and the superintendent of police holds review meetings at the start of every academic year, and inclusion of stakeholders from civil society in district and state-level anti-ragging committees. However, students and educationists remain unimpressed by this “knee-jerk reaction” of the state government to the latest ragging incident because several of these recommendations to root out this cruel campus initiation rite already exist on the statute books. For instance, the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Ragging Act, 1997, prescribes strict punishment for violators of the provisions of the Act. Yet, according to Union ministry of human resource development (HRD) data, the number of ragging incidents in the state has risen from 25 in 2015…