Perhaps the biggest opportunity missed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance coalition government, which has reigned, even if not ruled, in New Delhi for the past five years, was to implement systemic reforms in education. Under septuagenarian Union HRD minister Arjun Singh, who was preoccupied with politicising higher education rather than reforming it in the interest of the worlds largest youth population, Indian education marked time, sliding imperceptibly downwards.Take for instance the inability of the HRD ministry to stamp out the ragging menace in the countrys 431 universities and 21,000 colleges. The ‘lynching to death on March 8 of Aman Kachru (19), a medical undergraduate student of the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, glaringly indicated the stark reality that ragging is alive on the countrys campuses despite repeated admonitions of the Supreme Court. In the absence of stern deterrents, the ragging tradition will persist and college authorities will continue to label ragging deaths as suicides due to academic pressure. Moreover right now thousands of ragging incidents are unreported, because teachers and senior students continue to believe that ragging is a healthy interactive personality development exercise. The media only reports sensational cases and parents and relatives fail to understand the pain of victims, says Harsh Agarwal, a former ragging victim who runs the Delhi-based CURE (Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education). Predictably the tragic ragging death of young Aman Kachru in Himachal, which drew poignant electronic media coverage, has evoked a traditional knee-jerk response from the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC), which supervises higher education in India. The commission has given an ultimatum to educational institutions to either take preventive steps to combat ragging or face funding cuts, said Harminder Kaur Chauhan, joint director of UGC, to media persons in Chandigarh, adding that a high-powered committee has been formed to curb ragging from the next academic session, and colleges and universities have been told to detail punishments for ragging in their prospectuses. Likewise in Delhi UGC chairman Dr. S.K. Thorat spoke of convening a conclave of all 17 regulators and monitoring councils — from AICTE to MCI — to formulate tough new anti-ragging regulations. A conclave draft reportedly contains provisions for cancellation and rustication of students indulging in ragging for two to four semesters, and withdrawal of UGC recognition to institutions. But educationists in the national capital feel that unless all the 50 recommendations of the R.K. Raghavan Committee, appointed by the Supreme Court to suggest ways and means to stampout the ragging menace from institutions, are implemented, this scourge cant be contained. The Raghavan Committee was appointed in December 2006 by the HRD ministry following a Supreme Court directive, and submitted its report with 50 recommendations to the apex court in May 2007, which accepted them on February 11, 2008. I am confident that if all the Raghavan Committee recommendations are followed and implemented, the ragging menace can be curbed, says Dr. Rajendra Prasad, principal of Ramjas College, who served as a…
