[Reader-list] request for Sarai and Sarai list members

[shivam]

Dear friends,

As you know, PACE has been running an anti-ragging
campaign. It is very important for us to have a
professional website, for which we humbly request all
of you for help. If you are a web designer or are
willing to fund one for us, we want to put up a
website about ragging. At the momemnt we have no
funding whatsoever, and shall hence be using free
space at Geocities. 

We request Sarai-CSDS and all members of this mailing
list to take a moment to consider this request. The
lack of a website is a great hindrance in our work at
the moment. The designer can build a basic structure
and upload some of the pages, all content shall be
provided by us, and thus build a basic structure so
that we can upload and add pages on our own
thereafter.



What we have done so far:

See our anti-ragging mailing list at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging

A heart-wrenching first-hand account of a ragging
victim (a sample of the kind of case studies the
dossier will have):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/13

'Horrible Ragging At Vikhe Patil College Of
Engineering , Ahmednagar, Maharashtra':
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/26

The myth of mild ragging:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/25

PACE Dossier on Ragging in India, a book in the
making:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/44

Survey on ragging in India:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/31

Volunteer appeal:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/message/45


This is the sort of stuff that has to be put online,
and a lot more waiting in our hard disk. A few ours of
your help can save some lives.


====================================
Society for People's Action, Change and Enforcement
(PACE)
Post Box No. 20, Ram Sagar Mishra Nagar, Lucknow - 16,
India
Phone: 0 94152 55042
Email: pace4change at yahoo.com
====================================


PACE (Society for People's Action, Change and
Enforcement) is a registered, not-for-profit voluntary
organisation.





  Indian action group all set to uproot ragging 
  
  By Sharmila Banerjee
  Hindustan Times / New Delhi, June 11 
 
http://www.hindustantimes.com/2004/Jun/11/181_819473,000600010001.htm
 

With college admissions in progress across the
country, flickers of fear have already struck the
minds of freshers.

Despite a Supreme Court ruling in 2001, in exercise of
the jurisdiction conferred by Article 32 and 142,
ragging is a reality of Indian campus life.

But a group of young minds -- onetime victims of the
menace from across the country -- is determined to put
a stop to the menace.

All this when the SC ruling allows the UGC to cut off
funds to an institution, which fails to curb ragging
on campus.

Using the platform of the People's Action for Change
and Enforcement, three students from institutions of
repute across the country (names withheld on request),
supported by PACE secretary, Sachin Agarwal are now at
helm to unite ragging-victims from across the country
and to generate a nationwide stir to free campus life
of cruelty.

"Students all over India continue to leave their
colleges, destroy their careers, turn to drug abuse,
suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders because of
ragging. There are about 415 universities in India and
thousands of hostels, many of which look like mini Abu
Ghraibs" says Agarwal.

And thus the strategy to brush it out too is well
laid.

For a start, the group has floated an online platform
to help victims voice their experiences. While an
online discussion on the issue is on at
ttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/anti-ragging/ since last
week, a 'Dossier on Ragging in India' is expected to
be released in July when the group would float a
Website with exhaustive information on ragging, its
sociological implications, the role of caste, class
and regionalism, issues of sexuality, memory, its
presence beyond India and other related issues.

This aside, ragging victims are invited to post their
experiences at pace4change at yahoo.com or
anti-ragging at yahoogroups.com where students may
discreetly write detailed articles on the nature of
the torment if they faced it and what drove them to
rag if they initiated it.

Later, the group is hopeful that they would be able to
establish a "permanent monitoring and advocacy
institution to oversee the implementation of the
ragging laws, aid ragging victims with legal and
psychiatric help".

So far so good -- yet, the question that lurks is what
at all turns a young student to seek pleasure out of
ragging juniors in the first place.

"It's an issue of power equation" says Psychologist
Divya S Prasad of VIMHANS.

"When as child someone is exposed to poor-role models
at authority levels, he is not able to handle the
power of authority himself. So in the independence of
campus life, when he tastes a seat of authority by
going to the second year, he mishandles power. It
reflects the poor mental health of the student".

Freshers, she adds do go to college with a "kind of"
expectation of 'humorous encounters with seniors',
trouble begins when seniors cross limits and daunt the
self esteem of the student by affecting his security
or inter-personal relationships.

"It is mostly then that these victims in turn have a
feeling of giving it back to the next years'
new-comers to enhance their own mental status" says
Prasad.

Thus starts the vicious cycle.

"In most campuses, it is the students who come from
beyond cities who become easy victims due to a certain
urban-rural divide. It is a pity because the first
fifteen days on college can be the most pleasurable
memory in a students' mind for a lifetime if the
interaction between seniors and the newcomers is on a
healthy note!" says sociologist Sunita Reddy.

 




		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail