Ragging : Illogical & Illegal...

Just the other day I was involved in an animated discussion about the practice of ragging in educational institutes in India. Though I had written on this topic a long time back, the contents of the discussion forced me to write about it again.

What amazes me is the support to the menace called ragging by those who themselves underwent the trauma while in college. During the above mentioned discussion, there were several points put forward in the favor of ragging. I will thus dissect each of them one by one.

Ragging is a means to ‘break the ice’ between the new-comers and their seniors.

Now, why does meeting someone new and getting friendly with them requires one to perform certain acts (even like singing and dancing) ? When you meet a stranger at a party, you don’t ask him or her to sing or dance for you to get friendly. What it simply requires is a shake of hands and some decent and nice talking to know one another.

And even if one accepts this theory of ‘introduction’ to be true, why is it only the new-comer who has to perform for the senior ? Why not the other way round ? The basic logic is that, to be friendly, all that is needed is a decent conversation of introduction. And it is required both ways, not just by any juniors.

Ragging teaches the juniors to respect their seniors.

Respect ?!?! A human being should respect every other human being and even animals and plants. And special respect towards someone comes through admiration, not through fear.

A person is respected not because of merely his or her knowledge, intelligence or even experience but because of his or her wiseness. And how can a so-called ‘senior’ by virtue of entering an institute before a junior be entitled to respect ? Isn’t it absolutely absurd to expect respect from someone just because you got admitted to an institute before them ?

Ragging teaches the new-comers to be disciplined and get accustomed to the rules of the institute.

Another absurdity ! How can something disgraceful and illegal be a tool to inculcate discipline ? Moreover, if a person could not be disciplined through twelve years of schooling, how can he or she be disciplined by ragging ?

Also, if that were true, all those ‘seniors’ who harass their ‘juniors’ should have themselves been disciplined after they themselves were ragged as new-comers.

Ragging creates a bond between the ‘seniors’ and ‘juniors’ after which, the ‘seniors’ help the ‘juniors’ with their studies and their life in the institute.

I fail to understand how someone can bond with a person who abuses and harasses him. As for the several benefits the ‘juniors’ keep in mind while tolerating the harassment, isn’t it something ridiculous to think that a person would harass someone in order to help them later ? A helpful person would help others irrespective of their being ‘junior’ or ‘senior’ to them. Doesn’t this signify that the ‘seniors’ need to be pleased in their pervert acts in order to expect help from them ?

And how can any benefit be greater than one’s self respect. Are people so vary of doing their own work or studies that they depend on some pre-cooked benefits from their ‘seniors’ ? My batch at college didn’t have any ‘seniors’ (as we were the first batch) but still we got through with our studies and life at college without any problems.

Ragging helps to build confidence in new-comers to face a tough professional life in the future.

How abuse, degradation, humiliation, harassment and torture can build someone’s confidence is something that is beyond my imagination. This is one of the lousiest excuses put forth in favor of ragging. In fact, the menace of ragging is an evidence of the perverseness and sick mindset prevalent in our society.

As far as logic and psychology goes, ragging cannot be anything as per the above arguments. My take on it can be summarized as follows.

1. Ragging presents itself as an opportunity to those individuals who never find anything about them to be appreciated by others (and hence, live in severe inferiority complex) to portray a false sense of superiority and an ego boost.
2. Why should a whole batch of new-comers be collectively afraid of a bunch of so-called ‘seniors’ ? Yes, it is usually a handful of people from every batch who indulge in ragging.
3. If one is confident of his or her own abilities, they don’t need to depend on any sort of help from any ‘senior’ that too in exchange of their self respect.
4. No ‘senior’ has any moral or legal right to exert their superiority on a ‘junior’ in order to treat them as their personal slaves.
5. Why can’t people be helpful and friendly irrespective of the other person being a ‘junior’ or a ‘senior’ ?
6. Ragging is, in fact, an outlet of the hidden perverseness in certain people which they take out on diffident and scared new-comers.
7. Instead of any benefits, ragging corrupts fresh minds by forcing them to indulge in activities which are not fit for any civilized society.

I hope this menace is weeded out from the society as soon as possible.

You can read my earlier post on the menace of ragging here.

Image courtesy : Google Images

Health Wars...

So what do you do when you find out that someone you know has fallen sick ?

Well, this question becomes all the more important when you are in India. The very thought of going to a doctor may elicit a wince on anyone’s face. But you get all the more baffled when the patient decides to take the treatment into his own hands. In a country like India, there is no dearth of alternative treatments and providers of such medicines.

In India, there has been a constant war between modern medicine and traditional medicine like ‘Ayurveda’. The emergence of ‘Homeopathy’ has only added to the pre-existing confusion in the choice of treatment for a person. While it is obvious that each form of medicine has its benefits and losses, the near fanaticism some people have for or against a form of medicine is mind-boggling.

And once you throw in loonies like Ramdev into the picture, any sane person can be expected to tear out his hair in exasperation.

While ‘Ayurveda’ is well documented and officially taught as a medical discipline, it becomes a totally different recipe when people like Ramdev present it as a hodge-podge mixed with ‘Yoga’, religion and what not.

It has been known since long that ‘Yoga’ (when practiced correctly) helps in maintaining physical and mental fitness. Something that correlates with the primordial prevention of diseases (specially non-communicable diseases) as per the practice of modern medicine. Also, it is logical to expect the beneficial effects of some ‘Ayurvedic’ medicines (which are mostly prepared from herbs) as even many modern medicines are herbal products, like Quinine and Atropine.

But to expect ‘Yoga’ and ‘Ayurveda’ (and even ‘Homeopathy’) to actually ‘cure’ diseases like cancer, diabetes, thyroid disorders and AIDS is simply absurd. And that is what Ramdev has claimed to do quite often.

Cancers occur due to complex interaction of environmental and genetic factors. How can a certain body posture and breathing pattern (as in ‘Yoga’) affect the genetic changes that have already occurred in a person’s DNA ? Even modern medicine finds it tough to ‘cure’ most cancers except those solid tumors which are surgically resectable. Same goes for a disease like ‘Type-I diabetes’ which is due to an autoimmune destruction of Insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. Modern medicine does not claim to ‘cure’ diabetes but aims to control the symptoms and prevent its complications.

The limits of absurdity are crossed when Ramdev claims to ‘cure’ AIDS too. Being a communicable disease which is caused by a virus entering into a person’s body, how does he expect his concoctions to strengthen the CD4 lymphocytes of the body to fight an attacking virus particle ? Can any form of ‘Yoga’ practiced by Ramdev ‘cure’ him of even ‘Malaria’ or ‘Dengue’ after an infective mosquito’s bite ?

Modern medicine has its limitations as drugs have adverse effects on some individuals who are genetically predisposed towards those effects. But medicinal drugs have scientifically proven mechanisms of action against the diseases and disorders they are used for. Whereas, people like Ramdev have no proof or logic to their claims except hearsay by their blind followers. And to further their agenda, they associate medicine with religion, language and nationality. Ramdev has often termed modern medicine as an invention of the British and had even demanded for higher medical education to be imparted in regional languages. I wrote about it then.

Sometime back, another of these frauds Asaram was seen to be advising pregnant women to drink cow’s urine if they wanted to undergo painless childbirth. Amazingly, these con-men have followers numbering hundreds of thousands. So it should be no surprise to find their methods of treatment to be so prevalent in the country.  

There are drawbacks in modern medicine most of which are more about faulty prescriptions and practices by the practitioners. But no form of alternative medicine can replace it in terms of emergencies. I won’t even mention surgical emergencies. But even in medical emergencies like cardiac failure, asthma, meningitis, shock and many more, one wouldn’t think of rushing to an ‘Ayurvedic’ or ‘Homeopathy’ practitioner. What one needs at such a time is emergency medical care.

No wonder Ramdev himself was rushed to the ICU of a hospital dealing in modern medicine when he collapsed after one of his fasts. Years of ‘Yoga’ practice could not help him endure the physical effects of a fast let alone help him recover.            

Alternative forms of medicine have their benefits specially as preventive measures. Even placebo effects may appear to be beneficial as in case of ‘Homeopathy’. But for non-surgical absolute cures, we will have to wait till the time ‘Nanomedicine’ makes its appearance in the medical world.

Image courtesy : Google Images

The Eternal Peace...

Being in the field of Medicine for quite some time now, I have been witness to countless examples of people in distress. Be it a patient in a hospital or someone known, I have been able to relate their pain to the obvious or most probable cause according to medical knowledge.

A few weeks back, my uncle (Dad’s younger brother) called me up to consult me about the ill health of his sister-in-law. Being a lady in her seventh decade of life, she was admitted to a hospital due to severe weakness after an episode of viral infection. As her blood investigations revealed, she was severely anemic and thus had to be transfused with blood. They being rather unaware of medical details and being in another town, my uncle regularly used to update and consult me about her health and the treatment she was receiving.

One day, as the lady complained of abdominal pain while still at the hospital, the doctor in charge ordered for an ultrasound. And to everyone’s shock, the ultrasound suggested it to be a case of liver cancer which was confirmed by a subsequent CT scan. On consultation, even the oncologist confirmed the cancer to be in the fourth stage and declared his helplessness to consider any sort of curative treatment any further. Hence, she was taken back home by the family after giving up all hope of her getting any further treatment at the hospital.

Though her condition continued to deteriorate by each passing day, the family members tried out all sorts of medication they could possibly get their hands on. Meanwhile, my uncle kept me updated of any and every minor complication the lady used to develop.

Just the other day, when my uncle called me up late in the afternoon, he told me how she had developed severe swelling all over the body, specially around her face and that she was in severe distress being rather dis-oriented mentally. He said the doctor had come to check on her and ordered some investigations. I told him to inform me about the results of the investigations as soon as they arrived.

In the evening, when my uncle called up again and started to read out the investigation reports, I was already anticipating severe derangement in them. But I was surprised to hear that each and every aspect of her blood and urine investigations were not only within normal limits, but were almost the ideal values that a healthy human is expected to have.

For example, her SGPT (a liver enzyme) which has a normal range of 5-38 units per litre was found to be 20. While without doubt, a case of liver cancer is sure to have this value in several hundreds. Likewise, her serum creatinine was stated to be 0.62 (normal range 0.5-1.0) which was highly unlikely seeing the bad state of her kidneys. Similarly, all the other blood values and electrolytes were stated to be the ideal values.

On a reflex, I told my uncle that the lab had simply not done the tests. I asked him to get it done again from some other lab immediately. By midnight, I got a call from him once again informing me that they had got the investigations done again from another reputed lab but the results were still the same. Though they had also sent for the investigations from a nationally reputed lab whose results were expected by the morning.

It was beyond my understanding as to how all investigations of such a critically ill patient could be not just within the acceptable limits, but also be almost the ideal values. Though it was an extremely low probability, but could two labs commit gross errors in their reports at the same time ?

I was woken by my uncle’s call early next morning. And he gave me the most unfortunate news that the old lady had passed away in her sleep. Before he ended the call, he informed me that the third report had just been received and it had nothing different than the first two.

Though this was completely against medical logic, but if one was to believe the reports, everything inside the lady’s body (at least in her blood) was as perfect as it could be.

This incident has made me wonder whether everything does become perfect at the end. As if all the cells in a person’s body are at complete peace with themselves and with one another just before the end. As if the body is in the final preparation of the eternal peace of the soul.

I don’t really know. It still defies any medical logic. But as I ponder over this I can’t help but remember the title thought on the blog of a blog-friend Preethika….

“Everything is OK at the end. If it’s not OK, then it’s not the end…”

Do you agree ?

(Image courtesy : Google Images)