HYDERABAD: Even as a wave of sympathy is building up for first-year Post Graduate medical student Preethi, who allegedly attempted suicide due to harassment by her senior in MGM Hospital in Warangal, doctors and other students in the State say ragging of juniors takes place all the time in all medical colleges though in varying degrees.
The juniors put up with the discomfort and would not report the harassment for fear of being marked and targeted in the future. “Kakatiya Medical College is notorious for ragging even at the undergraduate level. A lot of my friends were worried when they got admission in the college,” said a third-year MBBS student from Osmania Medical College (OMC).
She said that it was indeed a prestigious college but ragging is always very serious there. “If what happened with Dr Preethi tells us about the condition of PG students, we can imagine what MBBS students are going through,” she said.
“Ragging culture definitely prevails, especially in government medical colleges,” the student further said. She added that there is an anti-ragging committee that prohibits the practice in OMC. However, once or twice this issue has even been taken to the principal, and action was taken against the senior students,” she added.
Seniors dump work on juniors
“There was an incident of seniors making us write their assignments. They excluded from discussions in the first year. Apart from that, we never experienced any serious form of harassment,” said another student from OGH.In post-graduation, seniors dump their work on juniors which causes stress, she added. Sometimes, ragging begins with a light joke and later developed into serious harassment that traumatised some students.
“During my graduation in a government college, 30 years ago, seniors used to make fun of us. Calling students outside the room or in the canteen and asking funny questions was common in those days,” said Dr Shrikant Manda, a pediatrician.He said that seniors also helped him to cope with the heavy load of studies by providing study material and guidance. “But these days, there are instances where ragging has driven students to end their lives.”
His daughter, Moukthika, who is in her final year MBBS in Mahavir Medical College, said that it may be common in government colleges, but in private institutions, there is a strict vigil by the anti-ragging. “We were saved because we did not have an immediate batch of seniors,” she added.
Most of the doctors said that all first-year students experience a milder form of ragging immediately after the start of the academic year. However, once the students get along with seniors.Almost all the students who do ragging were themselves victims of ragging. Those who have faced ragging by their seniors take revenge for the injustice that happened to them, by ragging their juniors.
‘Menace took serious turn over the years’
Stating that the ragging has taken a serious turn over the years,Dr Shrikant Manda, a pediatrician, said: “During my graduation in a government college, 30 years ago, seniors used to make fun of us. Calling students outside the room or in the canteen and asking funny questions was common in those days.” He said that seniors also helped him to cope with the heavy load of studies by providing study material and guidance. “But these days, there are instances where ragging has driven students to end their lives,” he added.