30 percent of Ragging incidents in India reported in Medical Colleges: UGC data

New Delhi: Referring to the issue of ragging in medical colleges across the country, a representative of the University Grants Commission (UGC) recently informed that 30 percent of the ragging incidents in India are reported from medical colleges.

"30% of the entire ragging in the country is happening in the medical institutes," Alka Tomar, a representative of the UGC from the Centre of Youth, informed while participating in the NMC National Task Force's meeting on mental health and well-being of the medical students held yesterday.

She added, "...as monitoring agency we look at the data, we analyze the data and medical institutes are among the top institutes where the raggings are happening. That's a data time and again it's coming and the Supreme Court has taken views on it."

Medical Dialogues reported that the National Task Force, constituted by the Anti-Ragging Cell of the NMC, conducted its meeting yesterday with the stakeholders to discuss the issues related to the mental health and well-being of medical students. The Chairman of the Apex Medical Regulator Dr. B.N. Gangadhar and other members including the President of the Undergraduate Medical Education Board (UGMEB), Dr. Aruna V Vanikar, the President of the Postgraduate Medical Education Board (PGMEB) Dr. Vijay Oza, member of NMC Ethics Board, Dr. Yogender Malik, NMC Secretary Dr. B. Srinivas and Deputy Secretary Dr. Aujender Singh. The Chairman of the National Task Force, Dr. B.M Suresh, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, NIMHANS, and a representative from the University Grants Association (UGC), Alka Tomar were also present in the meeting.

Speaking about the issue of ragging, UGC Representative Alka Tomar termed UGC as the monitoring agency for anti-ragging issues in the country. She referred to the UGC regulations which were framed in 2009 to curb the menace of ragging. Describing this process, she referred to three aspects, receiving complaints, asking students to submit affidavits with an undertaking not to take part in ragging activities, and compliance with the rules.

Referring to these three aspects, she said, "Somewhere we need to look at how do we institutionalize the regulations of UGC into your mechanisms, especially in the task force recommendations."

Apart from this, she also addressed the issue of suicide and clarified that "Even one life, that is lost (and I am talking about the ragging) is something not acceptable and should not happen. And if it's happening, it means somewhere the system is failing us and we are failing them." Clarifying that UGC takes it very seriously, she invited NMC for a discussion to look into the matter. 

She also referred to the recommendations made by one of the doctors about the requirement of a direct channel and mentioned that UGC has a helpline which is 24x7 active. "We have very systematic processes to follow and within 30 minutes your complaint gets escalated to the highest topmost level and then the college or the particular institute has to take cognizance of it, and follow it up," she said.

Mentioning that the complaint remains active till the matter is addressed, she added, "...as the helpline, we are totally, 200% with the complainant/victim because anybody can file on behalf of the victim."

Urging NMC to communicate about this existing mechanism to all the stakeholders, Alka Tomar further said, "It means there are system mechanism existing. So when they are existing why are we not communicating that enough to the UG and PG students? That this is available, this system is created, money being spent, and we are there for you. That's I think very very important point we want to make through you and submit to you that please communicate about this to everybody."

Referring to the issue of compliance, she stressed on the prevention mode and said, "The compliances is for the medical institutes, the colleges, the universities...so there are 39 to 40 compliances each institute as part of the regulations need to adhere to. And as commission, you can make sure that they are doing it."

"Each college each institute has to make anti-ragging committee, anti-ragging squads, the warden information and the nearby police station, nearby DM that information ideally should be on each and every institute's websites and plus on the anti ragging committee's website, with us, so that we can follow it up. That is also another important thing that we need to look into," she added.

Further, she mentioned that UG PG students joining the medical institutes need to file an affidavit giving an undertaking that they will not commit or participate in this process. She clarified that participating in ragging or encouraging ragging is something that will not be taken nicely. 

Finally, she added that UGC is looking forward to the NMC National Task Force's recommendations and looking at how to integrate the same. Referring to the NMC survey which received 37,000 responses from doctors, she said that UGC was willing to look into it to verify if the ragging was causing it.

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