Corporal Punishment and Ragging

This evening when I switched on the news channels I was devastated after watching the news of 11 year old Shanno Khan’s death as a result of the heartless punishment meted out by her school teacher. Parent’s send their children to school thinking that their kids are safe and are at a home away from home for absorbing knowledge from educators. What a shame that we also produce teachers who can wreak havoc with the lives of innocent children – can you imagine the mental trauma the ten-eleven year old fellow students would be suffering from after seeing one of their own being brutally punished? The child’s head was banged on a table and then she was made to stand for more than two hours in Delhi’s unrelenting 40 degree Celsius heat with two bricks on her back in a “murga” position! I wish the teacher is punished in a similar fashion for at least eight hours with ten bricks on her back to account for the age factor. Let us see is she has the physical condition to withstand the punishment without rest or relief which was denied to the child. This girl was taken to the hospital when her younger sister called her parents after finding her in the compound bleeding from her nose in an unconscious state, where she died without regaining consciousness!

I wonder what our education minister has to say now – this has happened in a Congress rules state during elections to boot! Mind you, this is not the first case, nor will it be the last unless serious steps are taken to bring in laws which can tackle the growing menace of so called teachers venting their own personal frustrations on unwary and innocent children. This is far worse than ragging which happens in professional colleges. Ragging takes place when seniors bully freshers into doing acts and chores during the initiation period (or get to know each other period) – at least these people are in their late teens or early twenties. Corporal punishment is meted out by teachers who take the place of trusting parents in school and their victims are barely more than toddlers! Ragging has been banned and legislation has been passed to ban and severely punish ragging – so why is corporal punishment treated with kid gloves (no pun intended)?

In the past all political parties have come out with statements condemning such cases – but apart from mouthing platitudes and giving cash awards to the victims nothing really changes! Rs. 50000 is the price of Shanno’s life! How the hell due you value an innocent life which is snuffed out through cruel inhuman action by a fellow human being, that too one’s own teacher? Does giving a cash award solve the problem? These people may be poor but they have their self respect, please treat them with dignity, if nothing else. I had written a few days back on Rajiv Gandhi’s statement about his being proud of India’s poor – well now he has more reason to be proud I guess!

The tragedy is that in India life is not respected, there is too much of it, therefore it is not valued at all! How many times has the government of India ever intervened when any of it’s citizens have been victimized by overseas Governments – not once that I can remember! Contrast that with the US or UK Governments providing all sorts of support to rescue its citizens who land up in trouble overseas. Governments in the west are accountable to their constituency, hence you will always find affirmative action from them – here after the elections are over, the only time the politician comes back is during the next elections, whatever the problem. The other issue is with the justice delivery system, it is too slow and time consuming to be of any effect. By the time justice is delivered, the memory of the case would be confined to the dustbin of history. If the teacher has any political connections, then they will probably try to obfuscate the issue by saying the child was sick or weak hence she died. In which case why the hell was she so cruelly punished!

This case is far too glaring to ignore – the teacher should be publicly reviled and punished – if this goes to Court then it could take for ever – better to set up a fast track court to deliver justice within 30 days. Exemplary punishment meted out when the incident is still fresh in public memory, I feel would be the only deterrent against such acts by others. Hopefully when the new government is sworn in, Parliament could just work for one more day than their recent average of 40 days in a year to have new legislation against corporal punishment.