Bachche Hain!

Words can not express my anguish at the absolutely needless death of the 19 year old medical student Aman Kachroo after being mercilessly “ragged” by his seniors.
As someone who has spent four years in an undergraduate institute of repute in a residential program, I can not pretend to be a stranger to the practice of ragging. I met most of my seniors and struck up abiding friendships with them leading off from some ragging session or the other. It shocks me to see the extent and direction of the spread of this practice. How are we bringing up our children?

Did the students who allegedly committed this crime, understand the consequences of their action? Or, did they think that irrespective of what they did, they will get away with it? Frighteningly, did they even ponder the moral consequences of their act?
The growing violence in our society is a pointer to the absolutely amoral upbringing that I see most young persons get today. My daughter tells me, matter of fact, that students in her class in junior school cheat. All the good students in the class carry padlocks to secure their school bags, so that exercise books are not “borrowed” just before the exams. If she leaves her pullover in class before going out to play in the sun, she may not see it again. All this, in a prestigious “public” school in Delhi.
My question is, if your son or daughter came back home with a bag full of someone else’s property, would you challenge her? If you know that your son or daughter is a big bully and routinely goes around kicking other students’ bags or plays “kick-ball” with others’ water bottles, would you take corrective action? Or, would you wait for “age” to cure his or her behaviour?
Please intervene, I beg of you. Children need to be told what is right and what is wrong. Or else, they will grow up thinking bad behaviour is acceptable or at most has no consequence. As they push boundaries of such behaviour, they will descend into criminality. Would you want to wake up one day and God forbid, find your son’s or daughter’s name staring back at you from the morning newspaper as a murder suspect?