I remember being taught “matha, pitha, guru, deivam” or “mother, father, teacher, god” way back in school during my earliest Tamil classes. The order of priority may vary and I’m sure is an intensely personal issue, but the fact that parents and teacher are elevated above the Almighty shows the roles and responsibilities they have. However we have seen incidents that were probably going on for so long but now have been brought to the public eye by our innumerable media houses, incidents like beating, abuse, molestation, rape and other unspeakable abuses the children endure under the hands of teachers. Too often we see teachers committing crimes that deserve the strictest possible form of punishment and often getting away with it easily. Yesterday we saw a teacher in a girl’s school trapped in a sting operation by a Hindi news channel. Her crime (yes, it was a woman), drugging her students and making pornographic movies with them, later on using these movies to threaten ...