In June 2010, a teenager named Rouvanjit Rawla committed suicide after being thrashed and humiliated by his teachers. This made national news and the issue was to ban all forms of corporal punishment.
The reasons put forward were the negative psychological effect on the students in their future life, physical and mental torture brings fear in the person. The government compared with other notable governments around the world decided to ban all forms of corporal punishment in the educational institutions.
Well, India is a unique nation. Here a person is depended on his parents and guardian for all his non-personal decisions till he is totally settled with a job. And, this is inevitable. Our culture and society groom us this way.
So, when the government bans all forms of corporal punishment, a student suddenly feels superior to everyone in school and at home. The result, bad behavior in the class room, adaptation to alien cultures and most importantly, the minors without the fear of being punished seriously commit crimes without even realizing that they are not doing something which a responsible citizen should do.
Recently, two guys from Sonipat were arrested because they allegedly killed their teacher because he refused them to cheat in their board exams. Firstly, they were using unfair means to cheat in the examination, and on being caught they could fearlessly kill their teacher too.
A teacher is one who is an educated and responsible citizen, the case of student harassment may be one in a thousand, but in general, a teacher refuges to corporal punishment just to ensure the students that when you do something wrong, you are punished. Corporal punishment is an example to teach the students that there is an Indian Penal Code outside the school which can give you real trouble if you do not abide by the law.
The rights of students need to be ensured, that’s for sure. But, we can’t deny the fact that in a school, if one teacher is a Hitler, then there are a dozen more Churchills and Roosevelts to control him. But, if the teachers are restricted from their authority over the children, they might forget even to respect the elders as they spend 60% of their day time at school. Children learn about moral values and society more from their teachers than from their parents.