Exploring Public Policy to curb Ragging & Bullying in institutions through a mutually beneficial way

Public policy will not end ragging and bullying in schools by issuing another circular and hoping the culture takes the hint. These are not random acts of cruelty. They are status games. A senior student humiliates a newcomer because an audience laughs, a teacher looks away, and nothing serious happens afterward. A child freezes a classmate out of a group chat for the same reason. If the only answer is a suspension, the hierarchy usually walks back in on Monday. What works better is a bargain in which everyone gets something worth keeping: safety for the student who is targeted, a respectable way to gain standing for the student who might otherwise take it by force, and a quieter school for the adults who have to run it.

In India, ragging has usually been talked about as a college problem, the hostel ritual in which seniors “welcome” juniors. Schools have their own version. It shows up as forced errands, public mockery, exclusion, and, increasingly, pile-ons online. Bullying and ragging feed on the same three conditions. There is an audience. The harm repeats. Reporting feels riskier than enduring it. Any serious administrative response has to reach that audience, not only the child whose name ends up on a complaint form.

The country already has pieces of a framework, even if they do not sit in one neat school law. After the Supreme Court pushed higher education to act, the University Grants Commission regulations of 2009 required an anti-ragging committee with outside members, a squad that actually moves around hostels and routes, and written undertakings from students. Senior secondary schools can copy that structure without waiting to become colleges. In March 2015 the Central Board of Secondary Education told affiliated schools to set up an anti-bullying committee with a senior teacher, a counsellor, a parent, and peer educators, and to give victims and bystanders a confidential way to report. Sanctions were meant to match the harm, from a written warning up to expulsion in the rarest cases. The Right to Education Act already bans corporal punishment, so the school cannot answer humiliation with more humiliation. In late 2025 the Board withdrew affiliation from a Jaipur school after finding that parents had complained about bullying more than once and the response had stayed at the level of a parent-teacher chat, with no working anti-bullying system and weak supervision of corridors. That order matters more than a poster in the lobby. Affiliation is leverage. In September 2026 the Supreme Court declined to entertain a plea for one central law on school ragging and bullying, and left the petitioner free to approach the authorities. The practical reading is simple. Boards, states, and managements already hold the tools. Waiting for a new statute is a way of not using them.

Punishment alone still misses the incentive. The student who rags often wants rank, not chaos. Take the rank away and offer nothing in its place, and the behaviour goes underground. A fresher mentor scheme can flip that. Every new student gets a trained senior whose job is orientation, not initiation. The senior gets a certificate that counts on the school record and a mention in assembly. The new student gets a named person and a clear line for reporting pressure. The school gets fewer secret rites because status has moved into a role adults can see. Peer educators, already imagined in the 2015 circular, can run ordinary class conversations about what counts as ragging, including the quiet kinds: the forced errand, the empty chair, the group chat. Counselling should be offered to the student who did the harm as well as to the student who received it. Repetition often tracks status anxiety, poor self-control, or an earlier turn as a target. Parents on both sides should hear early. That protects the child from a private deal that leaves the culture untouched, and it protects the school from the later claim that nobody was told.

Finland’s KiVa programme is the clearest national proof that this logic can be built into policy. It was developed at the University of Turku, paid for by the education ministry, tested in a large randomized trial, and then rolled out to most comprehensive schools. The universal part is lessons and activities for every student, aimed less at scolding bullies than at teaching bystanders how to stop supplying the audience. The indicated part is a small trained team that steps into live cases. In grades 4 to 6, evaluations found drops in both self-reported and peer-reported victimization, and in bullying itself. Later work linked the programme to warmer feelings about school, better motivation, more empathy for targeted peers, and, for the children bullied most often, gains in self-esteem and fewer depressive symptoms. Programme reports say a very large share of victims who sat with a KiVa team felt the situation improved. The bargain is visible. Students who might have joined in get a script and social approval for refusing to amplify the harm. Targeted students get a peer climate that pays the aggressor less. Teachers get fewer disruptions. Effects were stronger in the trial than in the national rollout, which is a useful warning: a circular without training does not reproduce a programme.

New Zealand supplies a second model that Indian schools can adapt without copying the cultural dress. From the mid-1990s, police and schools promoted a No Blame approach. Staff ask the targeted student how the behaviour is landing, then bring together a small group that can include peers, onlookers, and the students responsible. Immediate punishment is held back so the group can propose how to stop the harm. Restorative conferences in the same tradition often include family and a facilitator. The student who caused harm hears the effect, takes on a concrete task of repair, and stays inside the community instead of being pushed into a resentful group beyond the gate. Victoria in Australia describes the same sequence: name the behaviour, link remorse to an action, and try to leave a relationship in which learning can resume. English evaluations of restorative responses have found that a large share of bullying cases stop when the process is actually carried out. None of this abolishes consequences. It orders them. Repair comes first. Removal, a police referral, or exclusion stays available when the harm is serious, repeated, or sexual, or when the targeted student does not want a joint meeting.

A practical Indian version can join these strands without a new ministry. Every school, government or private, should publish a short annual note: how many reports came in, how fast an adult responded, what share of targeted students later said the behaviour had stopped, and how many peer mentor hours were delivered. Inspectors should treat a missing counsellor, a dormant committee, or a pattern of ignored complaints as a compliance failure, which is what the Jaipur affiliation order already began to do. States can fund a shared counsellor for clusters of smaller schools so the offer is not reserved for campuses that can hire at will. The first-response protocol should be written before anyone needs it. Secure the targeted student, record the account the same day, tell parents, offer a restorative meeting where it is safe, and escalate when the harm crosses a stated line. Seniors who finish mentor training should receive a co-curricular credit, so the prosocial role can compete with the old glamour of the ringleader. Class teachers should note the audience, not only the named aggressor, because the Finnish evidence says the audience is the lever. Online harassment belongs in the same committee, with messages preserved and a route to parents and, where needed, to the police.

This fails if it becomes a soft exit for serious harm. A student who has been beaten, sexually humiliated, or coerced into silence is not obliged to sit in a circle for the comfort of the institution. Policy should say that in plain language. Restorative options are for cases where the targeted student agrees, a trained adult facilitates, and someone checks later whether the behaviour actually stopped. Confidential reporting has to be real: a locked box, an adult outside the class teacher, and a ban on informal settlements that leave no record. Staff need cover too. A teacher who reports a pattern should not fear a quiet transfer or pressure arranged by a powerful family. Adults will not interrupt a culture that punishes the interrupter.

Done this way, the method is not leniency. It is a redesign of status. India can use the committee, the squad, the parent undertaking, and the affiliation sanction it already knows. Finland shows that lessons aimed at bystanders, plus a small team for live cases, can reduce both the bullying and the distress that follows it. New Zealand and parts of Australia show that a structured conversation, family in the room, and a repair task can stop a large share of cases without pretending every incident is a criminal matter. Schools that combine the two give targeted students their safety, give potential aggressors a public route to respect, and give administrators a record they can defend. That is the bargain worth writing into policy.