What if the High Courts of the land ban corporal punishment? There are ways and ways of getting around the ban, as the New Delhi school authorities seem to demonstrate.

Rahul (name changed), a Class IV student of a government school in central Delhi, does not want to be the class monitor. “My friends will become enemies. I will be made to beat them if they misbehave.” Teachers “authorising” class monitors to punish classmates is not a practice unique to Rahul’s school, reports Hindustan Times, a leading daily.

Child rights activist and lawyer Ashok Aggarwal came across a similar incident three weeks ago in a municipal primary school in Bhalaswa. The class monitor had punished three girls, making them bend with their face between their knees. “This is a prevalent practice. Monitors are even given canes at times. It becomes a power show for children,” he said.

Way back in 2000, the Delhi High Court judgment had declared corporal punishment illegal. The only option to rein in the “unruly?” Asking the other students to take to the cane. As simple as that.

“Class monitors are given the authority to use force against their peers. I have seen a Class IV monitor beat his classmates. Children tend to imitate their teachers,” said Meenakshi Singh (name changed), a trainee teacher at a government school in Pragati Maidan.

Kusum Jain, president of Parents’ Forum for Meaningful Education, said this practice is prevalent in several private schools too. “Schools are cultivating a culture of peer violence. Teachers are teaching children to be brutes,” said Jain, who has interviewed students who admitted to being beaten by their class monitors. “This practice makes bullies of children and leads to groupism in class.”