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bullying among indian school going children a review

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 Page 1 of 4 Paper ID: EIJ20110000767

767. Bullying among Indian School Going Children: A Review

 Shweta Singh-Research Scholar, Faculty of Education, Banaras Hindu University, Uttar-
Pradesh, India, Email- shwetaankitsingh@gmail.com
 Dr. Seema Singh-Professor, Faculty of Education, Banaras Hindu University, Uttar-
Pradesh, India, Email- seemansh@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
Bullying is an intentional and repeated action-oriented toward others to harm or make them feel low,
and the victim is unable to defend themselves. The researcher is keen to know what Indian studies say
about the prevalence of bullying in India, and how it affects the mental and physical health of students.
For this researcher to review different papers, in which secondary sources are used and only those
studies are taken which are conducted in India or organized abroad but talk about Indian scenarios
and are available online. After reviewing these studies found that studies focused on the various
aspects of bullying, in which they mainly talk about the concept, the prevalence, forms, causes, and the
effect of bullying in the Indian scenario. Results show that the prevalence of bullying is very high in
India, which is approximately 50-60%. Bullying has bad impacts on student health, studies also
elaborated on the bullying cause and effect. studies also show the bad impact of this problem, which
needs much attention and eradication as soon as possible.
Keywords- Bullying, Prevalence, Causes, Effect.
Introduction
A child is born with some innate abilities, and as they grew up learn things from their parents, family,
society, and from their surroundings i.e., television, phone, technologies, social environment, etc.
When a child goes to school, he learns a lot of things from teachers, friends, and the curriculum.
He/she also uses their previous learning to know further and communicate with others. In schools’
children read, play, eat and fight with each other, which are normal activities but when a child or
group of children intentionally and repeatedly hurt a child this is not a normal activity, then this act is
called bullying. Bullying could be conceptualized in different ways, sometimes it is considered a
subset of aggressive behavior. “Bullying is a subset of aggressive behavior, it is generally agreed that
it refers to repeated, intentionally aggressive acts against someone who cannot easily defend
themselves” (Smith,2016). Intentional, repeated negative behavior by one or more persons directed
against a person who is unable to defend himself or herself (Olweus, 1994). Generally, bullies target
those students those who are different from them like who are overweight, over-slim, wear glasses,
have low academic achievement, or have obvious differences: big ears, noses, eyes, or severe acne
(Omoniyi, 2013). In India majority of schools have witnessed bullying incidents and the school
accepted it as a minor violence incident unless it’s physical (Nazir, 2019), in school verbal bullying
and teasing others are considered normal activities and a mode of interaction.
In Indian schools, everyday students fight with each other and tend to bully also, but these activities
are not reported by the school authorities in fact teachers did not intervene in these circumstances. In
private schools, there are provisions for school rules which should have to be followed by students but
these are mainly focused on discipline and unacceptable behaviors i.e. smoking or drinking in school,
damaging school property, repeatedly avoiding the homework, fighting with classmates causing severe
physical harm. The definition of unacceptable behavior is also varied from school to school. In most
bullying cases parents are not involved, and victims of the bullying do not report the incident to their
parents. Only 24% of parents were aware that their children are being bullied (Kshirsagar, 2006).
Bullying is not only happening in the classroom but it also takes place in the playground, on school
buses and siblings too tease and bully each other. Bullying should be identified and need eradication,
for this present study is conducted to know the prevalence of bullying in Indian schools, its causes, and
its consequences on students. Research was analyzed while keeping some major themes of the study

Education India: A Quarterly Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education, A UGC- CARE List
Journal, ISSN 2278-2435, Vol. 11, Issue-4 November-2022. http://www.educationindiajournal.org
 Page 2 of 4 Paper ID: EIJ20110000767

as, the concept, the prevalence, the causes, and consequences of bullying. Only those studies are taken
which are conducted in India and are easily available online.
Concept of bullying
The credit for research regarding bullying completely goes to researcher Dan Olweus, who studied it
extensively and developed many intervention and prevention programs. His research and extensive
work in this area elaborated on bullying and unfolded this critical issue and its related impact. Dan
Olweus (1978) defines bullying as “A person is bullied when he/she is exposed, repeatedly and over
time, to negative actions on the part of one or more persons, and he/ she has difficulty defending
himself or herself”. Bullying is the use of power and aggression repeatedly, and which is intended to
harm, cause distress, make him/her feel low, or control another (Malhi, Bharti & Sidhu, 2014). Indian
researcher identifies Bullying as intentional, aggressive, and unprovoked abuse of power by one or
more children to inflict pain, cause distress and disturb another child on repeated occasions
(Kshirsagar, Agarwal and Bavdekar, 2007; Ramya & Kulkarni, 2010; Mehta & Pilania, 2014; Rai,
Binil V, Savitha,2018). Bullying includes verbal and physical assaults, threats, jokes or language,
mockery, criticizing, social exclusion, insulting behavior, and facial expression. Ramya & Kulkarni
(2010) Most common form of bullying is verbal bullying, like names calling (57.9%), followed by
making fun of one’s physical appearance (15.5%) and degrading (15.2%) whereas physical forms of
bullying is only 12.5%. Kshirsagar, Agarwal, and Bavdekar (2007) also found a similar result
regarding the forms of bullying in which verbal bullying is more prominent as compared to physical
bullying. Patel, Verma, Shah, Phatak & Nimbalkar (2017) found that 29.7% of students are victimized
by bullying, which victims are girls who experience emotional and sensitive forms of bullying whereas
victims are boys who experience physical and verbal means of bullying.
Prevalence of bullying in India- Prevalence of bullying also varies according to the different types of
schools, like single-sex (boy’s school and girl’s school) and co-ed schools. Kshirsagar, Agarwal, and
Bavdekar (2007) found in their study that the prevalence of bullying is 18.5% in girls’ schools while
38.2% in the co-ed schools. The prevalence of bullying among girls is 28.5%, and 36.2% among boys.
Ramya & Kulkarni (2010) found the highest prevalence of bullying, which among girls is 53% as
compared to among boys, which is 63.9%, and also found that the prevalence of bullying gradually
increased with age, after reaching a peak at 13 years of age it reduced at 14 years. Malhi, Bharti &
Sidhu (2014) reported the prevalence of bullying among students in grades 9 th to 10th is 53% (of which
19.2% are victims and 13% are bullies). Yadav & Mehata (2015) found that in Varanasi city about
33% of students were bullied by their classmates; about 10% of students were bullied by their
classmates but of different sections. Nearly 26% of students are bullied by seniors while 3% of
students are bullied by their juniors. Patel, Verma, Shah, Phatak & Nimbalkar (2017) concluded in
their study that the Prevalence of bullying in Gujarat is 49%, and boys are more likely to be bullies.
Rai, Binil V, and Savitha (2018) revealed in their survey that Bullying is significantly associated with
gender, family income, and area of residence. Nazir (2019) found that the prevalence of bullying in
Kashmir is high among secondary-level students, in which 25.8% are victimized and 14% are bullied
and 15.7% are bully-victim.
Causes of bullying- Causes of bullying are not universal they vary as per the different bullying
situations, types of bullying, individual thoughts, and behavioral patterns. Here only those reasons are
discussed which are found in different research papers and are common in almost every type of
bullying. Srisiva, Thirumoorthi & Sujatha, (2013) found the causes of bullying in their study as
students want to establish dominance (34%), prove physical strengths (22%), pretend to themselves as
heroes of the class (16%), past quarrels (seeking revenge) (12%), for any petty issues (9%). Malhi,
Bharti & Sidhu (2014) found that low self-worthiness is both a cause and a result of being bullied.
Mehta & Pilania (2014) express the causes of bullying in the behavioral situation “A student could be

Education India: A Quarterly Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education, A UGC- CARE List
Journal, ISSN 2278-2435, Vol. 11, Issue-4 November-2022. http://www.educationindiajournal.org
 Page 3 of 4 Paper ID: EIJ20110000767

bullied for not carrying a particular kind of mobile phone or putting up a picture on a social
networking website. It is very often children with special needs, handicapped children, overweight
children, children who are shy and anxious, and others with certain psychological traits who become
victims of bullying. Studies show that overweight adolescents are more likely to be bullied by their
classmates than those of normal weight. The bullies pass nasty comments on them and tease them.
Children with a handicap or a disability are often an easy target”. Nazir (2019) interviewed some
students and concluded that “students get victimized as they believe because of their physical
appearance. Such cases like someone who has been bullied due to his physical lean or fat body or
someone is wearing tested glasses or even someone is tall or short are very common causes to provoke
bullying behavior among students”.
Effects of bullying- Bullying is a repeatedly occurring problem in school-going students. This
problem affects all students whether they bully, the victim, the bully-victim, and the witness. Rai,
Binil V, and Savitha (2018) concluded in their study that bullying and psycho-social well-being are
related negatively, this indicates that when psycho-social wellbeing decreases then bullying increases.
Kshirsagar, Agarwal, and Bavdekar (2007) and Ramya & Kulkarni (2010) concluded that bullying
causes many health problems in which headache and stomach pain are more prominent, and a majority
of students feel sad and depressed. Kshirsagar, Agarwal, and Bavdekar (2007) revealed that if the
bullying is severe and frequent then this will affect victims in different ways such as abstaining from
school, low confidence, low self-esteem, low academic achievement, psychosomatic illness, anxiety,
depression, loneliness, suicidal ideation. Srisiva, Thirumoorthi & Sujatha, (2013) revealed that
students face many problems like poor concentration while studying (56%), low self-esteem,
tearfulness (41%), and suicidal ideation (27%), and some victims students change into bullies to take
revenge. Malhi, Bharti & Sidhu (2014) discussed in their research based on other research that psycho-
social problems experienced by victims are higher as compared to those experienced by bystanders.
Problems include high levels of social isolation, depression, anxiety, self-harm behaviors, and suicidal
ideations. Rigby, (2003) as cited by Mehta & Pilania (2014) has categorized the consequences of
bullying victimization as low psychological well-being, poor social adjustment, psychological distress,
and physical unwellness.
Conclusion-Bullying is a very prominent problem among school students, this is not a new term and
trending for a very old time, despite old problems researcher starts noticing this problem to work on a
later stage. In a foreign country, research begins in the mid19th century but in India, it starts in the 21st
century, in India researchers on bullying are few as compared to foreign research. All the studies from
India show the high prevalence of bullying among school-going students, researches also revealed the
cause and its drastic impact on children. Causes of bullying vary as per individual level, family level,
social & cultural level, and institutional level. As the causes vary in the same way, the impact of
bullying also varies according to the resistance capacity of the individual student, their parental
support, family environment, and institutional ethos.
References
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Nazir, T. (2019). Prevalence of School Bullying in Higher Secondary School Students and Myths
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Education India: A Quarterly Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education, A UGC- CARE List
Journal, ISSN 2278-2435, Vol. 11, Issue-4 November-2022. http://www.educationindiajournal.org
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Education India: A Quarterly Refereed Journal of Dialogues on Education, A UGC- CARE List
Journal, ISSN 2278-2435, Vol. 11, Issue-4 November-2022. http://www.educationindiajournal.org

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