WIREDGOV

Childhood bullying is a worldwide problem, and can cause long-lasting damage including poorer health, wealth and social relationships. Although few Indian studies have focused on bullying, a 2015 survey by research agency IMRB and ParentCircle indicates that every third child is bullied in school, while a 2012 Microsoft report ranks India in third place in a global survey of cyberbullying.

New findings suggest that bullying is common in Indian schools, and cyberbullying is becoming a serious problem on social media. The UK-India collaborative project Bullying, Cyber bullying, and Pupil Safety and Well-being, featuring four European research teams (from UK, France, Germany, Netherlands) and two Indian teams (from Punjab and Tamil Nadu), has revealed new insights into the prevalence and characteristics of bullying in Indian schools. Previous contact between Indian researchers and European researchers in this area has been almost non-existent, making this research collaboration groundbreaking.

Early findings

• Bullying is common and recognised in Indian schools, but there is considerable variation in how schools respond to bullying.
• Cyberbullying (by mobile phones and the internet) is increasingly recognised as a problem. Much of this now occurs on social networking sites.
• Discussion of bullying is complicated by language issues. There is no exact equivalent for bullying in Punjabi or Tamil, the two languages the researchers mainly worked with. There are quite a lot of terms with some similarity, but they are not identical.
• There are different roles in bullying (bully, assistant, reinforcer, defender, victim, outsider). These roles were found to be about equally prevalent in Indian and German schools, but there was a difference: in India, they were mainly confined within the same sex (boys bullying boys, girls bullying girls), while in Germany bullying between sexes was also common. This may be because of greater gender segregation in Indian schools.
• Teacher attitudes to bullying and related problems in Indian schools vary widely. More punitive ways of coping with it appear more common in rural schools and older teachers. More counselling-based approaches appear more common in urban schools and among younger teachers.

The research teams worked in five topic areas, including:

• use and abuse of new technologies
• pupils' social networks and bullying/bystander roles
• life skills, health and risk-taking
• influence of educational and cultural variables in bullying behavior
• intervention strategies, including teacher training, peer support and parent support.

The overall aim of the project is to increase knowledge about pupil safety and wellbeing, and the effectiveness of prevention and intervention measures, in all five countries involved in the collaboration.