Should corporal punishmnet be banned in schools?

With the beginning of the new academic year, parental anxieties over how their little ones will fare in schools are renewed. The recurring incidents of harsh punishment in schools leading to traumas can certainly not be ignored by parents. The government must crack down on schools that still use corporal punishment. There should be a system that keeps a tab on such erring schools.
Spare the rod and spoil the child was the adage we grew up with. But then, punishment was governed by an unwritten code of fairness that applied to teachers and students. Mild caning, a clip behind the ear, standing outside the classroom, writing a poem 1000 times were the usual forms of punishment. They were accepted by students and parents as the unwritten law. The Kolkata school incident, which recently led to the tragic suicide of a 13-year old boy devastated by humiliating punishment, was not possible in those days. That the school still allows caning and even now fails to see the essential barbarity of the practice is a sad commentary on our educational system.
The question is: do we allow our dear children to be caned for whatever reasons? Should corporal punishment be allowed at all? Are we ready to let a stranger assault our child? In today's schools, hardly any teacher knows the students well. The teachers normally have neither the time nor the inclination to get to know the students. We admit our children to a reputed school and leave them to the mercy of the teachers. If corporal punishment is allowed, we are authorising them to beat our children. Parents don't know the teachers. They can't meet them personally. They hear about the teachers only from the children. They have no idea what kind of people the teachers are. They have no way of knowing whether the punishment the teachers award will be fair.
The parents are in a dilemma. Even if they come to know from their child about some needless punishments, they can't do much because the school will keep justifying its methods. And the parents can't shift a child to a new school sometime in the middle of a session, even if they are ready to forsake the huge fees paid to the first school. This is because there won't be any seats vacant in other good schools. And, of course, there is no guarantee that the new school will be any better. More good schools for the expanding middle class may ease the problem slightly. But the problem can be solved if corporal punishment is banned by law.