Since punishment works to modify behaviour only if swift and consistent, the answer must be No. Incentives and rewards would be much more effective. Also, understanding the cause of the truancy might the be key to developing a programme that is effective for that student.

Question about your question. You begin with a statement: " Chaining, beating and even starving are usually given to children as a means of punishing them ..."

Do you mean that one of the following? (1) Do you have data that indicates this? Or (2) are you just stating that you believe this is why such punishments are used?

The UN Convention on the Rights of Children, ratified by 196 countries, includes the general provision that there is an "obligation of all state parties to move quickly to prohibit and eliminate all corporal punishment and all other cruel or degrading forms of punishment of children"

I can't say if I know that corporal punishment significantly changes children's (or any other group's) targeted behavior (by which I mean the unapproved behavior for which the child is being punished) -- and agree with Dr. Allen's comment. Having studied criminal punishment for decades, punishment is not a very useful/effective means for changing unwanted behavior.

Moreover, with respect to corporal punishment and children, research indicates that corporal punishment is likely to create adverse behavioral outcomes for children such as trauma, and increased likelihood that they resort to violence to settle conflicts (even as adults)

.

See especially Elizabeth T. Gershoff's research....

E.g., of some relevant research:

Spanking and Child Development: We Know Enough Now to Stop Hitting Our Children

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdep.12038/full

Physical punishment of children: lessons from 20 years of research

http://www.cmaj.ca/content/184/12/1373.short

Simons, Dominique A., and Sandy K. Wurtele. "Relationships between parents’ use of corporal punishment and their children's endorsement of spanking and hitting other children." Child abuse & neglect 34, no. 9 (2010): 639-646.

Gershoff, Elizabeth T., Jennifer E. Lansford, Holly R. Sexton, Pamela Davis‐Kean, and Arnold J. Sameroff. "Longitudinal links between spanking and children’s externalizing behaviors in a national sample of White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American families." Child development 83, no. 3 (2012): 838-843.

Gershoff, Elizabeth T., and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor. "Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses." Journal of Family Psychology 30, no. 4 (2016): 453.

MacKenzie, Michael J., Eric Nicklas, Jane Waldfogel, and Jeanne Brooks‐Gunn. "Corporal punishment and child behavioural and cognitive outcomes through 5 years of age: Evidence from a contemporary urban birth cohort study." Infant and child development 21, no. 1 (2012): 3-33.

Does corporal punishment the best means to correct truancy and stubbornness in students?

It would be pretty much impossible to get ethical approval to undertake the needed study. So you will not find your answer in the published literature. Truancy is often related to problems elsewhere so you would need to think what it is you are hoping to correct: the symptom or the cause. If the students you refer to are yours perhaps you might ask what changes you could make in your approach?