Vice-Prez red flags mushrooming coaching centres
Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday slammed the coaching culture taking root in the country and said coaching centres had turned into “poaching centres” and were akin to “black holes”.
“Coaching centres have become black holes for talent in regimented silos. They are mushrooming and it is becoming a menace for the youth, who are the future of our country. We cannot allow our education to be so smeared and tarnished,” he said, addressing the fourth convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Kota.
The city, which has emerged as the coaching hub of India, has reported at least 14 deaths by suicide among students taking coaching for competitive exams. Even the apex court asked recently why students were dying only in Kota.
Questioning the mushrooming network of coaching centres, he asked, “How could one even speak of gurukuls? Gurukuls are among the 22 visual depictions in the Indian Constitution. We have always believed in the donation of knowledge. Coaching centres must use their infrastructure to transform into skill centres.”
“I urge civil society and public representatives before me and outside to appreciate the urgency of this disease. They must converge to restore sanity in education. We need coaching for skill,” he added.
Dhankhar underlined how obsession with marks was harming the spirit of learning. He said, “The obsession with perfect grades and standardised scores have compromised curiosity, which is an inalienable facet of the human intelligence.”
“The seats are limited, but coaching centres are all over the country. They ‘robotise’ students, stymieing their thinking and leading to the rise of psychological problems,” the Vice-President said, encouraging students to look beyond grades, saying mark sheets and grades did not define a person.
The Vice-President also spoke about the threat of foreign digital infrastructure. He said nations would no longer be compromised or colonised by armies as algorithms had replaced the armies.
“Sovereignty will not be lost through invasions, but through dependence on foreign digital infrastructure,” he said.
The Vice-President called for a new vision of patriotism rooted in technological leadership. “We are getting into a new era, an era of new nationalism. Technological leadership is the new frontier of patriotism. We have to be world leaders in technological leadership,” he said.
Dhankhar also raised concerns over import dependence in critical sectors like defence and noted that technology-driven equipment from outside, especially in sectors such as defence, had the power to bring us to a standstill.
He pointed out that global power dynamics were changing in the digital age. “The battleground of the 21st century is no longer land or sea. Gone are the days of conventional warfare. Our prowess, our power has to be determined by code, cloud and cyber,” he said.
The Vice-President emphasised the need for local tech solutions, saying, “A smart app that doesn’t work in rural India is not smart enough. An AI model that doesn’t understand regional languages is incomplete. A digital tool that excludes the disabled is unjust.”
“Youth of Bharat must be conscious keepers of the tech world. We need to build Bharatiya systems for Bharatiya users and globalize it,” he added.
India