“Coaching Centres Are Black Holes for Talent”: VP Dhankhar
VP slams coaching industry at IIIT Kota convocation; calls for digital self-reliance, reforms in education
GG News Bureau
Kota, 12th July: Delivering a forceful critique of India’s coaching culture, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday described coaching centres as “poaching centres” and “black holes for talent,” warning that the commodification of education is eroding curiosity and turning students into “intellectual zombies.”
Addressing the 4th Convocation Ceremony of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Kota, Dhankhar said, “Coaching centres are mushrooming in a menacing manner, smearing the purity of education. We cannot allow our youth to be trapped in regimented silos. This is a dangerous trend.”
The Vice-President cautioned that sovereignty in the 21st century would no longer be lost through invasions, but through “dependence on foreign digital infrastructure.” Emphasizing technological self-reliance, he declared, “Technological leadership is the new frontier of patriotism. Nations will be defined not by arms, but by code, cloud, and cyber capabilities.”
Criticizing the coaching industry’s profit-driven model, Dhankhar said it clashes with the National Education Policy (NEP) and called for repurposing such institutions into skill centres. “We must end this assembly-line culture. Coaching centres are against the flow of NEP. They robotize students and kill their thinking abilities,” he said.
Highlighting the psychological and societal toll of excessive focus on marks, he remarked, “The obsession with perfect grades has compromised curiosity — a cornerstone of true learning. We’re creating memory without meaning, degrees without depth.”
Calling upon youth to rise as leaders in the digital domain, the Vice-President urged students to build “Bharatiya systems for Bharatiya users” and local tech innovations with global relevance. “A smart app that doesn’t work in rural India is not smart enough. An AI tool that ignores regional languages is incomplete. A digital solution that excludes the disabled is unjust,” he said.
He warned that import dependence in defence and tech sectors gives foreign powers the ability to paralyze India’s critical systems, and advocated for Indian leadership in emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and data science.
“We must rise as architects of our own digital destiny and also influence the destiny of other nations. India can no longer remain a passive user of borrowed technologies,” he added.
Concluding his address, Dhankhar took a dig at rote learning, calling it “cramming culture” that produces “mechanical repositories” rather than thinkers. “This must stop. Education must liberate, not limit.”
The convocation was attended by Rajasthan Governor Haribhau Kisanrao Bagde, Lt. Gen. (Retd.) A.K. Bhatt, Chairperson of BoG, IIIT Kota, and Prof. N.P. Padhy, Director, among others.
