Jaipur, July 12 : Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Saturday launched a critique of the current coaching culture in the country, calling it a serious threat to the education system and the mental well-being of students.

"Coaching centres have turned into poaching centres. They have become black holes for talent in regimented silos. Coaching centres are mushrooming. This is menacing for our youth, who are our future. We must address this malice that is worrisome. We cannot allow our education to be so smeared and tarnished,' Dhankhar said while addressing the 4th Convocation Ceremony of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Kota, Rajasthan.

Dhankhar further added, 'Nations will no longer be colonised by armies as they have now been replaced by algorithms. Sovereignty will not be lost through invasions, but through dependence on foreign digital infrastructure', he noted.

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.'

Dhankhar raised concerns over import dependence in critical sectors like defence, saying, 'If we get technology-driven equipment from outside, especially in sectors such as defence, that country has the power to bring us to a standstill.'

He explained how global power dynamics are changing in the digital age, saying, '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.'

'Among the 22 visual depictions in the Indian Constitution, there is also an image of a Gurukul. 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 to appreciate the urgency of this disease. They must converge to restore sanity in education," he mentioned.

Dhankhar underlined how obsession with marks is harming the spirit of learning, saying, 'The obsession with perfect grades and standardised scores has compromised curiosity, which is an inalienable facet of human intelligence. The seats are limited, but coaching centres are all over the country. They prepare the minds of students for years together and robotise them. A lot of psychological problems can arise out of it.'

The Vice-President encouraged students to look beyond grades, saying, 'Your marksheets and grades will not define you. When you leap into the competitive world, your knowledge and thinking mind will define you.'

Turning to the digital world, the Vice-President emphasised, '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.'

Dhankhar encouraged the youth to become leaders in building local solutions for global impact, saying, 'Youth of Bharat must be conscience keepers of the tech world. We need to build Bharatiya systems for Bharatiya users and globalise them.'

Urging Indians to lead the world in digital self-reliance, he said, 'We must rise as architects of our own digital destiny and also influence the destiny of other nations. Our coders, data scientists, blockchain innovators, and AI engineers are the modern-day nation builders. India, once a global leader, cannot afford to be at rest just being a passive user of borrowed technologies. Earlier, we used to wait for technology. The gap was decades. It has narrowed down to weeks now. We should be exporting technology now.'

Dhankhar strongly opposed the idea of education being treated like an assembly line, saying, 'We must end this assembly-line culture, because this culture is very dangerous for our education. Coaching centres are against the flow of the National Education Policy. This creates unnecessary hiccups and impediments to growth and progress. 'Money is poured into billboards and advertisements in newspapers. This money comes from those who either take loans or who painstakingly pay to make their future brighter. This is not optimal utilisation of money, and these advertisements are alluring, but they are eyesores for our civilisational ethos," he noted.

He concluded with a sharp critique of rote learning culture, saying, 'We are facing the crisis of cramming culture, which has transformed vibrant minds into mechanical repositories of temporary information. There is no absorption. There is no understanding. It is creating intellectual zombies rather than creative thinkers. Cramming creates memory without meaning and adds degrees without depth.'

Rajasthan Governor Haribhau Bagade, Lt Gen (Retd) A.K. Bhatt, Chairperson of the IIIT Board of Governors, Director Prof N.P. Padhy and other dignitaries were present at the convocation ceremony.

/IANS