In his 2026 Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the government will roll out free online coaching for competitive exams using India’s digital public infrastructure. The announcement was made in a bid to reach out to the Gen-Z youth, especially following the widespread student protests against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper leak. The objective of the PM’s announcement was to save poor and middle-class families thousands of crores while also helping students prepare without leaving their homes. However, can free public technology break the private coaching industry? Buddha Chandrasekhar and Anubhav Shrivastava discuss the question in a conversation moderated by Maitri Porecha.

How do you view the announcement made by PM Modi to provide free online coaching?

Buddha Chandrasekhar: Prime Minister Modi’s announcement on August 15 is a major intervention in education equity. We need to see it as an opportunity to redesign the entire competitive exam preparation ecosystem so that the probability of success depends less on family income, geography and access to an elite coaching centre. India has digital public infrastructure, teachers and talent. We can create a better personalised and customised free online coaching network.

Anubhav Shrivastava: I see it as an announcement that can bring reforms in the education system. But accessibility and affordability are not the main issues here; the issue is deeper. It is about the dependency of the Indian education system on coaching. We need to see whether the launching of this new programme will effectively kill this dependency (on private elite coaching); if not, it will just be another free access platform where videos will be uploaded every day. It will just be another video library.

Will the prospect of free online coaching really kill the dependency on private and elite coaching? Also, India has an existing public digital infrastructure with education platforms such as Swayam, Saathi and so on. How then can shifting to online modules be an alternative to the coaching industry?

Buddha Chandrasekhar: The existing platforms are very traditional in nature. We need to create Agentic AI-based systems suitable for Gen Z youth where they can experiment without going to the classroom. They want everything to be mobile based and they want quick content delivery in different formats. We are not able to meet these expectations. It is not that our systems are bad; our systems are not designed for them. This is the problem statement that needs to be accepted so that we can create better systems.

Why do we need coaching centres when we have very good schools and colleges? Because there is a fundamental difference between what is taught in school and what is asked in competitive exams. The school aims to conceptualise learning and focuses on board examinations whereas competitive exams ask a student a question to understand whether they can outperform millions of other students under severe time pressure. These are two different dimensions altogether. And that basically requires a separate skill set altogether. In coaching centres, students learn how to do rapid problem solving and deploy different test strategies. If you know how to eliminate the wrong options and figure out the right answer, you will get a better rank in competitive exams.

But online coaching cannot cover everything. What about personalised feedback and a competitive peer environment? I’m sure after your parents and friends, you still remember your school teachers. The reason is because they emotionally and academically mentor you. I think we need to create a hybrid mechanism. As the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 encourages skill hubs, we need to make sure there are skill hubs in schools which students can attend physically and get mentored in regular intervals along with online classes. We need to create a digital twin of everything. If you have a digital twin, students will tweak it and use it as per their needs. Gen Z wants an immersive experience — so it needs to be digital first, along with human assistance.

Anubhav Shrivastava: The main objectives of school and board examinations are totally different. In Class 9 and 10, students are less dependent on coaching. In Class 11 and 12, when they start preparing for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and NEET, they start depending on coaching because they have to solve complex questions. The curriculum is not designed in a way that can make a student well prepared for the upcoming examinations. So there’s a huge gap between the objectives of the two.

Just providing free access to lectures is not going to work for the students. We need to find out what the coaching industry provides to the students which they don’t get from anywhere else. The classes are structured and deliver on what they promise — there are weekly assessments and doubt solving forums. Moreover, in the coaching industry, not all courses cost lakhs and thousands. Some tutors like me create an application which offers students all this for a minimum application charge of around ₹700-₹800. The government has ample funds, with Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) at their disposal. They can make coaching free of cost: but not just the lectures, this entire structure has to be incorporated.

India has over 100 major national-level exams, including the UPSC, JEE and NEET that attract millions of aspirants. To build coaching for all of them at one point will be diluting quality, so what should be the scope of such a plan?

Buddha Chandrasekhar: The current thought process of the government is one course per exam. But instead, we can create a common competitive learning stack. About 70% to 80% of these exams have similar kinds of requirements for reasoning, language, general awareness, and current affairs. We can create a national competitive learning and opportunity grid and have a layered way of selection. The student can easily adopt layers depending on the exam.

Anubhav Shrivastava: I don’t feel the common stack model works. I teach physics for both NEET and JEE aspirants. There is a huge difference in teaching the subject for both exams. While fundamental concepts are the same, the nature of the examination is different. So, you have to take different classes for them. A common grid could be a futuristic plan but I don’t think it’s currently feasible. There should be one proper dedicated platform per examination.

There are millions of students who face a double hurdle. One is that there is a lack of reliable, high-speed Internet and electricity for online coaching and that exam centres are located hundreds of kilometres away. So how do you bridge the last mile?

Buddha Chandrasekhar: 3G and 4G level implementation in our country has already reached tribal areas. But let us assume it’s a very difficult terrain, where Internet penetration is very less and there are frequent disconnects — there satellite technology can be explored. A small, compact ground antenna box can be installed at a remote exam centre. Instead of relying on local broadband or mobile networks, the antenna connects directly to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or Geostationary (GEO) satellites — similar to satellite TV broadcasting. The base station receives the question paper from the satellite, stores it locally, and acts as an offline server to display or transmit it short-range to students. Students write their answers using pen and paper placed over a small smart digital pad (equipped with short-range wireless capabilities such as NFC/radio waves). As the student writes, the digital pad captures the answers, encrypts the data locally, and saves it in real time — requiring no active Internet connection during the test. Once the exam ends and a satellite link connects, the local base station securely uploads all encrypted answer files back to the central examination authority.

This is the way TV broadcasting works. So when we can watch OTTs like this, why can’t we can conduct an exam using it? There are some gaps as of now, but we can cover this.

Anubhav Shrivastava: For catering to the last mile student, we have existing infrastructure — we just have to improve it. We can install smart boards as I have been doing near cities where we deliver classes. You can provide them with all the lectures, and a mentor can play the video and make students understand concepts by doing some of the activities in front of them.

Listen to the conversation

Buddha Chandrasekhar is Chief Coordinating Officer of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) and CEO, Anuvadini AI, run under the Ministry of Education. Anubhav Shrivastava is co-founder of Theory of Physics.