Rebuild education system to reduce cost and stress, says Rahul in Kota

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday (June 17, 2026) called for rebuilding the country’s education system, saying it puts pressure on children, gives stress to students and extorts money from parents. The “Gen Z families” were spending an amount three times the Centre’s education budget on top five competitive exams, he said.

Mr. Gandhi was addressing a students’ convention at Dussehra Maidan in Kota, considered Rajasthan’s hub of coaching institutes, in the first leg of his national education campaign to highlight the alleged NEET paper leak, youngsters’ distress, exam irregularities, and unemployment, with a demand for accountability.

A large number of youngsters, including NEET and JEE aspirants, attended the programme, titled “Chhatron Ki Goonj” (students’ voice) with catchphrase, “Seal the Leaks”. Mr. Gandhi said it was not a political meeting, but an occasion to interact with the young people struggling to get a future and facing challenges every single day.

“The biggest weakness of India’s education system is that it does not nurture the dreams of our children. It does not respect the options and aspirations they truly want to pursue,” Mr. Gandhi said. While the public sector education had declined, the private education had become expensive, putting an immense burden on parents, he added.

Five students, who included NEET, JEE and civil services aspirants, were called on the stage for interaction with Mr. Gandhi. He talked to them about their plans for future, their strategies for preparation for exams and the expenditure made on preparations. A couple with their daughter also came to the stage to narrate the family’s struggle to arrange for coaching.

The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said the examination system for jobs and professional courses had turned out to be a “rejection system”, rather than an exercise for selection, with a minuscule number of candidates selected from among lakhs. This puts a heavy burden on students and their families, resulting in financial ruin, emotional depression and suicides in extreme cases, Mr. Gandhi said.

Mr. Gandhi referred to five top competitive exams in the country — UPSC, SSC, RRB, JEE and NEET — while pointing out that they drained the energy of the youth as well as financial resources of middle-class families. “Our education system is in fact an extortion machine,” he said.

Mr. Gandhi said the government’s claim of providing employment after education was a lie, since out of every 1,000 youths, only 12 get formal and salaried jobs, while 297 remain unemployed and 691 get informal and insecure work. The system should be such where the youth could dream big and get education at the lowest cost, he said.

Mr. Gandhi will address similar conventions in Allahabad, Patna and Delhi during the campaign. The Congress units including NSUI and Youth Congress will actively participate in the campaign.