Dev 360 | India’s AI Future Still Needs Properly Equipped Schools | Patralekha Chatterjee

In his Independence Day address from the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced two initiatives aimed at India's youth: free online coaching for competitive examinations and a programme to train one crore young Indians in artificial intelligence over the next year. His promises came as nationwide youth protests had put their aspirations — and discontent — squarely in view.

Arguably, free online coaching could make a difference in a country where families spend heavily on preparation for JEE, NEET and other fiercely competitive exams. India also needs to prepare its young for an economy in which AI will increasingly matter. Using digital public infrastructure to widen access to high-quality learning is important.

But in the same month that India was promised this digital future, schoolchildren in several parts of the country were making a more basic demand — give us a school that works.

In Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, students have marched, staged sit-ins and, in one case, stopped a minister’s convoy after complaints went unheeded. Their demands have included teachers, paved roads to school, electricity, drinking water, toilets, fans and safe, functioning classrooms.

In July 2025, the roof of a government school in Rajasthan’s Jhalawar district collapsed, killing seven students and injuring others. The tragedy triggered a statewide safety audit that identified thousands of unsafe or dilapidated schools. The government primary school in Rajasthan’s Rampura-Kanwarpura village, which recently made headlines, was among those classified as dilapidated in September 2025. Children had been attending classes in a cowshed ever since. What was meant to be temporary continued for almost a year, until a youth-led Cockroach Janta Party team arrived. The team was reportedly roughed up by villagers. But the pressure had one immediate fallout: the 18 children are now out of the cattle shed, and a new school building is promised. The state government and some local villagers say funds for it were already sanctioned.

The question: How do we reconcile almost a year of some children studying in cattle sheds with a national ambition to create an AI-skilled workforce?

Another important detail: The AI announcement needs unpacking. We do not yet have the full picture of what training one crore young Indians in AI will entail. What will they learn? Who will be eligible? What level of training is envisaged? How will they be assessed? Will the objective be basic AI literacy or job-oriented technical skills?

The distinction matters.

India already has YUVA AI for ALL, a foundational AI-literacy programme designed to help people understand what AI is, how it is used and how to use it responsibly. But foundational AI literacy is very different from training one crore people to become AI engineers or acquire job-ready technical skills. The promise is welcome; however, we need to know the operational details.

There is an equally important question at the other end of the pipeline: What sort of educational foundation are the young people entering this digital future receiving?

An online coaching class assumes a device, electricity, connectivity, somewhere quiet to study and enough foundational knowledge to benefit from the teaching. Serious AI training assumes even more.

Before children can work with sophisticated technology, they need to be able to read confidently, understand mathematics, reason, solve problems and learn independently.

That is where India’s schools matter.

A recent Niti Aayog report, citing ASER data, noted that the share of Class 3 children able to solve at least a basic subtraction problem rose from 25.4 per cent in 2014 to 33.7 in 2024 — still leaving roughly two-thirds unable to do so.

Schools are about hardware and software. Buildings, classrooms, toilets, electricity, water, roads, fans and, increasingly, digital equipment make up the hardware. The software comes from teachers, the quality of teaching, learning materials and the environment in which children are taught.

A brightly painted school building does not produce high learning outcomes if teachers are missing, poorly equipped, unable to teach effectively or use fear to intimidate.

This is why reports of children studying in cattle sheds are more than an embarrassing anecdote. They point to a much larger question about what we mean when we say India is building a technology future.

UDISE+ data show substantial improvements in access to basic infrastructure nationally. Those gains matter. But national averages can coexist with extraordinary local failures. Rajasthan’s data, for example, have acknowledged tens of thousands of government school buildings requiring major repairs.

The people pointing this out should not be dismissed because they are ‘outsiders’.

Schools are places of learning. If they are in a horrendous state, and if the learning outcomes that form the foundation are poor, it is a serious issue. Anyone who cares about India’s children and future is an insider in this conversation and has a stake in it.

There is another reason to take the broad educational base seriously.

Take the two countries dominating the AI race: the United States and China. They offer two very different approaches. The US has enormous resources and has been able to draw heavily on talent educated elsewhere, including some of India’s most highly trained graduates. But a country of India’s size cannot build its technological future solely by educating a relatively small elite and then watching a large number of its most talented people leave for better-funded universities, laboratories and companies elsewhere.

China has followed a different path: building mass education alongside elite institutions, expanding its scientific and technical base and investing heavily in research and technological capacity. Its emergence as an AI power did not happen because a handful of elite institutions suddenly became world class. It rested on a much broader accumulation of educational and technical capability, starting with schools.

That is the point India needs to confront.

An AI superpower cannot be built on an island of excellence surrounded by a sea of sub-standard schooling. The apex matters; so, does the base.

India has the IITs, IISc and other excellent institutions. They have produced extraordinary talent. But countries aspiring to technological superpower cannot rely indefinitely on a thin layer of exceptional institutions and individuals. Successful countries invest in basic education because technology ultimately rests on human capability. An AI push does not eliminate the need for literacy, numeracy, reasoning and good teachers. It increases the premium on them.

India needs both visions — the ambition to train young people in new technologies and the determination to fix the school that leads to that future.

India wants to put young people in the cloud; what happens when the child is still sitting in a cowshed?

The writer focuses on development issues in India and the emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com.