Congress leader and party general secretary Sachin Pilot on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, publicly backed Rahul Gandhi's interaction with Gen Z youth in Kota, Rajasthan, saying the Congress leader had given voice to the suffering of young aspirants and their middle-class families burdened by soaring coaching and hostel expenses.

Context

Posting under the hashtag #ChhatronKiGoonj ('echo of students'), Pilot said that Rahul Gandhi, during the Kota interaction, presented a data-backed picture of the education system that laid bare both the opportunities and challenges facing India's youth. In his words, the event captured 'the compulsion of parents to spend lakhs of rupees on coaching and hostel, and the acute shortage of opportunities relative to the number of candidates — and ultimately it is the middle class that suffers.'

Kota is widely recognised as India's foremost hub for IIT-JEE and NEET coaching, drawing hundreds of thousands of students from across the country each year. The city has long been at the centre of debates on the commercialisation of competitive exam preparation and the mental health toll on young aspirants.

Policy Backdrop

The Right to Education Act, 2009 mandated free and compulsory schooling up to Class 8 but left a significant regulatory void in the competitive exam coaching sector. The National Education Policy 2020 introduced structural reforms emphasising multidisciplinary learning and reduced exam pressure, yet critics argue implementation has been uneven and private coaching costs continue to spiral.

Opposition parties, including the Indian National Congress, have repeatedly linked rising coaching fees and a limited number of government college seats to deepening middle-class economic stress and growing youth disillusionment. The Congress has positioned this as part of a broader critique of what it calls jobless growth and unequal access to quality higher education.

Stakeholders and Impact

Middle-class families are at the sharpest end of the pressure. A family sending a child to Kota for two years of coaching can routinely spend several lakhs of rupees on tuition fees, hostel accommodation, and study material — with no guarantee of a seat in a government institution given the extreme competition ratios. Pilot noted that the mismatch between the number of aspirants and available opportunities ultimately falls hardest on this demographic.

Competitive exam aspirants themselves face psychological strain documented over years in Kota, where student welfare has become a recurring policy concern. Any substantive reform in coaching-sector regulation or an expansion of government college seats would directly affect this constituency.

What's Next

Pilot expressed confidence that Rahul Gandhi's amplification of student grievances would 'not only reach the ears of the government but also bring about a revolutionary change in making the education system easier and more accessible for the middle class.' Attention will now turn to whether the Congress translates this outreach into concrete legislative or policy proposals, and to upcoming debates in Parliament on education expenditure and student-loan access. State-level moves in Rajasthan on coaching-centre regulation will also be closely watched as a potential bellwether for broader reform.