Artificial Intelligence in Schools Where Children Cannot Read: J&K's Governance Priorities Need a Reboot
Before teaching prompt engineering to children who sit in tin sheds, the Minister owes J&K an answer: who will teach the teachers?
There is something philosophically audacious about a government that cannot staff its classrooms, cannot keep its schools open for the mandated 220 days, and cannot ensure that a Class 5 student reads at Class 2 level but convenes a high-level meeting with IIT Jammu to roll out artificial intelligence curricula across primary, middle, and higher secondary schools.
Minister Sakeena Itoo's AI initiative is not without merit in conception. Integrating computational thinking, responsible AI use, and prompt engineering into school education is the direction every serious education system is moving. The instinct is correct. The sequencing is not.
According to the ASER 2024 survey, only 21 percent of Class 5 students in J&K government schools could read a Class 2 text. Over 98 percent of schools lacked digital library facilities. More than 1,900 schools had no separate toilets for girls. Schools recorded fewer than 150 academic days against the mandated 220 during the 2024–25 session. These are not peripheral statistics. They are the foundation on which any AI curriculum must be built. That foundation is rubble.
Over 9,000 schools lack boundary walls. Nearly 11,000 have no playgrounds. In Baramulla alone, school buildings constructed under earlier schemes remain structurally incomplete some recommended for demolition. The Minister wants to introduce generative AI into these institutions. The question that demands an answer before any IIT presentation proceeds is: on what device, taught by which teacher, in which language, in which structurally sound room?
Only 594 lecturer vacancies have been referred for recruitment a figure insignificant against actual need with no timeline and no subject-wise breakdown. Infrastructure expansion without teachers produces hollow education. The department has 4,479 lecturer vacancies across J&K. It has not resolved a 2018 hiring freeze. It cannot fill headmaster posts in 76 schools in a single district. But it is designing prompt engineering modules.
A harder question sits beneath the policy theatre: has the Minister personally visited a government school in J&K? Has she walked into a girls' toilet block where over 1,900 schools have none and asked what dignity means to a female student who must choose between attending class and basic hygiene? Chairing a high-level AI meeting with IIT Jammu while that question remains unasked is not transformation. It is avoidance dressed in technological ambition.
The Minister's directions were not wrong in isolation multilingual AI content, fraud detection in SEHAT, hospital bed management optimisation. Each deserves serious pursuit. But a government that attempts to leapfrog foundational failure through technological announcement is not reforming an education system. It is performing one.
AI cannot teach a child who has no teacher. A smart classroom cannot compensate for a school with no roof. Computational thinking cannot flourish in an institution that recorded 70 school days fewer than legally required last year. The rocket is broken, Minister. Fixing it is not glamorous. It does not photograph well at high-level meetings. But a moon mission launched from a broken rocket does not reach the moon. It reaches the headlines briefly and then falls. J&K's children deserve the trajectory, not the announcement.
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