After announcing the launch of a mobile-based application IIT Pal to curb the growing menace and monopoly of coaching institutes, the HRD Ministry has come up with another initiative to outwit the billion-dollar coaching industry.

The Government will soon start 32 Direct-to-Home (DTH) channels that will telecast free lecture series for the benefit of engineering aspirants. These channels will be available free of cost through Doordarshan’s FreeDish DTH platform, and the aspirants will only have to secure a Set-Top Box to watch these channels.

MHRD’s initiatives to introduce DTH learning and mobile-app based learning will reduce the dependence of JEE aspirants on the coaching classes to a great extent. But will DTH learning platform be effective in solving doubts of the aspirants and, assessing their understanding of the subjects?  When asked, the Director of IIT Gandhinagar, S K Jain, said, “I think there will be an doubt solving mechanism in the coming time. Where students will be able to post their doubts through various mediums like SMS, Email, etc. The videos will be mainly in two languages, English and Hindi.”

These video lectures will be compiled by the top professors of the six IITs of Bombay, Madras, Delhi, Kharagpur, Kanpur, and Guwahati. The Department of Space has agreed to allocate two transponders on a GSAT series satellite to telecast it live across the 32 channels.

A high-level committee chaired by SK Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, worked out the finer details of operationalising the project at a meeting held last month. It has recommended that the channels be launched by August this year, sources said.

In due course, MHRD will widen the scope of programmes to be telecast on these channels and apart from six IITs, the channel will also air content from other top institutes.