Former Chief Justice of India D.Y. He was speaking at the plenary session of the 10th Annual IC3 Conference.
Chandrachud on Wednesday (August 19, 2026) said the youth must possess the ability to ask difficult questions “even when they pose truth to power”.
“In an age of technology, our children must become patient listeners, willing observers and possess the ability to ask difficult questions even when they pose truth to power. The theme of this year’s conference organised by the IC3 Movement is ‘Looking Deeply — From Information to Insight’. Saying that literacy and higher education were linked to greater autonomy and empowerment across the world, Justice Chandrachud added, “Access is only the beginning. Our young still need guidance to distinguish evidence from assertion, significance from novelty, understanding from familiarity and judgement from opinion. He highlighted the problems of unequal opportunities in education and the lack of adequate investment. Lauding students for their ability to navigate technology, he asked why our educational system was keen to mainstream everyone without recognising the needs and capabilities of individuals. “All of them belong to the future we define as our demographic dividend. We need an inclusive India. It is time to redefine merit and to bring the last student into the mainstream. “We have become extraordinarily good at gathering information around us. We should celebrate that progress.
The two-day conference, held in Mumbai on August 19 and 20, brought together school counsellors, university representatives, industry leaders, diplomats and policymakers from more than 60 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan and Spain, alongside hundreds of students, parents and teachers. “We speak of expanding access to education, but can we really be satisfied with a classroom and a mid-day meal where, in 2025-26, 1,05,000 schools still lacked proper toilet facilities for girls, including thousands where no girls’ toilets existed at all? Because there is no toilet for them to use,” he said, the reality is, so many menstruating young girls drop out of schools.
Referring to challenges posed by artificial intelligence (AI), he said, “Once, the difficulty was finding information. Now, the difficulty is to understand what deserves to be knowledge,” he said. Raising the issue of accessibility to school for rural girls after hitting puberty, the former CJI said there was a need to widen access to knowledge. Justice Chandrachud said the country needed an inclusive educational system where all children who learn differently are accommodated and celebrated. Education should leave room for curiosity,” he said. Justice Chandrachud said that passing traditional knowledge from one generation to another, like in Japan, helps a country develop a national memory. But modern knowledge shouldn’t make us forget what earlier generations had learnt,” he said.
