Can India Build an Ivy League?

The Hindu

7 hours ago

Published : Jun 20, 2025 21:13 IST - 13 MINS READ
A recent issue of The Economist asks: can India create its own Ivy League? It is piquant that the question should come so late in the day, and from a foreign source. Countless alumni of Indian campuses have distinguished themselves across the world in many spheres. Yet the institutions that produced them (not solely the IITs by any means) endlessly chase the chimera of 'world-class' status.
The so-called brain drain from India was once admitted and deplored. There were ineffectual moves to reverse it, like the Scientist's Pool Scheme. As the exodus swelled, it was worked into the scheme of things. Today, the overseas Indian is politically and culturally attuned to the resident community. While that might be heartwarming, it does not enhance the intellectual resources at the direct disposal of the nation.
The subject has gained new relevance given the current upheaval in academia abroad. The immediate concern might be to accommodate Indian students already abroad or planning to go. The larger issue by far is whether India can take this opportunity to reinvent its own academic order.
We must start with the story behind the story. In 1947, India's literacy rate was 12 per cent; by 2017-18, it had barely crossed 80 per cent. The slow progress was compounded by a radical structural change in the school system. Before Independence, the small minority that went to school overwhelmingly followed a state-planned curriculum, generally in the local language. This remained true of the expanded school system after 1947, but the educated elite increasingly sent their children to an equally burgeoning category of fee-paying English-medium schools. Imbalance in access to quality education was wired into independent India's school system from the start. The new century has added fresh layers of increasingly expensive and exclusive schools.
Level playing field offered by public universities
This could not but affect the course of tertiary education, but there were crucial countervailing factors. With forgettable exceptions, private universities were legitimised in India only in the 21st century. Until then, the public university offered the nearest approach to a level playing field at any stage of a disadvantaged citizen's life, always assuming he or she could cross the entry barriers in the first place. The quota system ensured that such individuals formed at least a substantial minority on campus. Fees were modest, often derisory. With painful slowness, the expansion of higher education did bring about a perceptible change in the composition of the educated and professional classes.
The bifold system of Central and State-run universities prevailed from the start, but in the early decades, the gap in emoluments and facilities was negligible. It has widened egregiously over time. Even earlier, Central universities offered more structured and assured support. State governments, then as now, were perennially impoverished. But that deficiency was greatly offset by support from Central sources, chiefly the University Grants Commission (UGC), on three crucial fronts: infrastructure, research support for individuals, and broader academic support to institutions. The Five-Year Plans, too, offered substantial funds for libraries, laboratories, and buildings as well as new teaching posts.
These funds were not routine sarkari bounty. They had to be applied and competed for. Before each Five-Year Plan, assessment teams visited every university to evaluate past utilisation and future needs. The most demanding awards aimed to foster overall excellence, with programme titles like 'Centre of Advanced Study' and 'University with Potential for Excellence'. By and large, they worked, unlike the scrappy and discriminatory record of today's 'Institutions of Eminence'.
Of course, there were many indifferent and some downright bad universities, and some marked shortcomings in the best. Dealing with the UGC could be a draining experience. Despite those flaws, top-rung public universities achieved substantial standing, even internationally. The most telling evidence, of which surprisingly little is made, is that their products figured prominently in the elite global workforce. These universities entered into numerous international exchanges and partnerships, and many of their faculty achieved international recognition. There were no world rankings then, but we could look the world in the eye.
These achievements filtered down to second- and even third-rung institutions, often in areas and among communities that had no access to higher education previously. In other words, the structure and output were pyramidal: there was a broad base supporting the best centres, hence the potential to add to the latter's number.
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Undeniably, serious deficiencies went unaddressed. Among them was the dismally unwelcoming face of the system. Teacher and student alike were thwarted and alienated by a byzantine bureaucracy. The physical state of the campuses was often no less dismal. This appeared more and more unacceptable, especially to the educated elite, as globalisation opened up the attractive and friendly ambience of campuses abroad.
We cannot wish away the dross, the inertia, and the downright corruption lodged in the earlier system, but we have suicidally allowed these to obscure the substantial achievement and greater potential it offered. At the turn of the century, the public university was a work in progress. The nation could have continued to build upon its imperfect but very real success. Instead, that success contributed to its undoing.
By this I mean that inadequately yet perceptibly, it extended the reach of higher education, and thus the social composition of academia and the workforce. This could not please the traditional stakeholders. The deficiencies were enlarged in their sight, even while (and this really was a failure) the system did not develop to accommodate the demands of a new aspiring class. We can compare the growing dissatisfaction at the time with public sector banks, and their eclipse by the newcome private sector.
The tipping point: Mandal Commission
The tipping point came with the Mandal Commission reforms. Campus demography now altered significantly, though hardly in line with the country's population profile. The educated elite (largely coinciding with the privileged-caste and economic elite) exuded an attitudinal pressure that made the entry of private universities inevitable. Tertiary education thus reverted rapidly to the same disparities that had always marked the school system. The inequity of the educational order was complete.
If today's India has any discernible strategy at all, it seems to be courting the American mix of top-rung private universities with a sprinkling of exceptional public ones, crowning a substratum of indifferent-to-competent centres, both public and private. Even in the US, this system is grossly skewed against indigent and underprivileged students.
In India, the utterly different demographic and economic framework makes it shockingly unviable, with a reverse historical thrust. In America, the bedrock of the system is a raft of private universities set up one or more centuries ago. The state university followed later to offer relief to the under-resourced. In India, on the contrary, the default or bedrock system is state-owned and state-run. The private university came much later to offer relief, if that is the word, to privileged and affluent students. In other words, its role in India is neither defining nor fundamental. It simply cannot be the shaping force of the system.
In fact, there is no shaping force and no system. Having opened the gates to private universities, the government has not advanced any overall vision to integrate public and private institutions in a meaningful policy. The private universities are uncoordinated initiatives, each going its own way. The public university system has lost the cohesion ensured earlier by the UGC. In opposition-ruled States, the Centre and the Governor connive to hamstring the State-run universities. India is sliding towards an anarchic welter of tertiary institutes through which individual students must track their fraught courses.
Platforms are even emerging for universities with no government oversight whatever. GIFT city in Gujarat offers such liberty to offsite campuses of foreign universities. The entry of foreign universities generally is accepted policy. More offsite campuses might be the readiest outcome if Indian students are thwarted from going abroad, to the US in particular. Such a development would hardly enhance the Indian system but rather obstruct its organic growth.
It is unlikely to happen on any scale. Eminent foreign universities, if they came at all, would demand a package of concessions that even a compliant government may find impolitic to provide. They may also try to divert their Indian clientele to offsite campuses elsewhere, like West Asia or South-East Asia. Medical students already flock to many improbable destinations.
Private institutions: The cost is simply too much
Their predicament is the acutest sign of how private institutions fail India's genuine overall need. They simply cost too much. A private medical college can charge crores. Students turn instead to 'affordable' seats at Rs.20 or Rs.30 lakh in the erstwhile Soviet bloc or in Nepal and Bangladesh. Not all these students will return to India. If they do, they may not pass the government's qualifying test.
If they pass, they will join upmarket private hospitals to recover the cost of their training, as will those who have paid even more at Indian institutions. Disturbingly, the latter are drawn from way down the selection list simply because they can afford the fees, ousting higher-ranking aspirants who cannot. We are drawing on less and less meritorious entrants from one small segment of the population while ignoring the talent among the rest. It is a colossal waste of the nation's human resources.
Even high-end public institutions, like the IITs and Central universities, have joined the high-cost league wherein the student of modest means is viewed as an interloper. A Dalit student's IIT admission was annulled last year for a few hours' delay in scraping together the formidable fees. It took the Supreme Court to ensure his entry.
The dizzy rise of private universities might soon hit a ceiling, having run out of clients able to foot the bill or willing to do so in the hope of a rewarding job. This has already happened with engineering colleges, many of which are shutting down.
In varying degree, but always with much hardship, deprivation, and waste, this scenario obtains in every sphere of learning. Perhaps one should say sphere of training, as the model is viable only for courses in lucrative pursuits like medicine, engineering, law, and management. The majority of private universities confine themselves to these disciplines. The best may be very good, but (economic barriers apart) they scarcely contribute to a balanced nationwide network of full-fledged universities offering the range of disciplines needed for a total knowledge order—or even a knowledge economy, which requires fundamental research without direct returns.
If the US has become the world's greatest powerhouse of knowledge, it is by investing in the full spectrum of fundamental research, with the world's best talent to staff it. Profits have followed abundantly but at a few removes. India, by contrast, is as impatient as a whining child. We want the fruit of knowledge to spring directly from the soil, dispensing with the plant (or shall I say STEM?). We may end up with cut flowers from someone else's garden.
Across India, hardly a dozen private universities aspire to the full range of disciplines, including the basic and experimental sciences. Their sustained growth awaits time; yet the government may use them as a pretext to slash its own research budget. As for corporate support, Indian industry's record of financing basic research is dismal. Anusandhan, the Union government's new research fund (of drastically limited scope, excluding inter alia virtually all the social sciences), budgets only Rs.10,000 crore per annum, and over 70 per cent of this is to come from industry. In the fund's first year, the government slashed its own commitment by 90 per cent. Figures for corporate contributions are not yet available.
Thus, on the one hand, we are excluding, by gross economic criteria, the greater number of potential students, from the sections of society with the richest untapped potential. On the other, by enforcing the same criteria, we are severely limiting the range and depth of research. Contrary to popular perception, the greatest threat is not to the humanities but to the basic sciences, as they need a massive initial investment with sustained support to follow.
Intolerance, the most visible deterrent to free academic activity
It is against this systemic vacuum that we should view the most visible deterrent to free academic activity: the growing intolerance, surveillance, and authoritarianism overshadowing academic life in India. This carries an obvious irony in the current international context. The turmoil in other countries could be turned to advantage by India, both to recall its students home and to attract those of other countries.
This clearly cannot happen if Indian campuses, too, are closed and intolerant spaces, dogged by obscurantism and authoritarian rule. People fleeing the fire may be wary of the frying pan. Nor should we view the situation simply as a business opportunity for private operators, a kind of windfall for invisible exports. Not only would such a take bypass the resident Indian population towards whom, we may reasonably demand, Indian education should be oriented; it will not succeed even on its own limited terms.
The Economist, not unexpectedly, suggests expansion of the private universities as the best means of a quantum upscaling of the system. It is unfathomable how this can be so if 80-90 per cent of the population are barred entry by the crudest economic criterion. It is equally doubtful how many private institutions could provide sustainable funding for academic infrastructure and contingencies (as opposed to one-time capital grants for land and buildings), above all in the basic sciences.
Finally, the presumed freedom of private universities (which The Economist makes much of) seems to be available only so long as it is not availed of. Except in outfits like GIFT City, private universities are equally subject to UGC and other government regulations (not to mention political exactions), not only of the Union but of the State where they are located. Freedom of speech and operation is no less precarious, as repeated incidents at the high-profile Ashoka University (including the one unfolding as I write) prove.
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There are no short cuts to achieving a world-level university system. The Western order, which must be our proximate model, has evolved over nearly a millennium, but most intensively and relevantly in the last 200 years. The modern Indian system also goes back 200 years and was set up explicitly to integrate India with the unfolding international knowledge order.
That was the declared purpose of Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (although the latter ran a Sanskrit College), as of Syed Ahmed Khan and Madan Mohan Malaviya, despite the names of the institutions they founded. It is the foundational philosophy behind today's flagship institutions like the IITs. We must ensure an honourable place within that order for venerable Indian knowledge systems, but it cannot be by tampering with the core principles of higher education in the 21st century, among which are rationalism, equity, and intellectual freedom.
Again, higher education and research today require big money, not for direct financial returns but as an investment in knowledge as a productive good in its own right. What it produces are tangible gains like well-being, good governance, and economic development. This necessarily implies valuing knowledge as a general or social rather than a private good.
Until we grant these guiding principles, our educational advancement will always falter. The Vishwaguru will fail his disciples.
Sukanta Chaudhuri is Emeritus Professor of English, Jadavpur University. He has chaired UGC committees and been associated with other initiatives in higher education.