India needs freer campuses with stronger institutions where dissent is not a policing problem, where students are not treated as potential criminals, where teachers do not fear that a lecture can become a scandal, and where “quality” does not mean ideological conformity
https://thewire.in/campus/gagged-campuses-hollowed-classrooms-the-university-in-india-today
It is not uncommon to read a new media piece every few months where someone rediscovers the same supposed malady that ails the Indian universities: Indian universities are failing because they are too political. If only the campus could be disinfected of politics, the argument goes, “human knowledge” would finally flourish.
Rankings have become the favourite instrument of this supposedly novel diagnosis because clean numbers seductively imply that academic quality is quantifiable, quite like GDP. In both cases, it is not. Such rankings are treated like a report card that proves Indian universities are broken.
But rankings are not neutral descriptors. They reward particular kinds of output and visibility, often privileging wealth, English-language publishing ecosystems, citation networks, and older reputational hierarchies – all potentially disastrous governing philosophies.
Most importantly, rankings talk allows policymakers and commentators to skirt harder questions about academic freedom, appointment of faculty, and curricula development. You can blame student politics forever and still not answer why universities are being made structurally incapable of intellectual risk-taking.
One possible way to describe India’s higher education predicament is this: public universities are being asked to do a lot more with a lot less, even as their autonomy gets narrowed in the name of standardisation and discipline.
Instances like guest lectures being cancelled for being politically inconvenient, film screenings being blocked, and faculty facing targetted campaigns have become a part of the regular functioning of the university space, particularly the public ones. In this environment, students learn very quickly which questions attract scrutiny thereby creating a climate that teaches caution as professional survival.
by Rishabh Kachroo
04/01/2026