India Does Not Need More Islands Of Excellence - Ishiqa Multani

For much of the past twenty-five years, India’s progress has been measured through expansion: more universities, more hospitals, more startups, more digital connections. This expansion changed the country. Yet the next chapter cannot be written by multiplying institutions that continue to work in isolation.

India does not suffer from a shortage of ambition. It suffers from too many disconnected capabilities.

Universities teach, companies employ, researchers publish and hospitals deliver care, but knowledge does not move easily between them. Students encounter industry only when they begin looking for jobs. Researchers may develop ideas without access to the computing power, multidisciplinary teams or commercial pathways needed to test them at scale. Companies search for specialised talent while remaining outside the process through which that talent is developed.

Artificial intelligence makes these separations expensive. AI is not simply another subject to be added to an engineering curriculum. It is changing how engineering is taught and practised. Across Indian higher education, programmes are emerging in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and robotics. That is encouraging, but changing the name of a degree is easier than changing the nature of learning.

The real shift must be from teaching technology to building with it.

Students should work on live problems whose answers are not available in textbooks. A mechanical engineer should be able to collaborate with a data scientist. A medical researcher should be able to work with a computing team. Faculty should have the infrastructure to move from an idea to an experiment, while companies should be able to participate without reducing universities to recruitment centres.

This is the thinking behind an AI Factory. The word “factory” is deliberate. A factory converts inputs into usable outcomes; an AI Factory should convert computing power, data, research and human imagination into deployable solutions. It is not merely a laboratory filled with machines. It is shared infrastructure where students learn by creating, researchers test at scale, and companies develop and validate applications alongside academic talent.

Its value lies in the collisions it makes possible. A healthcare problem can become an engineering challenge. An industrial bottleneck can become a research question. A student project can become intellectual property, a startup or a solution deployed in the field. The institution becomes not the final destination of knowledge, but the place where knowledge begins to move.

This model demands a different measure of university performance. Enrolments, buildings, publications and placements remain important, but they are incomplete. We should ask: How many disciplines collaborate? How quickly does research reach applications? How many students have solved a consequential problem before graduating? How much knowledge creates value beyond the campus?

India’s next advantage will not come from producing more degree-holders who compete with machines at routine tasks. It will come from developing people who can frame problems, exercise judgement and use systems responsibly.

The past twenty-five years expanded opportunity. The next twenty-five must connect it. India’s strongest institutions will not be islands of excellence. They will be ecosystems that make excellence travel.