Galgotias and the AI Impact Summit Fiasco
The controversy surrounding the Galgotias University in the AI Impact Summit has elicited a wave of public shock, a barrage of ridicule, and institutional embarrassment. The intensity of this reaction invites a question: Why should such an episode surprise us at all? Is it not one of the pieces of the anti-science and anti-intellectual age that our higher education space has been ushered in? The Age of Unreason, so to speak. Rather than treating the incident as an aberration attributable to the failings of a single private university, it may be more analytically productive to interpret it as symptomatic of a broader transformation in India’s higher education landscape and, more generally, in the political economy of knowledge production in contemporary India. The episode exposes structural features of an ecosystem in which spectacle increasingly substitutes for substance and institutional legitimacy is, more often than not, manufactured rather than earned. Peter Fleming, in his scathing study of the neoliberal university, Dark Academia: How Universities Die, warns of institutions hollowed out by managerial imperatives and metrics-obsession. These are places where the autonomy, craft, and vocational zeal that once defined academic life have given way to a performance of relevance rather than its substance. He calls this the "zombie university." What the Galgotias episode suggests is that this undead condition is not merely a Western affliction. It has found fertile ground here, too.
Over the past three decades, India has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of private higher education. This expansion was initially justified in terms of democratising access, meeting rising demand, and compensating for the fiscal constraints of the public sector. However, the regulatory architecture failed to evolve at a commensurate pace. The result has been the proliferation of institutions that operate in a grey zone between formal accreditation and substantive academic credibility. In such a context, quality assurance mechanisms tend to become procedural, emphasising compliance with paperwork rather than the cultivation of intellectual ecosystems. The mushrooming of private universities, many established through state legislation with minimal infrastructural or faculty requirements, reflects a policy orientation that privileges numerical expansion over qualitative consolidation.
The political appeal of this expansion is not difficult to discern; universities function as visible markers of development, particularly in regions seeking rapid economic transformation. Announcing new institutions generates the impression of forward movement, even when the underlying capacity remains underdeveloped.
In some instances, governments have conferred prestigious designations upon institutions still in their formative stages, thereby collapsing the distinction between aspiration and achievement. Such gestures, while symbolically potent, risk diluting the meaning of academic excellence itself. Prestige cannot be distributed through administrative fiat. It needs to be earned through sustained scholarly output. Else, there is a risk of it becoming susceptible to inflation.
Within this broader environment, events such as research showcase summits acquire a performative character. They are staged less as sites of rigorous intellectual exchange and more as spectacles designed to signal innovation and global relevance. Is it not worth asking why has India woken up so late to the developments in the artificial intelligence space? Why have the champions of the 70-hour work week been caught sleeping at the wheel, while their counterparts elsewhere have been ploughing back profits and investments in research and development, instead of paying shareholders dividends, building products that have captured the imagination of the world at a level rarely seen in the science and technology space in the last five decades?
In such a context, hosting an AI summit allows institutions to position themselves within a narrative of cutting-edge relevance, regardless of their actual research capabilities. The Galgotias episode also reflects a deeper cultural shift toward what might be termed the "quantification of prestige." Rankings, enrolment numbers, placement statistics, and infrastructural claims have become central currencies in the competition for students and investment.
While metrics can serve legitimate evaluative purposes, their proliferation often encourages institutions to optimise for appearances rather than outcomes. This phenomenon is not unique to India; it resonates with global critiques of audit culture and performative accountability in higher education. However, in a context where regulatory oversight is uneven and public scrutiny episodic, the distortions can be particularly acute.
Equally significant is the role of media and political discourse in amplifying these dynamics, as we have seen that contemporary public culture rewards announcements, inaugurations, and grand narratives of technological leapfrogging. Universities, especially private ones reliant on tuition revenue and brand recognition, are incentivised to participate in this economy of attention. The boundary between academic institutions and corporate brands becomes increasingly blurred. Summit diplomacy, celebrity endorsements, and visually striking demonstrations of technology function as tools of reputation management. In such a milieu, the line between educational mission and marketing strategy is difficult to sustain.
It would, however, be reductive to attribute the problem solely to private actors because the regulatory state bears responsibility for creating conditions in which rapid expansion proceeded without robust mechanisms of accountability. Let us not forget that the University Grants Commission has not had a full-time head since early 2025.
Accreditation bodies have often been criticised for opacity, bureaucratic inertia, and susceptibility to political influence. Moreover, the absence of sustained public investment in higher education has indirectly encouraged the privatisation of opportunity.
As public universities struggle with resource constraints, private institutions fill the vacuum, albeit unevenly. The resulting stratification produces a system in which access expands, but quality remains highly differentiated. The scandal thus serves as a mirror reflecting collective choices rather than individual misconduct.
Furthermore, the episode raises questions about the symbolic politics of technological aspiration in contemporary India. Artificial intelligence, like earlier narratives of information technology and digital transformation, carries the promise of global competitiveness. Yet the pursuit of symbolic alignment with technological modernity can sometimes overshadow the slow, labor-intensive processes of building research capacity, fostering academic freedom, and nurturing interdisciplinary inquiry. The desire to appear future-ready may thus paradoxically undermine the conditions necessary for genuine innovation. In this sense, the public shock following the summit controversy may reveal less about the unexpectedness of the event and more about a disjunction between collective self-image and institutional reality. India’s aspiration to be recognised as a knowledge superpower coexists with structural weaknesses in its educational infrastructure. Episodes that expose this gap provoke discomfort precisely because they challenge the narrative of seamless progress.
The tendency to personalise blame directed at a particular university or a particular professor allows society to avoid confronting systemic issues that implicate policymakers, regulators, and consumers alike.
Ultimately, the significance of the Galgotias fiasco lies not in the immediate embarrassment it caused but in the questions it poses about the trajectory of higher education in India. If the goal is to build institutions capable of genuine intellectual leadership, the emphasis must shift from rapid proliferation to sustained investment in faculty development, research ecosystems, and transparent governance. The episode, therefore, should be understood as a cautionary moment.
Whether this moment will catalyse meaningful reform or merely fade into the cycle of episodic outrage remains uncertain. What is clear, however, is that the conditions that made the controversy possible are deeply embedded in the contemporary landscape of Indian higher education. To address them requires not only institutional introspection but also a broader societal and political commitment to valuing substance over spectacle and credibility over numerical expansion.
Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha is Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Rashtriya Janata Dal ; views are personal
