India, Dec. 26 -- The 2026 Times Higher Education rankings make for grim reading. Not one Indian university features in the world's top 200 universities. By contrast, Japan has five, South Korea has six, and China has 13. And the gap is widening. China now has five universities in the top 40 worldwide (this rises to seven if we include Hong Kong) and its national champions, Tsinghua and Peking, are on the verge of breaking into the world's top 10.

We are not without hope. The National Education Policy signals that the government wants to do better. The continued development of IITs and IIMs, which have begun setting up international campuses, bodes well. More promising is the rise of well-run private universities, symbolised above all by...