India, Dec. 27 -- 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 Ashoka University. Even so, to know if Indian universities can "catch up" with the rest of Asia, we need to understand why they fell behind in the first place. We need to start with the fact that modern education arrived in India sooner than elsewhere in Asia. When the Japanese launched Keio University in 1858, Hindu College, Elphinstone College, and Presidency College were already thriving. By the time the Chinese set up Peking University in 1898, British India had five public universities, and the Native States had established their Maharaja's Colleges. These institutions housed great minds, from JC Bose, PC Ray, and Ashutosh Mukherjee in Bengal and KT Telang, MG Ranade, and RG Bhandarkar in Bombay, to Sundaram Pillai and BN Seal in Mysore, Aurobindo Ghosh and TK Gajjar in Baroda, and Aghorenath Chattopadhyay in Hyderabad (and this is only to skim the surface). Clearly, we do not have to hark back to Takshashila and Nalanda to think of a time when Indian universities led the pack in Asia. How was this lead squandered? The hard truth is that once the British and the Maharajas departed, universities began to be treated not as ends in themselves but as means to address grievances. To advance socialism, "reactionary" ideals had to be chased out; to satisfy regional pride, locals had to be advantaged; to redress inequality, fees had to be kept low; to overcome caste, reservations were introduced; and to regulate "quality", bureaucratic interference was normalised. The question was never what politicians and bureaucrats could do for the university but what the university could do for them. In short order, the university became an extension of party and State, as seen in the keenness with which middle-aged candidates partake in "student elections" and the ease with which bureaucrats maintain "ex officio" roles. It is not all gloom. There remain talents scattered across our public universities. A few institutions, particularly the IITs and IIMs, have remained autonomous and grown in stature. But, in the international race, it is not enough to walk briskly when one's competitors are running full tilt. To wit, when the Times Higher Education rankings launched in 2004, the IITs were 20 places above Tsinghua. Two decades later, they are more than a hundred places behind it. The realisation that public universities are not likely to regain their former glory any time soon has prompted some admirable private initiatives. Unfortunately, these endeavours face an uphill battle for three reasons. First, because they are latecomers, these universities are invariably located outside metropolitan centres. This creates an immense geographic disadvantage. When travelling to a university involves long, back-breaking commutes, opportunities for international collaboration and fortuitous connections dim rapidly. Recruitment becomes harder too, because modern families want dual careers, access to high-quality schooling and health care, and leisure opportunities. This is why more than 90% of the top 200 universities in the world are located in urban hubs and within an hour of a major international airport. Second, because these universities are frequently reliant on single founder-donors, they tend to be under-institutionalised (or, to put it another way, the donor's family and retainers tend to be over-involved). The curse of the "family business", which has stifled corporate India, may undo much in the higher education sector too. Third, there is the "cost of doing business" in India. To rise in world rankings, these universities will need to attract global talent. To do so, they not only have to persuade "stars" to quit esteemed universities abroad, but they also have to convince them to put up with the inconveniences of daily life in India, where "contacts" cannot save you from constant pollution, endless gridlock, sexual harassment, and language chauvinism. These challenges are not insurmountable. But there is worse in the offing, because private institutions are not immune from the sarkari mentality that has humbled our public universities. The essential problem is that our political class cares not one whit for the autonomy of the private or civil sphere. We see this dynamic at play in the growing calls for reservations in private corporations. Against such populism, what defence do entrepreneurs have? The prospect of organised mobs, FIRs, and endless court appearances - our cynical politicians know that these will bring their opponents to heel. Thus, the more successful this new crop of private universities becomes, the more likely it is that the very same influences that corroded public universities will work their way in. They will be pressured to give way when it comes to admissions, quotas, grades, and unions - or else. This vulnerability is only deepened by the duplicity of our intellectual class, which smugly critiques these fledgling universities as "elitist" and "neoliberal" (even though they would move heaven and earth to send their own children to a Yale or an Amherst). Worse still, they send these universities to an early demise by urging them to become more "radical", as if the purpose of a university is to advance political revolution rather than human knowledge. Ask Peking and Tsinghua where the former path leads. They learnt the hard way in 1968 and 1989, which is why they now focus on generating patents rather than protests. Here then is the dilemma India faces as it tries to rebuild its university sector. The great universities of modern Asia have been produced in one of two ways: Either by strong States with vision and taste or by selfless philanthropists backed by the good sense of their fellow citizens. India once had both, now it has little of either....