NALANDA, Dec. 23 -- Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday flagged India's slipping global standing in university rankings and cautioned that "unrealistic global aspirations" cannot substitute for basic investments in schools and higher learning institutes. Tharoor, also a renowned author, was speaking during an interactive session on literature with Prof Sachin Chaturvedi at the ongoing Nalanda Literature Festival in Bihar. "India no longer hosts any of the world's leading universities... While a few universities have now entered the top 200, none figure among the top 10 or even the top 50 worldwide," the Thiruvananthapuram MP said. He welcomed the revival of Nalanda University as a symbol of India's civilisational legacy. The Nalanda Mahavihara site comprises the archaeological remains of a monastic and scholastic institution dating from the third century BCE to the 13th century CE. The ruins of the centre of learning is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a coveted tag it earned in 2016. Tharoor said the ancient university was a leading institution of the world, "not just because there was no competition, but also because it was an extraordinary institution."He called it a matter of "great, great satisfaction" that Nalanda University has been re-established after nearly 800 years of its "third and lasting" destruction by Bakhtyar Khilji in around 1200 AD. Tharoor pointed out that Nalanda once attracted students from as far as Turkiye and Persia in the west to Thailand in the east and Japan in the north....