The farce at the recent AI Expo, where Galgotias University sought to pass off a Chinese robot dog as its own ‘original’ work, could easily be dismissed as an embarrassing aberration, but in fact exposes a national system increasingly built on falsehoods, where projection substitutes for reality. Galgotias University’s blunder is a metaphor. It captures a system that has become adept at staging success, at projecting competence and modernity, even as the underlying structures remain neglected and fragile.
This is not an isolated lapse. It is the natural outcome of a social sector reshaped by privatisation, where education and healthcare are no longer public goods but commodities—and where the governing ethic is pure extraction. Private players excel at glossy brochures, celebrity endorsements, and event and exhibition theatrics, but struggle with genuine research, affordable fee, or ethical practices. Public institutions, meanwhile, are starved of resources, creating a vicious cycle where the consumer has no real choice.
A four-year engineering or management degree at a private university now routinely costs between `10 lakh and `25 lakh, and much more in the ‘elite’ private universities. Medical education is even more prohibitive: an MBBS seat in a private college can range from `50 lakh to over `1 crore. These are not fees; they are financial commitments that can distort the trajectory of entire families. Students increasingly graduate into debt, with diminishing opportunities for employment that could justify the cost of their degrees. Very few of these overpriced institutions, moreover, are delivering anything approximating an acceptable standard of higher education.
Healthcare is harsher. Each year, over five crore people in India are pushed below the poverty line by medical expenses. A single hospitalisation for a serious illness can cost anywhere from `2 lakh to `20 lakh or more. In moments of vulnerability, families do not bargain; they comply. Lands are sold, homes are mortgaged, debts outlast recovery. And many private hospitals inflate both treatments and costs to meet arbitrary profit quotas.
This is not merely the failure of markets. It is the failure of a system driven by sheer greed and opportunism, where black marketing and profiteering are normalised as ‘surge pricing’—not only in private enterprise, but even within the public sector. The language of efficiency has become a cover for price gouging.
Meanwhile, the public system has been allowed to wither. Government schools and hospitals, though still the backbone for millions, are chronically underfunded and quality has often intentionally been compromised to redirect benefits to the private sector.
The consequences extend beyond individual hardship. They reach into the foundations of India’s economic future. A system that commodifies education but underinvests in knowledge cannot sustain innovation. India’s total R&D spending remains just 0.64–0.7 per cent of GDP. Of this, the private sector contributes only about 36 to 37 per cent—or just 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of GDP, barely USD 6 to 7 billion annually. In advanced economies, private industry typically accounts for 60 to 75 per cent of R&D, with far higher overall investment. India’s innovation base remains unsurprisingly shallow and oriented toward short-term returns.
The pattern is consistent. Where public purpose recedes, private opportunism expands. Where the state abdicates responsibility, markets do not deliver efficiency—they deliver extraction and failure, concealed undercorporate branding.
The AI Expo episode is not trivial. It is emblematic. It captures a system that has mastered the art of appearing competent while neglecting the harder task of being so. Universities advertise excellence, hospitals advertise care, and the state advertises responsible regulation. Beneath the projection lies an ugly truth: even the ability to pay exorbitant sums cannot assure access to knowledge, to health, and to opportunity.
An irresponsible, unaccountable state, which seeks little beyond the enrichment of a narrow cabal, can only produce an irresponsible and unaccountable private sector.