Table of Contents
The Making of Next-Generation Institutions
Institutions do not merely transmit knowledge — they decide, again and again, what counts as knowledge at all.
Institutions as Contested Ground
o institution simply transmits knowledge; it decides, again and again, what counts as knowledge at all. Every curriculum committee, accreditation visit, and funding formula encodes a judgment about which questions are worth asking. India is rebuilding this machinery under the National Education Policy 2020, through new autonomy regimes, a reformed accreditation system, and an unsettled debate over what should replace the University Grants Commission. The real stakes go beyond administrative reform: institutions are where knowledge, power, and policy are continuously negotiated.
Whose Knowledge Counts
Michel Foucault argued that what a society accepts as true is produced only within networks of institutional authority (Foucault, 1980). Research metrics and reward structures do not simply measure knowledge; they shape what gets studied and legitimised (Bowman, 2023). Michael Apple made a parallel point about curricula: choices reflect existing hierarchies, not neutral technical decisions (Apple, 1995). For NEP 2020’s push toward multidisciplinary learning, declaring intent to value diverse knowledge is not the same as building incentives that reward it.
“Institutions are where knowledge, power, and policy are continuously negotiated.”
Autonomy: A Policy Word That Cuts Both Ways
NEP 2020 proposes replacing India’s roughly 40,000 affiliated colleges with graded, autonomous institutions governed by independent boards (Ministry of Education, 2020). But autonomy here has historically been a “Janus word”: it sounds like devolved power, but because the state grants it, it can just as easily remain control dressed as freedom (The India Forum, 2020). The Institutes of Eminence scheme shows this concretely: real freedom, yet selected, funded, and revocable by the same regulator (University Grants Commission, 2017); a stalled Higher Education Commission of India proposal draws similar criticism (PRS Legislative Research, 2018). Autonomy is renegotiated continuously, never simply granted.
Accreditation and the Machinery of Legitimacy
If autonomy determines how much freedom an institution has, accreditation determines whether it is believed. NAAC’s grading is the de facto currency of institutional legitimacy (National Assessment and Accreditation Council, n.d.), a currency whose fragility became clear in February 2025, when the CBI arrested NAAC’s committee chairman and several assessors for accepting bribes for inflated ratings (Teachers Institute, 2026).
NAAC’s shift to a binary accredited/not-accredited scale reads as an admission that the old system let appearance substitute for substance, with much of the sector still outside any external accountability mechanism (Teachers Institute, 2026).
An accreditation certificate and a research paper perform the same function: each declares, on behalf of an institution, what should be believed. The difference is only in the audience.
Building the Institutions India Needs
None of this argues against reform; it argues for reform that treats knowledge, power, and policy as inseparable. A genuinely multidisciplinary institution needs boards willing to fund disciplines without an obvious market, curricula shaped by scholars rather than placement statistics, and accreditation robust enough to resist the kind of capture NAAC just experienced. Policy can mandate multidisciplinarity; only sustained institutional practice can deliver it.
“An accreditation certificate and a research paper perform the same function: each declares what should be believed.”
Case Study: The IIT Governance Model
The IITs show how governance design, not policy intent alone, shapes what an institution can produce. Each IIT, under the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961, is run by a Board of Governors coordinated nationally by an IIT Council (Council of Indian Institutes of Technology, n.d.) — real autonomy, extended further for Institutes of Eminence, but still bounded centrally.
IIT Governance at a Glance
- Board of Governors — runs each institute day-to-day under common Council-set standards.
- Institutional autonomy — covers curricula and funds, but within centrally set limits.
- Global ranking — IIT Delhi reached rank 118 in the QS World Rankings 2027, its best ever (IIT Delhi, 2026).
- Faculty recruitment — remains strained nationwide despite governance gains (ThePrint, 2026).
- Research ecosystem — several IITs rank among the world’s strongest on citations per faculty (IIT Delhi, 2026).
Conclusion: Knowledge Does Not Govern Itself
Knowledge does not organise, fund, or protect itself; institutions do, through structures of power that policy can reshape but never eliminate. As the IIT case shows, policy builds only the scaffolding; it cannot make an institution trustworthy. That work falls hardest on private universities, which enjoy freedoms public institutions rarely get.
Policy can widen or narrow their space, but cannot compel them to use it well — to treat staff as partners, open decisions to scrutiny, or protect a researcher’s freedom to ask an inconvenient question. Those choices are made inside the institution, not imposed from Delhi. Whether India’s next generation of institutions becomes genuinely open to new knowledge will depend less on policy ambition than on the ordinary work of building trustworthy governance.
India’s aspiration to become a global knowledge leader will depend not only on policy reform but on institutions, public and private, willing to extend real transparency and academic freedom to the people who sustain them. Policy can open the door; only governance built on ethical leadership and trust-based quality assurance can make an institution worth walking through it for.
“Policy can open the door; only governance built on ethical leadership and trust-based quality assurance can make an institution worth walking through it for.”
“Institutions are where knowledge, power, and policy are continuously negotiated — and where trust, once lost, must be rebuilt from the inside.”
Dr. Sandeep Sachan
Associate Professor, Department of Fashion Interior · NIFT, Varanasi
Dr. Sandeep Sachan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fashion Interior at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Varanasi. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. He has more than 25 years of experience in higher education, academic administration, and institutional leadership, having served as Campus Director, Joint Director, Associate Professor, and Head of Department, contributing to campus development, academic planning, laboratory establishment, curriculum development, and industry–academia collaboration across engineering and design institutions.
His research interests include sustainable interior and furniture design, smart furniture systems, Quality 4.0, Industry 4.0, supply chain management, human-centred design, healthcare interiors, colour psychology, design innovation, handloom and handicraft development, and sustainable design. He has published research papers in national and international journals, integrating engineering, technology, sustainability, and design to address contemporary challenges in the furniture and interior design sectors.