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The AI Impact Summit, 2026 held in Delhi was a huge opportunity for India to project country’s technical skills globally. It was attended by the best of minds from Google, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft and the India counterparts like Reliance/Jio. The French President Macron, who was on an India tour, briefly visited the Summit accompanied by the Indian Prime Minister. But alas! The event managers made such a big mess. The infamous traffic bottlenecks sent a wrong signal to the international visitors. To top it all, a private university from Uttar Pradesh, Galgotia, attempted to project a Chinese made AI robot as its own creation and did immense damage to the “Make in India” brand, which the country is now trying to market internationally.

Indian talent, especially with the spread of information technology has been respected globally. In fact, most of the big IT companies in the world, now being transformed into AI giants, are headed by Indian borns. And yet, Indians have never been able to create any globally recognised ‘original’ hardware or software on Indian soil. One of the reasons of course is the government’s low priority on research and development (R&D). Recent data from the government’s Department of Science and Technology reveal that only 0.65% of GDP is spent on R&D, against 2.4% in China and 3% in the US. Only recently, the government has woken up to the reality and announced in investing in five microchip factories of its own. But isn’t it already late? Can we compete with countries like Korea and Taiwan in chip making?

The government seems not to be bothered in building the real infrastructure that can harness the human talents within the country. The visionaries, after independence, created the ‘temples’ in IITs and IIMs and prepared the human resource; but they left for foreign lands for jobs, finding no proper opportunities here. Capital expenditure for road and allied infrastructure has increased considerably in recent times; but not for laboratories and R&D. When the New Education Policy, 2020 was introduced, the experts who created the document had recommended that it would require a budget of 6% of the GDP for proper implementation.

The government, in principle, agreed to it then, and it was introduced. But the central budget on education still remains at 2.5% of GDP. Since education is in the concurrent list, combined expenditure of states on education and that of the centre would not go beyond 4% of GDP.

So the inevitable has happened. India has remained a ‘copycat’ in all forms of manufacturing, since there is no fund or opportunity for ‘original’ research, either in the industries or in the universities. We believe in showbiz or events, not in original research. The Chinese robotic dog was drawing immense crowds at Galgotia University’s pavilion, till the faux pas was noticed by the authorities and were asked to leave the Summit grounds. But by then, the damage was done. The world came to know about India’s real weakness: a mind yet to recover fully from colonial dependence.

India is ambitious enough to become the third largest economy of the world. India has the resources and there is nothing wrong to think big. But one cannot achieve excellence through optics. It needs mental rigour, sustained research. The industry and the academe will have to collaborate to manufacture something original. The traditional centres of excellence are being systematically dismantled. The newer institutions are increasingly becoming tools of propaganda.

The foreign universities have already landed in India. If a student can obtain a Harvard or MIT or an Oxford degree staying in India, who will look for an indigenous private degree? If the universities in India desire to collaborate with the foreign universities, they will have to match their quality. The ‘copycat’ mentality will take India nowhere. The gloss and glitter of infrastructure is not enough; nor the present colourful pageantry.