In 2017, I asked whether India could create a world-class university within a generation, when no Indian institution ranked among the world’s top 200. Nearly a decade later, India’s visibility has improved considerably, but its depth has not. The pressing question now lies closer to home: can Odisha use the Centre’s new university-township initiative not merely to build another campus, but to create a genuine knowledge ecosystem — a place where universities, laboratories, industry and skills work together?
The progress is real. In the QS World University Rankings 2027, three Indian institutions sit in the world’s top 200: IIT Delhi at 118th — India’s best-ever position — with IIT Bombay at 134th and IIT Madras at 170th, and fifty-two Indian institutions appear overall. Nor is the story confined to the older IITs; representation has broadened across the country.
But representation is not influence. India still has no institution in the world’s top 100, and its best universities remain far behind the American, British, Chinese and Singaporean institutions that set the terms of global research. The weaknesses are structural: limited international faculty and students, uneven research quality, faculty shortages, fragmented disciplines and, above all, too little institutional autonomy. Rankings are diagnostic instruments, not the purpose of a university. The challenge is no longer entering the tables; it is developing the depth and intellectual weight to join the leading group.
Odisha’s record mirrors this pattern. The state can point to islands of excellence: in the NIRF 2025 rankings, two Bhubaneswar institutions — Siksha ’O’ Anusandhan (SOA) and KIIT — stood 15th and 17th among all Indian universities. Around them sit NIT Rourkela, IIT Bhubaneswar, AIIMS Bhubaneswar, IIM Sambalpur and the Central University of Odisha. The state’s academic base is far broader than a decade ago.
Yet the divergence is striking. Utkal University, the state’s flagship public university, sits outside the top 100 and 48th among state public universities. The gap between Odisha’s private and centrally funded institutions and its public universities remains wide. Why? Governance, funding flexibility, faculty recruitment, leadership continuity, or research incentives? Whatever the answer, one conclusion is clear: Odisha has several islands of excellence, but they do not yet function as one connected knowledge ecosystem.
This is what makes the Union Budget 2026-27 significant. The Centre has proposed supporting states, through a competitive challenge route, to create five university townships near major industrial and logistics corridors — academic zones bringing several universities, research organisations, skill centres and residential communities together. Odisha has signalled it will bid, with Bhubaneswar, Sambalpur and Koraput under consideration as possible sites; nothing has been confirmed. Odisha is competing for the eastern-zone township against West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
The shift in thinking is the real story. The objective is no longer to place another university behind a boundary wall, but to create a city-scale environment in which universities, laboratories, industry, skill centres, startups and homes support one another. For Odisha, this may be the most important higher-education opportunity since its leading national institutions were established. It is a chance to do in one stroke what the state has otherwise had to attempt institution by institution. It is also a test — because the same scheme could easily become something else.
The temptation will be to treat the township as a land question: where are the thousand acres, and who develops them. That order is backwards. Odisha should first decide what problems the township exists to solve, and only then where it belongs. Its geography suggests three missions: a Bhubaneswar–Cuttack–Puri–Paradip corridor for AI, health technology, logistics, coastal studies and startups; a western cluster around Sambalpur–Jharsuguda–Rourkela for materials, manufacturing, energy transition and industrial decarbonisation; and a Koraput–Rayagada node for biodiversity, tribal knowledge, agriculture, nutrition and mining sustainability. A networked model — a principal township joined to specialist nodes — may serve Odisha better than a single mega-campus, if the Centre’s guidelines allow it.
Location, however, is the easy part. Three conditions will decide success.
First, academic mission. The township must organise itself around a few areas where Odisha holds genuine advantage, not cover every discipline at once and dilute its resources.
Second, people and autonomy. Buildings do not create a world-class institution; outstanding, well-supported people do — which means competitive recruitment, international searches, visiting appointments and decent living conditions for faculty. It also means an independent professional authority, with academic, government, industry and civil-society voices on its board, whose day-to-day academic decisions stay free of political and bureaucratic interference.
Third, shared infrastructure and genuine partnership. Institutions should share advanced laboratories, computing, libraries and technology-transfer services rather than duplicate them. Industry must arrive as a long-term research partner — funding laboratories, doctoral fellowships and commercialisation — not as an employer of cheap trained labour. And the township should be deliberately international, with joint laboratories, dual-degree programmes and co-supervised doctoral research.
The greatest danger is that the idea becomes a real-estate project dressed in academic language. A thousand acres, striking buildings and several nameplates will not, by themselves, produce excellence. The honest test is measurable: the quality and influence of the research, doctoral completion and placement, patents and startups, solutions for Odisha’s social and environmental problems, and whether students from disadvantaged and tribal communities are genuinely included. If those indicators move, the township is working; if not, it is not.
Rankings matter because they offer an external measure of research, reputation and international engagement, but they cannot be a university’s final purpose. The deeper objective is to create knowledge, nurture independent thought and solve society’s problems. Odisha now has an unusual chance to move from isolated institutions to an interconnected knowledge city. Built around autonomy, outstanding people and a long intellectual mission, it could become a model for India; built as a construction project, the opportunity may not return for a generation.
The writer is a PhD in civil engineering from University of Michigan and managing director of RaSpect, a Hong Kong-based AI start-up for building technology and the sustainability of built infrastructure.
