As Finance Minister detailed out the plan for the proposal, it made the political intent explicit. States, she said, can offer land in challenge mode, and universities with different types of courses can come and set up, including through partnerships with universities abroad, so that students who would otherwise go overseas can receive the same quality of education in India. This is not a minor detail. It reveals who these townships are imagined for, and the higher education model the government is trying to normalise.
Will the New University Townships End up Becoming Brahminical Gated Communities? - The Wire
In a deeply caste rooted society, education has never been neutral. Universities reproduce hierarchy through admissions, faculty recruitment, language regimes, informal networks, and routine discrimination. Yet the township proposal, as described so far, remains silent on the safeguards that would make quality meaningful for India’s majority marginalised students. There is no clear public commitment that these proposed educational hubs will be anchored in institutions governed by constitutional obligations. There is no practical assurance on reservation in admissions and faculty hiring. There is no framework for fee regulation. There is no credible framework for anti discrimination accountability in these ultra elite private universities.
What the proposal signals instead, is a corridor model in which states compete by offering land, corporate led private and foreign institutions are invited in, and branding substitutes for structural reform. In a deeply unequal society, that model is unlikely to expand democratic access for all citizens. It is more likely to produce elite education zones that function like gated communities.
Finance minister Sitharaman is framing the policy as townships which would be the solution for students who couldn’t go abroad because overseas education is expensive or because visas are uncertain. The imagined beneficiary is not the first generation Dalit, Adivasi, OBC, or minority student trying to survive in a resource starved public universities. It is the aspirational middle and upper middle class student seeking a study abroad type credential at home.
by Ashok Danavath
20/02/2026