Public Universities, Private Logic: How India’s Higher Education Is Being Marketised from Within
Utkarsh Mishra | 25 June 2026 | Countercurrents
Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University and Allahabad University are still legally and popularly known as public universities. They remain owned by the state. But is ownership alone enough to make a university truly public? Or does that also depend on whether education remains affordable, teachers have secure jobs and academic freedom, and knowledge is treated as a public good rather than something sold to those who can afford it? By that measure, India’s public universities have been quietly drifting towards a private logic for years—not through one dramatic act of privatisation, but through a series of smaller changes in funding, staffing and governance that together have had much the same effect….