India, Forward
I am writing this from India, where our partnership tour concluded today. I feel the familiar mix of exhaustion and clarity that comes after a stretch of sustained attention. When you stop moving, stop reacting, and finally have space to reflect, patterns emerge. This trip made one thing unmistakably clear: India is not catching up. India is building forward.
Our journey began in Ahmedabad with a visit to GIFT City, and it set the tone for everything that followed. GIFT City is an incredible, deliberate policy choice made tangible through infrastructure, governance, and long-term planning. The tax holiday alone signals ambition, but the deeper story is about sovereignty of vision. India is investing in its own people, its own institutions, and its own future as a global center for finance, technology, and education. The alignment between policy, capital, and human development is strategic.
The scale, impressive as it is, wasn’t the most significant aspect. The coherence was. This is not some sort of layer on top of outdated systems but a complete rethinking of how systems should function in a global economy that no longer revolves around old centers of gravity. GIFT City felt like a signal.
From there, we moved into a very different but equally important space: people.
We spent a day celebrating the graduates of the Executive Certificate in Internationalization of Indian Higher Education. I had the privilege of serving as a facilitator for two modules, and I can say that I learned as much, if not more, from the participants than I shared. Their work sits at the intersection of policy, practice, and lived institutional reality. These are professionals building systems while also questioning them. They are designing solutions for Indian higher education that are globally literate but locally grounded, which matters.
The theme continued and deepened during the Junction 91 Gathering. Over two days, the conversations centered Indian voices, Indian priorities, and Indian leadership in global engagement. Too often, international education conversations are dominated by external frameworks imposed on non-Western contexts. We experienced thoughtful, critical engagement with global systems without deference to them. Engaging questions. Helpful and pragmatic solutions. Interactive workshops. This was capacity building in the truest sense as knowledge creation and not knowledge transfer.
Junction 91 matters because it refuses the default posture of global education convenings. Instead of importing narratives, it amplifies those already doing the work. The sessions were meaningful, grounded, and unapologetically forward-looking. One of the highlights for me was signing a memorandum of understanding with Presidency University at the gathering. I’m so excited about this partnership because it emerged from real dialogue, shared interests, and mutual respect, and it is not an MOU as a checkbox for internationalization.
If we are serious about decolonizing international education, Junction 91 is what it looks like in practice. Not the absence of Western partners, but the presence of equity. Not rejection, but recalibration. India is not asking for permission to lead in this space. It is doing so.
The final leg of the trip took us across the country, from Delhi to Hyderabad to Jaipur to Bangalore, visiting universities and meeting leaders, faculty, and students. Over five days, we saw institutions experimenting boldly with curriculum design, research partnerships, industry integration, and global collaboration. No single model but across all institutions, a willingness to move.
Indian universities are building platforms, piloting programs, and partnering with industry in ways that feel agile, relevant, and unburdened by nostalgia for how higher education used to work. Student-created platforms addressing international education needs. Research agendas tied directly to societal and industrial challenges. Partnerships that prioritize application alongside theory. There is an energy here that feels unencumbered by the inertia that often slows institutions elsewhere.
As someone who works daily in global higher education, I do not say this lightly. There is a freedom in how innovation is being approached. A refusal to be stifled by antiquated ways of doing higher education. A confidence that systems can be redesigned and not merely reformed.
Taken together, the trip left me both inspired and reflective. From the policy architecture of GIFT City to the intellectual rigor of ECIIHE participants, from the intentional platform of Junction 91 to the ambition of universities across the country, India is a place in motion. Not chaotically, though the traffic might seem so, but purposefully.
This is imagination. Choosing to invest in ideas, people, and institutions that will shape the next several decades. India is already one of the most important countries and economies in the world. What I witnessed suggests it is also becoming one of the most influential architects of how global education, research, and innovation will evolve.
I want to end with gratitude.
This experience did not happen by accident. It was the result of vision, planning, and care. My sincere thanks to Girish Ballolla, Preetika Sachar, and Gen Next Education for imagining and executing a journey that was intellectually rich, professionally meaningful, and genuinely generous in spirit. (Shout out to our travel buddies, airplane cookies, excellent storytelling, and Princess Leia.)
I leave this trip wanting to remain present in India as it evolves. Not as an observer but as a partner paying attention. This is a country building forward, and it is worth listening closely to what is being created here.