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Conversations shaping the future of Indian education.

A weekly deep-dive with the architects, reformers, and builders rewriting what school, policy, and enterprise can be. Every conversation becomes a newsletter you can act on.

Latest · Part 2, Issue #01With Prof. M.M. Sharma · Institution Building

India wants to build 50 world-class universities by 2047. He built one, with NO MONEY, NO RANKING AND NO DEADLINE.

The institution that taught India to build industry.

Every state is chasing the same thing: bigger campuses, better rankings, buildings that look good in a brochure. The national goal is louder still — 50 world-class universities by 2047.

So here's a man worth hearing out. Professor M.M. Sharma ran the University Department of Chemical Technology (now Institute of Chemical Technology) in Mumbai — the place that, in his words, gave birth to India's chemical industry. He made it world-class without IIT-level money, without a famous name, and without a single ranking to aim for. For years, his university didn't even have a budget line called "research." Ask him how, and he never once mentions money.

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From Issue #01With Mahesh Balakrishnan · Education & Leadership

Your school has a ₹8 crore lobby and a ₹8 lakh teacher.

Guess which one is leaving.

Every year, hundreds of schools across India post job listings for teachers they should never have lost. The positions opened because a competitor called with a better offer, because a new principal arrived and made a long-serving teacher feel like a new hire, because a policy got implemented overnight without so much as a conversation with the people who would have to execute it.

Mahesh Balakrishnan has spent fifteen years inside some of India's most ambitious school systems — IB schools, CBSE chains, hybrid institutions trying to do both. He has seen this cycle from every angle. His diagnosis is blunt: teacher attrition is the most expensive, most ignored, and most fixable problem in Indian education today.

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