At the India AI Impact Summit 2026 last week, Galgotias University provided a shameful sideshow that gravely undermined India’s attempt to project itself as a serious player in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) with credible educational standards.A communications teacher from this private university, which appears to enjoy considerable government patronage, claimed in an interview to Doordarshan that Orion, a robotic dog, had been developed by its centre of excellence. In reality, it was a commercially available Chinese-made robot. Social media erupted with viral posts and memes ridiculing the claim. The embarrassment was so acute that the University was swiftly asked to vacate its spacious pavilion at the Summit.When a university, at a national showcase event, blurs the line between assembly, demonstration and original research, it exposes a deeper malaise. The incident sparked a backlash and a much-needed debate about the quality of Indian education. False and inflated claims, many argued, are emblematic of a larger crisis in our education system that stretches from foundational schooling to elite institutions and private universities.At one end, primary schools are being closed down and dropout rates are rising. At the other, elite institutions and mushrooming private universities appear to be gaming everything, from patent filings and peer-reviewed research to placements, in order to secure government benefits. Consider a few reports from February alone that expose the spectrum of the problem.The University Grants Commission (UGC) has again identified 32 fake universities operating across 12 states. More shocking than the list itself is the fact that the number has jumped from 20 to 32 in just two years. Instead of a crackdown and exemplary punishment – particularly when 12 of these institutions operate in the national capital – UGC has merely advised parents and students to exercise caution.If this concerns higher education, the situation appears no better at the foundational level. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) police recently blew the lid off a major scandal in which a truckload of textbooks printed for free distribution under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) for the 2026–27 academic session were being sold as scrap at Rs 4/kg instead of being delivered to students. An inquiry has been ordered; but few would be surprised if such loot is more widespread. UP and Madhya Pradesh have recorded the highest primary-school closures in the country.Among the most credible voices consistently documenting the decline in education is Maheshwer Peri, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Careers360 (Pathfinder Publishing Pvt Ltd). Through data-driven analyses, based on thousands of RTI (right to information) filings, he has exposed disturbing trends in school enrolments, lack of infrastructure, faculty quality, placements and regulatory compliance.On February 19, in the aftermath of Galgotias University’s claim, he posted a detailed thread on X exposing what he described as ‘academic fraud’ built into our education system and ‘sanctioned by the powers that be’. His posts span the entire spectrum – from elite institutions to primary education.Fudging research and patentsThe starting point, he argues, is an incentive structure in which business benefits are tied to rankings. These benefits include: autonomy, graded autonomy, permission to open new campuses, launch fresh courses and offer online degrees. The result is relentless gaming of metrics. Here are some numbers.Four private universities, for instance, claim to have conducted more research and filed more patents than all the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) combined. Five private universities boast research scores of 90+, while the elite Indian Institute of Science (IISc) scores 51.9; indeed, 70 universities rank above IISc. Data of this nature, by itself, ought to have triggered investigation.In September 2025, Peri posted data to show that even the premier IITs under-report admissions to inflate placement percentages and faculty-student ratios. Against a sanctioned intake of 1,001 seats, combined IIT admissions were shown as only 710 (70.9%) for placement calculations, he says.The gaming of education metrics has not gone unnoticed. Peri cites reports ranging from Chemistry World (October 2024) on the gaming of ranking, to Nature (August 2025) on the surge in research retractions needing reform, to The Print (September 2024) on scientists gaming peer review and a January 2026 The Times of India report headlined: “Universities rush to file patents for rankings, few acquire commercial value”.Internship fraudAt the middle tier of technical education, pressure to secure internships has spawned a shady market in fake certificates. Companies have sprung up in Noida solely to issue internship certificates for a price.The roots of this fraud lie in regulatory design. The all-India council for technical education (AICTE), which is the statutory regulator for technical education, mandates internships after every alternate semester but does not require institutions to arrange them. With 15–20 lakh students entering technical education annually, a ready market for fabricated credentials was inevitable.If higher education has been captured by rankings-chasing and revenue-maximising incentives that reward manipulation over quality, foundational education reveals a different, but equally troubling, decline.Primary education: Demographic nightmareLaunched in 2000, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan promised to address India’s chronic literacy deficit and lack of basic education. It soon claimed 98% school enrolment. Two decades later, the picture is vastly different. Primary schools are closing; student enrolment has fallen; and, as the Uttar Pradesh episode or the scholarship scam in MP reveal, funds allocated for education of low-income groups are vulnerable to diversion.Drawing on parliamentary data, Peri notes, in a detailed post on X, that 93,000 government schools (many were rural primary schools) have shut down over the past decade. School enrolment has dropped by 2.41 crore. While a 32% increase in private schools has partially offset the 7% drop in government schools, the gap exposes deep stress in foundational literacy, especially when India’s overall population has increased at the same time.The Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) 2024 also shows that fewer than half of class five students can read a class two text. “Forget demographic dividend,” Peri warns. “We will soon face a demographic nightmare.”Worryingly, the distortion is not confined to a few corners of the education system. In 2025 and early-2026, medical colleges were found inflating faculty strength ahead of inspections; law schools have faced scrutiny over exaggerated placement disclosures; and several universities quietly withdrew research papers following complaints about plagiarism and data-fabrication. Across disciplines – medicine, law, management and the sciences – there is a familiar pattern of check-list compliance, gaming the system or outright fraud.When rankings, patents and enrolment numbers to obtain government benefits become ends in themselves, products of such a system will lead to compromised competence in laboratories, courtrooms, hospitals and boardrooms. That is not the route to Viksit Bharat.Sucheta Dalal is an award-winning financial journalist who previously worked as financial editor at The Times of India. This article was originally published on Moneylife India.