Galgotias, the Robo-Dog and the Fine Art of ‘Development’

 

Let me begin with a disclaimer, for what I am about to say will inevitably be dismissed by some as compulsive negativity, without the courtesy of examining the concerns being raised. The recent India AI Summit 2026 unfolded less like a conference and more like a coronation. Vast LED walls pulsed with algorithmic optimism, exhibition halls shimmered with robotic choreography, and panel discussions rose and fell in crescendos about ethical AI, sovereign compute and India’s moment in the digital century. Policymakers, top global government representatives, investors and venture capitalists, industry leaders from India and around the world, startups and researchers converged under one gleaming roof, each armed with slides, statistics and suitably visionary adjectives.

India’s digital public infrastructure, from Aadhaar to UPI and other population-scale platforms, bore testimony to administrative success and, beyond that, stood as a civilisational proof of concept. The narrative was confident and expansive, suggesting a nation fully at ease with both broadband and bravado. The numbers were large, the projections larger. Agreements were announced, partnerships unveiled and ambitions amplified.

The scale was impressive. The enthusiasm was almost euphoric. The exhibition floors hummed with digital curiosities and predictive dashboards poised for destiny. The speeches were stirring and the intent noble. For a few luminous days, the future appeared not only inevitable but comfortably within reach.

And precisely because the intent was so positive, what should trouble us must be read not as ritualistic cynicism but as anxious concern for credibility. When ambition is advertised on LED screens the size of small runways, scrutiny is not negativity; it is oxygen.

Allow me a brief detour to familiar tracks, since I happen to know a thing or two about them. The Vande Bharat Express is routinely hailed as a triumph of Indian engineering, and as the person who led that project, I am expected to glow modestly in the corner. Modesty be damned, I do. It was indeed a bold first step, a clear declaration that India could design, integrate and deliver a contemporary trainset without leaning anxiously on foreign collaboration. For once, we demonstrated that we were not fated to remain lifelong importers with patriotic packaging.  

But let us not confuse a beginning with a breakthrough. It was not a world-class leap; it was a necessary first stride. Eight years on, technological advancement has not been even incremental. The sleeper version, much advertised, should have arrived years earlier. The recently declared ambition of a 250 kmph train appears less like the flowering of a coherent design philosophy and more like a hurried recovery from disrupted negotiations with Japan. We know what we are; we hesitate to imagine what we could be. Potential untested is only vanity wearing hope’s costume. Action is the truest form of eloquence.

This national habit of mistaking announcements for achievement is not confined to railways. We applaud intentions, proposed investments and projected completion dates and then, prematurely, we declare victory. In doing so, we risk normalising mediocrity. What a nation celebrates, it eventually becomes. If adequacy is enough, mere adequacy will define us.

Two decades ago, Chinese products were dismissed as inexpensive imitations. Today they dominate manufacturing, transport, electronics and construction across continents. The change did not arrive through conferences or confident declarations. It came through iteration, scale and discipline. The achievement was not rhetorical. It was industrial.

Our malaise of applauding mediocrity and garlanding projects still incubating on drawing boards has now evolved into something more audacious. We have progressed from celebrating the unfinished to staging the untrue. The recent AI summit offered a masterclass in this new aesthetic, complete with a brief but intoxicating cameo by a four-legged celebrity. A robot dog, agile, obedient and camera-ready, was paraded by Galgotias University as a proud emblem of indigenous innovation. It answered to the stirringly cosmic name ‘Orion.’ Unfortunately, it also answered to the far less patriotic identity of a Unitree Go2, a commercially available Chinese product manufactured by Unitree Robotics. The robot was impressive. Its résumé, however, required translation.

What followed would have been comic had it not been so instructive. Clarifications surfaced with astonishing speed and even greater elasticity. The university insisted it had not actually built the robot, merely ‘used’ it as a learning platform. The burden of misunderstanding was generously distributed between an ill-informed faculty member and various reporters and social media creators. Semantics, that dependable sanctuary of the cornered, took centre stage. We were treated to linguistic acrobatics of rare quality. The registrar solemnly parsed the distinction between “developed” and “development,” while spokespersons earlier attempted to reassure us that “development” bore no necessary relationship to “design” or “manufacture.” By that standard, gravity may soon be liberated from falling. On this evidence alone, the institution might well qualify for the highest global Ignoble Award in scientific research as well as Creative Vocabulary Management.

To add a touch of international harmony, reports indicated that a South Korean drone had also been displayed by them in similarly patriotic illumination. Eventually, they were asked to vacate their stall and the premises. By then, however, the symbolism had travelled farther than the robot ever could. What was meant to showcase Indian innovation instead exposed a troubling willingness to substitute presentation for provenance, leaving not only the university but also the concerned ministry and summit’s organisers looking complicit in a spectacle of avoidable falsehood.

But this is not a story about one institution. It is about the incentives that flourish in a distorted ecosystem of higher education.

India ranks fifth globally in patent filings. At first glance, that appears reason enough for celebration, but a closer look complicates the picture. Patent grant rates remain modest. For leading public institutions such as the IITs and NITs, the grant rate hovers around 40 percent. For several private universities that file in large numbers, the grant rate falls below 1 percent; they file energetically but convert abysmally. By comparison, Japan grants close to 70 percent of filed patents, and South Korea around 57 percent.

Incentives explain much of this divergence. The government reimburses up to ₹2 lakh per domestic patent filing and up to ₹5 lakh for international applications. Educational institutions enjoy substantial fee concessions. Patent filings also influence positions in the National Institutional Ranking Framework. A higher count can improve ranking. A stronger ranking attracts more students. More students generate more revenue, which perhaps is the main concern of these venal private institutes.

The cycle is tempting. File at low cost. Claim reimbursement. Climb rankings. Market the achievement. Increase admissions. Repeat.

Some private universities have reported filing over a thousand patents in a single year. In certain periods, individual institutions have submitted more applications than several premier IITs combined. The concern is not enthusiasm for intellectual property; it is the widening gulf between intent and impact. Many of these applications appear neither rigorously prosecuted nor ultimately granted. While even among IITs the commercialisation of granted patents remains limited, in much of the private university sector it is virtually absent. Innovation thus risks becoming procedural rather than practical, a statistical entry rather than a solution that breathes in the real world.

In such an ecosystem, presenting imported hardware as evidence of domestic ingenuity becomes less surprising. When metrics reward volume over value and optics over outcomes, performance displaces proof. The stage is brightly lit; the scrutiny is dim.

Correctives are neither radical nor onerous. Shifting reimbursements from filing to grant would restore seriousness. Linking incentives to demonstrable commercialisation would encourage depth. Auditing abnormal filing-to-grant ratios would discourage excess. Reforming ranking frameworks to privilege granted patents and measurable impact over raw numbers would align ambition with achievement.

India’s aspiration to lead in artificial intelligence is not misplaced. The country has scale, engineering talent and digital public infrastructure that many nations admire. Its startup ecosystem is energetic. Its domestic market is large enough to test products rapidly and refine them at speed. The ambition is legitimate.

Yet it is also true that many global AI companies see India less as a laboratory of frontier breakthroughs and more as a vast consumer market and a reservoir of comparatively affordable technical talent. Domestic conglomerates often appear more comfortable investing in real estate, electricity and water for data centres than in the uncertain and capital-intensive core of foundational AI research. There is concern that the data-centre boom may at times prioritise real estate arithmetic over research depth. High-profile summits and investment announcements can create momentum, but they cannot substitute for sustained research capacity or risk-tolerant capital. The deeper ecosystem required to compete globally remains a work in progress.

Leadership in artificial intelligence, as in railways or any complex technological field, cannot be declared into existence. It is earned through repeated testing, public failure and eventual refinement. It is validated in markets that are unforgiving and in products that withstand scrutiny beyond applause.

Innovation is not a certificate filed or a machine displayed. It is time saved, cost reduced, safety enhanced and reliability delivered. It is a train that runs dependably at speed, not merely one that photographs well. It is an algorithm that performs outside the conference hall, not just within it.

If we mistake beginnings for destinations, we will linger at the starting line, applauding ourselves for a journey not yet taken. It is wise to recall Shakespeare’s caution that “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win.” Yet the greater peril today may lie not in doubt, but in premature certainty. When a nation crowns its announcements as achievements, it risks constructing triumphs out of applause rather than accomplishment, of sound rather than substance.

...