Brick Over Books: Hidden Crisis Behind India’s Education Infrastructure Boom

Written by: Sushovan Dhar

In recent years, India has witnessed a strange paradox in its education system. While new campuses are being inaugurated, digital classrooms launched, and glossy brochures of “smart” universities circulated widely, classrooms remain understaffed, libraries underfunded, and learning outcomes stagnant.

The façade of progress conceals a deeper crisis: a steady privatisation and defunding of public education, combined with an “infrastructure fetishism” that channels scarce resources into concrete rather than classrooms. At its core, this trend illustrates a wider real-estate-driven model of development, in which education, rather than being considered a social right, is regarded as a means of capital accumulation. Consequently, the education system fosters division rather than intellectual growth.

For all the rhetoric about a knowledge economy, India’s investment in education remains abysmally low. Successive governments have failed to meet the UNESCO-recommended 6% of GDP spending target. Even the Union Budget 2025–26, hailed as a record allocation for education, sets aside only Rs 1.28 lakh crore for the Ministry of Education — less than half the global benchmark as a share of GDP. The consequences are rampant, as schools and universities struggle to pay teachers, fill vacancies, or maintain libraries and laboratories. Yet, paradoxically, there is no shortage of funds for buildings.

The Rise of “Infrastructure Fetishism”

A 2024 report by CBRE India, one of the country’s largest real-estate consultancies, estimates that India’s K–12 and higher education sectors will require over 4 billion square feet of additional built space by 2034–35. That figure — enough to construct 400 Taj Mahals — is not an education projection but a market forecast. It signals to investors, developers, and contractors that education is the next real-estate frontier.

Education has thus become part of India’s construction-driven growth model. Public expenditure and private investment are increasingly directed towards capital-intensive projects: new campuses, hostels, auditoriums, and “centres of excellence.” Each new announcement of a central university, IIT extension, or model school translates into contracts for builders, developers, and suppliers. The result is a massive flow of public funds into the construction economy, often at the expense of recurring academic expenditure.

This is what one might call “infrastructure fetishism” — the belief that physical expansion equals educational progress. But new walls do not teach students. Buildings alone do not produce knowledge.

The Human Resource Crisis

While funds pour into infrastructure, the human backbone of education — teachers — continues to erode. According to official reports, India faces nearly 10 lakh teacher vacancies across school levels, roughly 17% of all sanctioned posts.

In higher education, the situation is equally grim. Public universities across the country — from Delhi University to North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) — have hundreds of teaching posts vacant, many unfilled for years. Temporary or “guest” faculty plug the gaps, working on precarious contracts with low pay and no research support.

Nothing is more glaring than the mismatch between rising infrastructure budgets and stagnant faculty spending. For example, in Delhi University, the 2025–26 budget shows a Rs 462 crore deficit — an 86% increase from the previous year. Servicing loans taken through the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) for capital projects, including construction and campus expansion, contributes significantly to this financial stress. Meanwhile, routine expenditures such as salaries and library upkeep are squeezed. This pattern is evident throughout India: institutions borrow for building projects while neglecting classroom needs.

Privatisation by Neglect

This infrastructure-heavy spending pattern is not just a technocratic error — it is a political strategy. By underfunding teaching and academic resources, the state systematically erodes the credibility of public institutions. As quality declines, families are pushed toward private schools and colleges, many of which are for-profit enterprises dressed up as “non-profits.”

This process can be called privatisation by neglect. The state doesn’t openly hand over public education to the market; it simply allows the system to decay until privatisation seems like the only viable option. Once privatised, education becomes another commodity sold through fees, branding, and placement packages. Even government institutions are instructed to “generate their own resources,” forcing them to behave like profit centres. This translates to higher student fees, contract teachers, and partnerships with private firms. Under the guise of “autonomy”, universities are being pushed onto the market.

The Real-Estate Nexus

To grasp the economic rationale behind this trend, it is useful to consider the broader context. The construction and real estate sectors together make up almost 18% of India's GDP — one of the highest percentages in the world. Government initiatives under banners like “Smart Cities”, “Digital India”, or “New Education Infrastructure” act as significant demand drivers for this sector. Education-related construction projects — ranging from school buildings to university townships — serve as publicly funded stimuli that enable private accumulation.

Consequently, land itself transforms into a speculative asset. New central universities and IITs are frequently established in semi-rural areas due to lower land acquisition costs and promising development prospects. Once the campus is built, surrounding land values soar — benefitting developers, local elites, and political intermediaries. The education project thus doubles as a real-estate venture, producing not just students but profitably “developed” land.

Between Aspiration and Extraction

In the Northeast, this pattern has taken a particularly contradictory form. Over the past two decades, the region has seen a surge in new central institutions — from IIT Guwahati and NEHU Shillong to NITs in Arunachal and Nagaland, and the new Sikkim University. On paper, this expansion represents long-overdue recognition of the region’s educational needs. But the reality is more uneven. Most of these institutions suffer from faculty shortages, poor research funding, and erratic maintenance grants.

At NEHU, for instance, the teachers’ association has repeatedly protested staff shortages, delayed promotions, and fund crunches. Many state universities — Mizoram University, Tripura University, Nagaland University — depend on ad hoc faculty for entire departments. Yet, nearly every year, new “campus development” projects are launched: new hostels, labs, and administrative blocks. Meanwhile, private universities have mushroomed across Meghalaya, Assam, and Sikkim, often as real-estate ventures tied to corporate or political interests.

In Meghalaya alone, over a dozen private universities have been established in less than a decade, many operating out of rented or newly built commercial complexes. The North East’s “education boom” has thus also been a construction boom, with land acquisition and building contracts becoming lucrative businesses.

The irony is bitter: while students in remote areas still travel hours to reach under-resourced government schools, state and central funds feed a parallel infrastructure economy that serves contractors more than communities.

The Costs

The cumulative impact of this model is devastating. What was historically one of the few avenues of social mobility for marginalised groups is being hollowed out. The class and regional divide in education is widening, as private institutions cater to the affluent while public ones languish.

Low-quality institutions increasingly exclude or channel students from working-class and rural backgrounds. Teachers feel demoralised and overburdened; they are often regarded as disposable labour. Moreover, at a more fundamental level, the concept of education as a public good and a democratic space is being supplanted by a market-driven logic focused on competition, profit, and branding.

If India is serious about building an equitable, knowledge-based society, it must shift its education spending focus from infrastructure to content. This entails addressing teacher vacancies and enhancing service conditions; fortifying libraries, laboratories, and research funding rather than simply expanding physical space; and enforcing budget transparency, with public disclosure of the proportions allocated to infrastructure compared to academic development. Most importantly, it requires reaffirming education as a social right rather than treating it as a speculative market.

In the North East, where access and equity continue to pose significant challenges, it is essential to democratise decision-making. This means enabling local communities, teachers, and students to shape the priorities for educational expansion, rather than leaving it solely in the hands of bureaucrats and contractors.

From Concrete to Consciousness

Education is not merely a sector of real estate; it is the cornerstone of citizenship, imagination, and democracy. When governments evaluate progress solely by the number of buildings erected rather than by the quality of learning attained, they confuse concrete with consciousness. The gleaming glass façades of new campuses may appear impressive, but beneath them often lies a hollow edifice — one that yields degrees lacking depth, jobs devoid of security, and knowledge that lacks critical engagement. India does not require more classrooms constructed from brick and glass; it demands classrooms vibrant with teachers, books, and ideas.

Sushovan Dhar is a political activist and trade unionist based in Kolkata.