Some of these institutions, notably Ashoka itself, are devoted not to the professional disciplines that offer the lure of quick upward mobility, but to the serious study of the fundamental arts and sciences. A deep intellectual interest in the disciplines – as opposed to their professional deployment – in an expanding middle-class is the sign of the economic, social, and intellectual vibrancy of a nation. This is also a point made by Banerjee in the same interview.
But with the hefty price tags comes the ubiquity of high-end smartphones. Possessing one becomes the marker of student identity, even to the campus security guards. The painful question that remains is whether these wealthy, new-age institutions are in the danger of failing students from a poor and disadvantaged background far more dangerous than our traditional public institutions have done. In spite of the old-boys network that connects Andover and Yale and Princeton, there is a strong culture of meritocracy in the US which is set in motion by the curious ahistoricity of American capitalism. India, dense with class and caste networks of power and privilege, is nothing like that.
What does it mean, then, to have an Ivy-League like higher education system in India? How can it assure campus comfort for the student who only has an old-style phone?