FROM POWERING PAYMENT systems to educational platforms and healthcare diagnostics, AI is fast becoming the backbone of India’s digital economy. As the transformation continues, it has piqued the general curiosity on what’s coming next. The next stage of growth, particularly in India, will not only be driven by tech firms or research institutions, but will also be influenced by Indians who use AI tools to address challenges in their lives, communities, and businesses.

This poses both an unprecedented opportunity and a fundamental challenge for higher education. How do we prepare universities for a world where innovation increasingly happens outside institutional walls?

Breaking the STEM paradigm

Despite the progress, several countries, including India, are still deploying an engineering mindset to something that AI is fundamentally changing. For instance, our National Education Policy, 2020, emphasises coding and technical AI skills, which were relevant five years ago. But we are missing a crucial event horizon: AI is systematically breaking down barriers between technical expertise and practical problem-solving. The era is fast approaching where a teenager, armed with high school mathematics and proficient language skills, will likely be able to direct AI systems more effectively than a computer science PhD still focussed on constructing models from the ground up. AI orchestration — the ability to identify problems, select appropriate tools, and guide AI systems towards solutions — requires human intelligence, not technical specialisation. Pattern recognition, problem decomposition, and practical wisdom matter more than coding ability.

Universities need to look beyond computer science to see AI as a universal capability amplifier. The role of higher education institutions is not to train more programmers, but to develop a generation that thinks strategically about problems, asks the right questions, stays with problems long enough, and then harnesses AI tools to solve them. Thinking laterally would be a big strength.

Grassroots innovation

Understanding these basic changes reveals India’s unique advantage. Our intrinsic and embedded jugaad culture becomes exponentially powerful when AI removes technical barriers to implementation. The mechanic who improvises solutions, the community leader who manages resources — they do not need programming but AI tools that respond to human-level intelligence and practical understanding.

Universities must become bridges between institutional AI resources and community problem-solving. Rather than confining advanced AI capabilities to academic walls, pathways should be created that make these tools accessible to anyone with basic education and practical intelligence. One such way, perhaps, would be to set up community AI literacy centres and make interfaces so intuitive that problem-solving ability would matter more than technical background.

Rethinking academic partnerships

Traditional industry partnerships focus on placing graduates in existing companies. But AI democratisation requires different collaborations. Universities should begin to partner with organisations, companies, and startups that make AI accessible by building voice interfaces, developing local language models, or creating intuitive AI tools for non-technical users. Making AI accessible and practical for everyone is as important as innovative AI research. This means projects focussed on interface design, community deployment, and real-world implementation in resource-constrained environments.

Ethics will matter more, too. AI democratisation makes ethics intensely practical. Rather than teaching ethics as abstract principles, we should engage students with actual ethical dilemmas that emerge from widespread AI deployment. How do we ensure fair outcomes when AI makes loan decisions across communities? How do we maintain privacy when AI processes personal data at scale?

Leveraging the diversity advantage

India’s linguistic, cultural, and economic diversity is not a challenge but can become a competitive advantage for AI deployment as it can increase the scale of ingenuity. Problems arising in diverse contexts propel and ignite innovation that homogeneous environments cannot replicate.

Universities should structure programmes around diversity. They must create interdisciplinary teams combining technical knowledge with deep cultural understanding. When computer science students work with their counterparts from anthropology, economics, and public policy, they develop the holistic perspective needed for responsible democratisation.

As AI tools become more accessible, universities face a tough choice: remain isolated centres of technical expertise or become platforms that amplify distributed innovation. The most successful universities will help graduates become multipliers.

At such places, students and faculty will take institutional knowledge and apply it to grassroots problems, translate between academic research and practical application, and guide and support community-driven AI innovation. It recognises that graduates’ impact may come not from algorithms, but from their ability to help others use AI effectively and responsibly.

Preparing for transformation

When affordable devices with local-language AI reach every Indian, we will witness the most dramatic democratisation of problem-solving capability. This transformation will happen when a child with basic math skills becomes capable of orchestrating AI systems to solve complex problems. Soon, even the knowledge of maths may not be necessary.

Universities have a choice: either get left behind by this shift or position themselves as institutions that recognise intelligence over technical training. We must prepare students for a world where the most important innovations might come from someone who learnt AI orchestration with nothing more than curiosity and a high school education, and where university graduates’ greatest value lies in strategic thinking and guiding AI tools towards meaningful solutions.

The future belongs to institutions that realise that human intelligence, amplified by accessible AI tools, becomes more powerful than traditional technical expertise. Our responsibility, thus, is two-fold: prepare students for such a world, and ensure that India leads the way to show the world how to solve problems, meaningfully.

(The author is Chairman, Hero Enterprise; and Chancellor, BML Munjal University. Views are personal.)