The Imperfect Necessity: Why India must learn to celebrate institution building

Goafest matters.

Let me elaborate why I appeal to the sceptical and critics.

There is a particular kind of criticism which is essentially an act of abandonment but feels sophisticated.

It identifies every flaw in an imperfect structure, catalogs every gap with forensic precision and then steps back, with arms folded, having contributed nothing to the repair.

India’s creative industry has, alas, become quite accomplished at this. As Goafest 2026 prepares to open its doors this May, we are witnessing another season of it.

I will be moderating at Goafest this year. So you may read what follows with appropriate skepticism. But I would ask you to engage with the argument on its merits, because it matters beyond this festival. It matters beyond this industry. It matters beyond this moment.

The Rarity of the Thing Itself

Before we audit Goafest, let us pause to appreciate what it actually is - an institution with a 19 year old legacy - built by an industry that did not have to build it.

Nobody mandated it.

No government legislated it.

No multinational seeded it.

The Advertising Agencies Association of India and The Advertising Club have come together and created, funded and sustained an annual congregation of India’s creative and media professionals.

That is not a small thing. In a country where industry-led institution building is the exception rather than the rule, it is a genuinely rare thing.

We forget this because we have grown accustomed to its existence. That is, ironically, the mark of a successful institution. It becomes so embedded in the landscape that people begin to treat its presence as inevitable and its imperfections as unforgivable.

But institutions are not natural formations. They are acts of sustained will. Civilisations are ultimately remembered not only for the brilliance of their individuals but for the durability of the institutions they leave behind. Unfortunately stubborn will, in the Indian creative industry, is in shorter supply than great talent.

What Institutions Actually Are

An institution is not a monument. It does not arrive perfect and stand unchanged. It is better understood as a metabolism. See it as a living system that must be fed, contested, adapted and occasionally overhauled to remain vital.

Every institution of consequence in the world The WEF meet at Davos, the Cannes Lions, the Oscars, the Booker Prize, even the Olympic Games carries within it a history of controversy, structural bias, commercial compromise and legitimate criticism. Every democratic Parliament emerged through periods of patronage, exclusion and internal contestation before becoming an enduring democratic institution. None of them was born credible. They became credible through the accumulation of participation, the pressure of reform and the stubbornness of continuance.

Cannes Lions had a ghost entry scandal that shook its foundations. The Oscars had a diversity crisis so acute it produced a global reckoning. The Olympics was nearly wrecked by corruption and its inquiry. The response in each case was not to dismantle the institution but to demand better of it and do so from the inside with skin in the game.

That is how institutions mature.

That is the only way they mature.

The Specific Criticisms Are Real And Insufficient

Let us not pretend the criticisms of Goafest are invented. They are not. The concentration of network agencies across participation, jury composition and marquee wins is a structural reality.

The limited presence of brand-side clients may weaken its claim to being a holistic industry platform.

The cost barriers may not be trivial. The drift toward leisure over learning is frequently remarked upon.

These are legitimate concerns.

They deserve direct answers.

But I ask the critics: “Compared to what?”

What is the alternative institutional infrastructure that exists or could plausibly exist, to replace Goafest’s function?

Where else does the Indian advertising and media industry gather at scale, contest ideas, recognise work and attempt , even imperfectly , to set a collective standard?

The answer, at the moment, is nowhere.

Goafest may not be the best version of what this industry deserves but it is the only version of what this industry has built sustained over time.

That asymmetry should give the critics pause. I said pause not silence. In my assessment, there is a meaningful difference between criticism that seeks to improve an institution and criticism that simply seeks to delegitimise it.The former is a civic act. The latter is a form of free riding , enjoying the right to opinion without bearing any of the costs of construction. Healthy industries, much like healthy democracies, depend on intermediary institutions that create norms, legitimacy and collective memory between the individual and the market.

India Has A Problem With Institution Building

India has a complicated, almost paradoxical relationship with its own institutions.

We simultaneously over criticise and under invest. We are extraordinarily good at critique and extraordinarily reluctant to commit. We identify gaps with great sophistication but fill them with great hesitancy.

This is not unique to the advertising industry. It runs through our chambers of commerce, our professional associations and our cultural bodies.

The pattern is consistent. First, a founding generation builds something with imperfect tools and enormous energy. Then, a succeeding generation inherits it, finds it wanting, and carries on with mounting critique.

The advertising industry is at that inflection point with Goafest.

What Momentum Looks Like

There is a concept in Physics that applies here. An object in motion carries within it the energy of all its previous motion. Momentum.

Institutions work similarly. Nineteen years of Goafest represent nineteen years of collective industry energy with relationships built, work recognised, conversations had, professionals convened.

Institutions resemble cities more than events. They accumulate clout slowly but can decay suddenly. Madison Avenue did not become culturally influential because of a single campaign or conference. It was because talent gathered there repeatedly, over time, long enough for rituals, standards and mythology to emerge.

That accumulated momentum is not nothing. It is, in fact, the hardest thing to recreate once lost.

When institutions fade, the vacuum they leave is rarely filled immediately or well. The Indian advertising industry does not have the luxury of assuming that if Goafest falters, something better will naturally emerge to replace it.

It may not.

What typically follows is fragmentation, a proliferation of smaller, less authoritative platforms and a loss of the shared ritual that gave the industry a sense of itself.

The framework, in other words, has value independent of any single edition’s execution.

The momentum of nineteen years deserves to be celebrated , not poked.

A Call for Stakeholder Criticism

My argument is not for ‘I care not’ complacency. The closed-loop jury problem needs structural reform with mandatory recusal protocols, broader representation, a dedicated Independent Agency category.

The client absence problem needs a programmatic response with a genuine integration of brand leadership into the festival’s intellectual architecture.

The cost problem needs even more creative solutions such as options with subsidised entry pathways for independent agencies, young professional programmes, regional participation incentives.

Critics must become stakeholders and try to bring their considerable analytical energy to the construction of solutions.

The most powerful thing an industry voice can do right now is not to publish another takedown of Goafest’s shortcomings. It is to show up, engage and make the case for specific, actionable reform from within.

Institutions are not reformed by those who refuse to give up.

The Larger Stakes

I want to end with something that goes beyond Goafest because the argument is larger than any single festival.

India is, at this moment, in the process of building the institutional infrastructure of a mature creative economy.

That includes industry bodies, award platforms, professional standards frameworks, educational pipelines and the shared rituals that give a profession its sense of collective identity and purpose.

Every time we choose sophisticated cynicism over difficult commitment, we make that infrastructure slightly less likely to exist.

Every time we treat imperfection as disqualifying rather than as the normal condition of anything worth building, we raise the cost of institution-building for the next generation.

Every time we free-ride on the critique without bearing any of the weight of construction, we inch closer to the future we say we don’t want . 

It means an industry without shared standards, shared platforms or shared ambition.

Civilisations do not decline only when institutions fail. They also decline when the best stop believing imperfect institutions are worth repairing.

Goafest is imperfect.

It is also ours.

It may deserve criticism.

But Show up.

Make it better.

That is the only argument that truly matters.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.