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Now there are many ways to respond to your argument. Suffice it to say, the underlying assumptions of your query are simplistic and fundamentally incorrect. Education and intelligence do not exist in vacuum but are in constant interaction with the social norms of a society. What it means in practice is that intelligence and education, on their own, cannot overcome the problems of corruption as sanctioned in public life. As it happens, what you suggest is already in practice. Observe the educational qualifications of those in All India Services. They are all well educated and are more than intelligent enough to not only clear a competitive examination but also engage in policy-making. Yet here we are. For all their brilliance, they are no more immune to the social norms of the day than the rest of us. Claims of their efficiency are debatable and evidence of their integrity non-existent.
Your division of the society between the “illiterate”/“backward” and the “best educated” also fails to take into account that no society can exist for long, much less be governed well, when divided so explicitly into haves and have-nots.
India’s problems are largely structural. Until its political economy becomes competitive and until a majority of its citizens become capable of competing in that economy and thereby making it self-sustaining, there will be no incentive to change the existing norms of patronage and naked tribalism and hence no difference in governance will be made, regardless of who leads it, whether an economist with a Ph.D. or a monk from a temple.