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Media encourages controversies, the latest being the government’s tag “institution of eminence” added to Jio University, which physically does not exist. A Twitter mention of the HRD Minister of Jio University - along with BITS Pilani and Manipal - of achieving the eminence tag created all  the hullabaloo.

Yes, a lot of deserving universities have been left out. Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science and the two IITs Bombay and Delhi have been added; but not the other IITs or the upcoming ‘private’ universities like Ashoka and OP Jindal. Naturally, there are lot of heartburns, envy and bitterness.

The historian Ramchandra Guha’s Twitter answer to the HRD Minister seems to have opened up a vicious attack and counterattack on the issue. Guha asked why Jio when it does not exist yet. In that case why not Raghu Raman’s university planned in Chennai? Faced with a deluge of questions, the government promptly goes on the defensive  and said that the decision  to set up ‘greenfield universities’ was taken by the recommendation of a  committee set up by the UGC. Going through the papers, the committee has suggested Jio and the other universities of eminence.

Education is a touchy area and any reform action (while everybody agrees that a prompt reform in education is the need of the hour) creates immediate counter-action. Healthy discussion is welcome; but what we see in today’s social media is a barrage of personal attacks almost at the level of abuse. Somebody asks Guha (quite unrelatedly) why did he run away from BCCI? Did he ever touch a cricket bat that he claims to be a cricket historian?

The wrong-side of the social media – especially this trolling – needs to be checked and regulated. There can be arguments and counter arguments, but no personal attacks. That’s how social media becomes useful and constructive. If technology has created the social media, technology will again show the way how it can be regulated. That’s what Facebook and Google, the creators of social media, have been saying – but are yet to find the right kind of regulation, which allows free speech and arguments, but no abuse, no personal attacks.

Media is the medium, not the content. People can use it, abuse it. People need to be more patient in its use of media. We are going through changing times and we all know that education is an area which in India needs radical overhauling if the country has any ambitions of becoming global. Mere trade and commerce will not give India that recognition or eminence.

Telecommunications has created a revolution in India’s development and Jio, it must be admitted created a second revolution in the field, putting the big players in their place and made phones and other related means of communication affordable for the common man. Who knows that Jio will not create another quick revolution in education? Private education – inspite of the misuse – is a must for the change that we require in education.

Privatisation of health has admittedly led to misuse by the creation of expensive superspeciality hospitals. But the right regulation – for example the Supreme Court  now asking  all the hospitals in Delhi to disclose  how much they have done for the poor and the government  being  asked to monitor  it – can bring  the  desired change.

Similarly, the right sort of regulation can change the mess that Indian education is now in. But in a hurry, the government too takes a wrong step or two. Recognition of ‘eminence’ to Jio could have come later, once they had started to act towards the change.