India, Jan. 30 -- The University Grants Commission did not suddenly wake up one morning and decide to become India's most controversial institution. It became the "big talk" because India's higher education system is finally being dragged-kicking, screaming, and protesting-from comfortable stagnation into uneasy change. And whenever a system that has enjoyed decades of inertia is nudged toward reform, the reflex is not introspection but outrage. What we are witnessing today is not merely criticism of UGC; it is the systematic, often reckless, spreading of fear, half-truths, and deliberate misrepresentation, packaged as concern for students and sold aggressively to the public.

UGC has long been an invisible power-issuing grants, setting n...