Truth or Rankings – The moral test before Manipur University

The India Today article on Manipur University paints a picture that requires critical reflection, not blind agreement. The suggestion is that negative media narratives and public criticism are faulted as being the primary causative factors for the fall in NAAC grades and NIRF rankings of the University, implying that journalists and citizens must restrain themselves to protect institutional image. But can silence ever be the price for academic reputation? Can corruption, nepotism, and favoritism be tolerated merely to maintain an illusion of excellence? The answer has to be an emphatic no.
Universities are temples of truth, not theatres of cover-up. If the moral foundation of an institution collapses, no amount of rankings or certificates can resurrect its credibility. The problem at Manipur University is not with its rankings or media perception; it is actually the erosion of trust that has been continuously caused by allegations of irregular recruitment, administrative opacity, and misuse of authority. Suppressing those truths in order to save NIRF scores would not heal the institution; it would only deepen the decay.
To claim that “negative reporting” harmed MU’s reputation is to mistake symptom for cause. Media criticism is not the disease-it is the mirror reflecting institutional rot. The University’s reputation has not fallen because journalists uncovered wrongs; it has fallen because those wrongs were committed, tolerated, and institutionalized. A ranking system based on the silence of conscience is a hollow edifice.
Indeed, NAAC and NIRF evaluate governance, transparency, and institutional values that cannot be there in the absence of accountability. If corruption or nepotism is protected to maintain these metrics, then rankings themselves would be rendered meaningless. Ethical governance and merit-based recruitment are not an impediment to NIRF success but prerequisites for it. A clean institution commands respect not because of managed perception but due to genuine performance.
Equally deserving of scrutiny is the article’s suggestion that media “amplified unverified allegations.” Indeed, responsible journalism demands verification to ensure fairness and balance. But when a news environment is deliberately deprived of official information, institutional walls of silence frequently confront the journalist. The media cannot be faulted for using other sources when the University’s Public Relations Office itself either remains inactive or selectively transparent. After all, accountability starts with openness, not with blaming those who question authority.
Equally distressing is the comparison that has been drawn with other regional universities that, too, preferred to treat corruption as “family matters.” If their secrecy helped them retain better rankings, all this would mean is how metrics can be manipulated to mask systemic rot. Universities are not private estates; they are public institutions funded by the taxpayers. Protecting wrongdoings from public scrutiny is not loyalty but treachery to the academic community and society.
The moral question, then, is simple: Should people and journalists be silent when a public institution, entrusted with the molding of future generations, compromises integrity for convenience? Silence in such moments is complicity. When journalism is reduced to public relations, democracy loses one of its strongest sentinels. The duty of the press is not to guard the image of the powerful but to defend truth, fairness, and justice.
First and foremost, if the Manipur University authorities really want to regain the lost reputation of the university, they will have to start with addressing the root causes: transparent recruitment processes, time-bound inquiry into the past irregularities, active communication with the media, and creating an accountable grievance mechanism for students and staff. Reforms, not reputation management, should be the guiding principle.
While journalists have to be in a state of ethical vigilance—verification of facts, eschewing sensationalism, and due space for official response—the effort should not be to malign but to inform, not to destroy but to reform. Media ethics and institutional transparency are not enemies; they are partners in truth.
Ultimately, rankings such as NIRF or NAAC are useful tools to gauge performance, but they are not the soul of any university. A university gains greatness not from its rank in some charts, but from its courage in confronting wrongs, upholding fairness, and inspiring intellectual honesty. If we trade these values for prestige, we would have gained numbers but lost meaning. The crisis in Manipur University, therefore, is not just administrative; it is moral. And its revival will come not from silencing dissent or polishing perception but in a collective rediscovery of truth and accountability. A university that fears criticism has already lost its purpose. Let Manipur University rise again, not by covering up its faults, but by setting them right. Let its next rank be earned by integrity, not image.