By Shakeel Ahmad for TwoCircles.net
Change is an essential ingredient for innovation; change in status quo must be the way of life for those who wish to experience the taste of progress, savour the flavor of growth, transcend into an advanced realm of being. Change is what the Creator has pleaded throughout the existence of universe, through prophets and their teachings, through eco-systems of nature – strive continuously to change for better. All of us know how difficult and painful the process of change proves to be, because of the physical, cognitive, and psychological dominance of the comfort zones we get knowingly or unknowingly lured into. Having been there for long, the mere mention or thought of breaching the zone frightens us beyond momentary shivers, swamping our mind, body, and soul further into the dark tarry depths of marshy adjustments.
General Motors was known for selling BIG cars until Saturn came into being as an entity mostly independent of the parent company (GM). Papers based on this ground-breaking venture have flooded the research journals of technology, innovation, management, sociology, psychology areas ever since. The concepts of team and flat structures became buzz-words of every industry as theory of organizational behavior got enriched by entirely new dimensions Saturn brought about. GM could do in Saturn what it had failed to do within GM production lines for long, thus raising efficiency to new levels never experienced before, nor perhaps imagined. GM had grown into an elephant, and all attempts to turn it into a horse had to meet the same fateful frustrating end. Saturn started as a green-field project wherein any organizational culture could easily be inculcated and nurtured, any experiments could be tested, tried, and brought to fruition, without any resistance from the reigning behemoth of deeply entrenched ethos that GM represented. Building Saturn from scratch, completely detached from GM, even geographically, brought about a quantum leap in efficiency that management processes had waited for long to witness.
The sticky grounds of AMU do not represent any better tar-pit than the pre-Saturn GM organization. How could AMU do a Saturn? Definitely not by sticking to the same tar-pit wherein even the best of ideas could get easily swamped into oblivion. Even the best of maneuvers and struggles of the largest beast in a tar-pit, to retrieve other sinking entities, result in the beast’s own progressive descent towards the bottom of the pit.
Large and small, massive or wiry, team after team has become entangled in the tar. No one thing seems to cause the difficulty – any particular paw can be pulled away. But the accumulation of simultaneous and interacting factors brings slower and slower motion. Everyone seems to have been surprised by the stickiness of the problem, and it is hard to discern the nature of it. But we must try to understand it if we are to solve it. [The Mythical Man Month, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.]
Think of the work culture of AMU as the symbolic tar-pit and the beast as its VC. Whether the VC is a champion from civil/ administrative or police services, from academics or military, the change that we aspire for would remain a distant dream plunging it into deeper, darker depths of despair, unless we remove the tar from our own pits. Removing the tar from the pit, particularly when the tar itself has become the way of life (and perceived means of progress) is a tall order knowing how challenging and agonizing the process of change is. Unless the insiders are ready to believe that the air outside of the pit is better for them, all appeals to them to hold onto an extended rope that could pull them out of the pit would most certainly be ignored. What can you do if they perceive the rope as a snake sulking for its first bite? They term all the outside attempts as dangerous, all the VCs as agents of these dangerous outsiders; so, if they don’t use the savior rope to be pulled out, and instead, prefer to use all their might to pull the rope and the person behind the rope into their own pits, that must not surprise anyone! Once pulled in, the VC faces the same fate as all others in the tar-pit. Even if he could pull himself out, is he expected to come out untarnished?
As long as we continue to fill the pit with our own tars of ego, false pride, selfish lust and greed, can we expect a succor for the pit that AMU symbolically represents?
An attempt was made by some (wise) men to gift AMU few Saturns in the form of Murshidabad and Mallapuram, away from the tar-pits. And, many more were promised (minimum three more). If we want, we can try our best to turn these promised centres into our Saturns, and change our tarred culture (and image, subsequently) forever. But, many of us have already started trying to turn the new centres into pits, and fill them with tars of our ego, false pride, selfishness, lust and greed. For the government, the best course would have been to establish new universities, completely detached from AMU, but why should the government do that? The central government takes recourse in the constitution to claim that a minority institution cannot be established by government funds; it must be established with funds from the minorities themselves. So, new minority universities are not possible; and we know that the proposal of Fatmi Committee/ HRD ministry to the UPA1 cabinet to establish central universities for minorities was turned downed. The alternative that the Fatmi committee proposed, after consultations with minority NGOS, muslim intellectuals and progressive Muslim leaders, in the form of five AMU centres, was hesitatingly approved by the UPA1 cabinet, after the AMU cabinet willingly approved the proposal. The trio of Arjun Singh, Fatmi, and Manmohan Singh, possibly carried enough emotive weight (or, they were just lucky) to get the proposal approved, and budget sanctioned to turn the proposal into reality.
Many of us perceive the AMU centres not as Saturns but as snakes in the form of ropes of lure; and rightly so. How can the Congress do us any good? The tar of suspicion is not at all unjustified, it is pitched in sustained acts of damaging acts spanning over decades. The actions of Kapil Sibbal, in UPA2, only strengthen that suspicion, adding even more tar to our pits of imagination. However, if we could look beyond the tar, we could take advantage of this opportunity and turn it into greatest advantage for us; we can make history. During the entire existence of AMU, when did AMU have an opportunity to get 1,400 acres of land for free (expected for the five promised new AMU Centres), without shedding even a small fraction of the sweat and tears Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had to? For most of us who would not invest a few thousand dollars or walk even a few miles to beg for funds to build a small school or college, the very thought of facing the challenges of the kind Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had to, is simply insane. And, here is a budgetary sanction of a few thousand crores to establish a few Saturns of our own! But, unless we could come out of the pits of suspicion, or remove our tarred glasses, how can we see the fairy of opportunity as an angel of salvation and succor? Instead of trying to drown this excellent opportunity into the illusory (or, real) statutes, can we work together to write some new chapters in the history of AMU and Indian Muslims? It is our choice to grope in the dark alleys of superficial threats or to make the best out of the few bright rays of hope to bring about the kind of quantum leap of excellence that the Saturn was able to make. If AMU Centres could be kept out of the tar-pit ghetto of perceived (and real) dangers, they could catalyze the much awaited progression of this great institution towards the top of the ladder. Let us join hands to help the AMU centres leap-frog the community into that leadership role we (and our institutions, by default) are entrusted with, by the Almighty, to play.
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Shakeel Ahmad is a graduate of BHU but considers himself a well-wisher of AMU.