At the outset, let me state that this article is not about the person or the university which was the centre point of various impassioned debates and arguments. This is about a far more serious and disturbing reality.
At the height of the controversy, when anyone and everyone had an opinion — some extreme, to say the least — on the hanging of Afzal Guru, there was a short video shared on a social media platform. The gist was to find out how aware people were, regarding who Afzal Guru was. After all, the controversy erupted because of his hanging.
What really stood out in the video was the level of ignorance and lack of awareness amongst people. The question, “Who is Afzal Guru” put forth varied responses like “I don’t know”, “Some kind of a revolutionary”, “Some famous person, I guess”, and other embarrassingly ignorant replies. Around 15-20 students were featured in the video.
My first thought after watching it was that this might not be a true picture — after all, the sample size was very small and they needn’t necessarily represent the larger population.
During the next few weeks, I interacted with various audiences, including students from a broad spectrum — graduates and post graduates from institutes all over the country. In every forum, I would ask the audience whether they knew about the controversy and Afzal Guru. If there was any hope I had of the video representing only a small fraction of youngsters, my first hand experience crushed it. A majority of the students had no clue as to what I was asking about.
I use the word ‘shocking’ to describe the experience because of two important perspectives.
1) Lack of awareness with regard to current affairs: This is a trend which does not augur well for the next generation, especially future managers. Tracking current affairs and news is not only about being informed about what is happening around you, but is also indicative of developments and trends which might impact the economy and country.
As a future manager, if management students aren’t aware of what is happening around them, they will be handicapped. If not for anything else, track the news and know what’s happening around you interviews, for interviewers often test your knowledge on these topics.
2) Lack of awareness is bad , but having an opinion without enough information is worse : Take any topic and check whether you and those around you are adequately informed about the same.
Irrespective of whether they know of the topic or not, chances are, people will still go ahead and have very strong opinions based on WhatsApp forwards, Facebook posts, and what people around them are saying.
This essentially means such a person can be easily manipulated and their opinion, influenced. It is definitely not a leadership trait. If anyone aspires to be a leader, he/she needs to first develop independent thought based on validated information. This situation, where a majority has no idea about the issue and yet expresses strong opinions, only shows the dearth of potential leaders.
One simple way to overcome this is to build a habit of informed opinions and decisions by following the news and current affairs. It might help if a group of friends decided to spend 15 minutes each day to pick up a current affairs topic and debate about it with well-researched, validated information.