It was a hot day and the tight group of boys and girls hunched over lunch in the canteen of Indumati College of Computer Systems and Technology looked worried. The college was making headlines with their ex-principal and founder venting his ire and the papers having a merry time.
“ Panditji ko gussa kyon aata hai? ” demanded Roshan who had just completed his first year.
“ Arre bachchu , you don’t know the background,” jeered his senior, Amit. Indusys, as their college was popularly known, was a leading computer science college in India painstakingly built up into a great institution by a group of middle-class professors with a penchant for excellence and values. It reported outstanding results in the university exams year after year and its fame spread abroad along with its students. Soon, Indusys along with two other colleges — one based across town and another in Mumbai — became synonymous with India’s prowess in computer programming. They accounted for most of India’s export of computer science graduates to American and European universities.
“That’s all fine, tell me what’s gone wrong now,” demanded Roshan.
Amit continued: “The troubles began when one of the co-founders, Ms N Nandini, widely expected to take over the reins of the college from Panditji, left Indusys to take up a challenging assignment in a government college.” The principal was named after the Lord Preserver Himself but was affectionately called Panditji. “But couldn’t they find someone equally good?” Roshan’s doubt was genuine.
“They could have, but the co-founders had a tacit understanding that each of them would get a hand at the wheel in turn. And so, the two remaining founders, Ms R Gopika and Ms SD Sheeba, assumed leadership in quick succession,” Amit explained.
“So how did our present princi Prof S Vaishali enter the picture? She’s not a founder, is she?” asked Roshan.
“Oh, things didn’t go too well after his exit and Panditji had to return to Indusys as principal. He steadied the college and ran it for a year before poaching Prof Vaishali from a German university where she was teaching,” Amit replied.
That raised a basic doubt in Roshan’s mind: “If Prof Vaishali was Panditji’s choice why’s he now so unhappy with her? Did he go so badly wrong in his choice or did he believe, mistakenly, that he could get Prof Vaishali to run the college according to his wishes?”
“ Bachchu bhai , allow me to explain,” Amit shot back. “Vaishali’s high-flying ways were a culture shock to Panditji, a conservative South Indian who needed nothing more than steaming hot idlis and spicy sambar along with filter coffee to make him happy. He couldn’t understand why Vaishali was paying such obscenely high salaries to her colleagues and he resented the fact that she did not consult him on major decisions.”
Vishal, a final-year student who was busy with his chicken pizza till then, butted into the conversation: “Dude, tell me what Panditji means when he says he wished he had stayed on longer in the college? Is he hinting at another comeback?”
Roshan, by then, was all red in the face: “What about the future of students? We’re as it is in trouble finding jobs, especially in the US, and most of our good teachers have already left us.”
Amit realised he had to calm things down. “Cool it, guys. Problem is that Panditji wants his successors to run the college as he did. But he should know better. To borrow examples from the world of business, Jeff Immelt did not run GE as the legendary Jack Welch did. Nor is Satya Nadella running Microsoft like Bill Gates did. Haven’t Sergey Brin and Larry Page given a free hand to Sundar Pichai to run Google?”
It was left to little Mohit, straight out of school, to bring clarity to the discussion. “Dudes, listen,” he said. “Panditji’s actions stem from an inability to let go. As founder, he thinks he has a lifelong right to run the college. He’s the proverbial elephant in the room of Prof Vaishali and is constantly looking over her shoulder. Panditji is making it impossible for Prof Vaishali to run the college and is damaging the very institution he built with his sweat and toil. It’s amazing that he doesn’t understand this!”
“Oh, he’s not alone,” Amit piped up, “I hear that something similar happened recently in a 150-year old university in Mumbai, almost bringing it to its knees. But that’s another story.”
With that the students of Indusys trooped back to their classrooms for the next session on coding.
Any similarity to living characters and institutions is intentional