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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Educated Muslims being hounded: Owaisi

Mumbai: AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi has flayed what he termed as a ‘media trial’ in the alleged TCS Nashik conversion case and claimed that educated Muslims youth are being deliberately targeted as part of planned ‘hate campaign’, here on Saturday. Reiterating full faith in the judicial process, Owaisi said that justice cannot be handed out through media narratives or television debates and the law must be allowed to take its own course. “We are seeing a very dangerous trend… Now,...

Educated Muslims being hounded: Owaisi

Mumbai: AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi has flayed what he termed as a ‘media trial’ in the alleged TCS Nashik conversion case and claimed that educated Muslims youth are being deliberately targeted as part of planned ‘hate campaign’, here on Saturday. Reiterating full faith in the judicial process, Owaisi said that justice cannot be handed out through media narratives or television debates and the law must be allowed to take its own course. “We are seeing a very dangerous trend… Now, educated Muslims are being picked out for orchestrated allegations and media campaigns. This doesn’t augur well for society and justice itself with the media playing the role of the judge and jury,” said Owaisi sharply. Flanked by the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen state President Imtiaz Jaleel, Owaisi also emphatically said that it was wrong to link his party with the TCS case prime accused Nida Khan, “who will be ultimately proven innocent in the courts”. He expressed concerns over the slur campaign driven by malice and political motives against his party as well as Nida Khan in some sections of the media even before the investigations were completed or a judicial scrutiny. “Merely because some allegations have been hurled at a young woman professional, attempts are being made to paint her ‘guilty’ through media trials, even before judicial scrutiny. But, we have complete faith in the judiciary and are confident that the court will eventually exonerate her,” asserted Owaisi. Public Discourse Raising questions on the probe and accompanying public discourse with stress on the alleged recovery of certain ‘evidence’ from Nida Khan’s home, he sharply questioned: “Since when have a burqa, a niqab or religious literature become objectionable… Is wearing a hijab now regarded as evidence of a crime?” He said that these details along with baseless allegations are sensationalism in the media to create further prejudice against the minority community and reflected a deep-rooted hostility aimed at harassing educated Muslim men and women. Owaisi pointed out that a complaint in the TCS Nashik case was filed by a leader linked with the ruling party, and as per the software giant’s statement, Nida Khan was not with its HR Department and transferred even before the controversy erupted, contradicting several media reports. Of the nine cases lodged in the matter till date, in one case, she was accused of hurting religious sentiments, but nobody can comment on it before the court pronounces its verdict, he pointed out. Court Fight Dismissing attempts to drag and link the AIMIM into the row, he referred to a party Municipal Corporator Matin Patel who was booked merely on the basis of certain allegations and vowed to contest the matter in the court. Here Owaisi cited multiple examples of educated Muslims being scrutinised – including in Delhi when some educated youths were arrested for possessing a book by the legendary Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib and they were later released. There was another one from Allahabad where some Muslim boys were targeted for writing an Urdu ‘sher’ (couplet) prompting judicial intervention, and predicted that even in the Nashik TCS case, the truth will ultimately prevail as no criminal charges against Nida Khan may stand. AIMIM to set up voter help-desks AIMIM President and Hyderabad MP, Asaduddin Owaisi said his party is developing a digital application containing electoral records of all 288 Assembly constituencies in Maharashtra for 2002-2024, to help voters in the SIR process. For this, the AIMIM will set up help desk centers in its strongholds to facilitate the process and ensure proper utilisation of voter data. Alleging discrepancies in electoral records, he said such errors create huge problems for the voters, especially the poor or illiterates. Owaisi mentioned how of the nearly 27 lakh names placed in the adjudication list in West Bengal, “90 pc were poor Muslims.” These centers would be open for all Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Adivasis and the general public needing assistance with the electoral records.

AI Is Not a Cure. It’s a Diagnostic

Last week, a founder in Thane said something I’ve heard in many forms before:

“Just tell me which AI tool to buy. I want this chaos to reduce.”


It was late at night. He wasn’t chasing transformation. He was exhausted. His day had been a loop of follow-ups, escalations, customer confusion, internal debates, and one more “urgent” that became urgent only because nothing moved on time.


And then AI appears. A tool that writes, summarises, replies, plans. A tool that sounds calm and confident even when your business isn’t. So, I understand the rush. In 2026, AI feels like the first technology wave that promises relief, not just efficiency. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: AI won’t cure a messy system. It will scan it. And the scan results are rarely pleasant.


AI For Relief

Founders don’t chase AI because they love technology. They chase it because they want mental breathing room. They’re tired of being the human glue. Tired of confirming everything. Tired of fixing what should have been fixed by the system.

AI feels like a shortcut to maturity because it produces the appearance of order:

clean emails, neat summaries, structured plans

But appearances have fooled SMEs before.


Emotional Pattern

If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve seen this cycle repeat: ERP promised control. SaaS promised visibility. Automation promised speed. AI now promises thinking. Each wave arrives with the same hope: “This will reduce our dependence on people.”


And each wave disappoints the same way because the tool lands on top of a system that was never stabilised. For a few weeks, things look better.


Then the old sentence returns: “We bought the tool. Why is nothing changing?”

Because tools don’t eliminate ambiguity. They scale it. AI just scales it faster.


Exposing Gaps

Here’s the clean reframe: AI is an MRI scan for your business.

An MRI doesn’t heal you. It shows you what’s happening under the surface.

AI does the same quickly and without politeness. It reveals four gaps founders often carry quietly.


First, unstable processes. In many SMEs, the process isn’t documented. It lives in someone’s head … often the founder’s or the “best performer’s.” When work isn’t done the same way twice, AI can’t help. It can only guess. So proposals look polished, but delivery doesn’t match. Not because anyone is dishonest, but because there is no single way of working.


Second, untrusted data. Ask a simple question like, “What price did we promise this customer?” and you’ll get different answers from sales, accounts, old spreadsheets, and memory. AI doesn’t fix this. It produces confident outputs from inconsistent inputs. Founders then step back in to verify. The load doesn’t reduce, it just changes shape.


Third, unclear decision rights. Most SMEs don’t suffer from lack of ideas. They suffer from lack of closure. No one knows who can decide, what “good enough” means, or when a decision is final. AI adds options but without decision ownership, options become noise.


Finally, trust debt. This is when the real company runs on side calls, personal favours, and WhatsApp war rooms. AI can make replies faster, but it can’t create trust. When trust is weak, speed only makes the cracks louder. Customers don’t want faster words. They want reliable outcomes.


A Small Confession. I’ve felt this temptation myself … the hope that a smarter tool might clean up complexity. But every durable improvement I’ve seen in SMEs started somewhere far less glamorous: One workflow stabilised, one ownership clarified, one source of truth agreed, one review rhythm installed.


Only after that does technology create leverage. Before that, it creates theatre.

Using Insight


This is not an argument against AI. It’s an argument for sequence. Use AI as a diagnostic, not as medicine. Don’t ask, “Which tool will fix us?” Ask, “What does AI reveal about us?” Then fix the foundation. Because the businesses that win in 2026 won’t be the ones that adopted AI first. They’ll be the ones whose systems were mature enough to hold the speed.


One Question

If AI made your business twice as fast tomorrow. What would break first? If you already know the answer, you already know where the real work is.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He works with founders and second-generation leaders to design operating systems where growth strengthens people, not exhausts them.)

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