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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.

KaleidThe Hidden Cost of Doing Too Muchoscope

A few days ago, I was stuck near Ghodbunder Road in one of those slow, crawling patches where the car keeps moving, but you still don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere.


That’s the best metaphor I can offer for many business owners I meet. Everything is moving. Everyone is busy. Calls, approvals, meetings, follow-ups, WhatsApp messages, late-night fixes. The day is full. The week is full.


And yet… progress feels strangely flat. As we step into 2026, it’s worth asking a blunt question: Are you actually building momentum or just running a very expensive routine?

Effort Is Not The Problem

Most founders don’t struggle because they’re lazy. They struggle because they are too reliable.


A second-generation business leader I met recently (closer to home, in the Mumbai–Thane belt) told me:


“We are working nonstop. Sales is on. Delivery is on. I’m involved everywhere. Growth should follow, right?” He wasn’t wrong about the effort. But he was confusing motion with momentum.


When you keep doing more, without redesigning how the business runs, you don’t create scale. You create a bigger version of the same struggle.


The Quiet Truth

There’s a myth many of us carry, especially in family-run and founder-led businesses: If I’m always available, I’m responsible. If I’m involved in every decision, I’m committed. If I’m in every loop, the business is “under control”.


But what really happens over time is more uncomfortable: The business starts depending on your effort instead of your design. And then your presence becomes the glue holding everything together. That glue works… until it doesn’t.


In the Mahabharata, Abhimanyu enters the Chakravyuh bravely. He fights hard. He holds his own. But he gets trapped because he knows how to enter, not how to exit. That’s the founder version of “doing too much”.


You enter every loop: You approve every discount. You rewrite every client email. You jump into every operations fire. You personally “close” every stuck situation.


Not because your team is useless. But because the exit path was never designed.


And slowly, the business becomes a Chakravyuh of your own making where the only way things move is if you are in the middle of it.


Hidden Cost Is The Team

Here’s what over-effort quietly does: It trains the team to wait. Every time you step in “just this once”, you teach people that escalation is the real workflow.


It shrinks initiative. People stop thinking ahead. They focus on keeping you updated, not solving the issue. It creates decision fatigue. You start carrying hundreds of micro-decisions. Even small things feel heavy. It blocks succession … emotionally, not just structurally. Because the team never builds confidence without you.


I’ve seen this pattern so often that I started noticing it in myself too outside business. When I over-function, the system around me under-functions. Not because people are incapable. But because my behaviour quietly tells them, “I don’t trust the process unless I touch it”. That’s a hard thing to admit. But it’s also a freeing realisation.


Now contrast Abhimanyu with Krishna. Krishna didn’t win by doing more. He shifted outcomes by designing decisions: Who acts, when. What gets escalated, and what doesn’t. What “done” looks like. What happens if someone is unavailable.


That’s what mature leadership looks like in a growing business. Not more involvement. More architecture.


If you want a different 2026, change the lens. Most people enter a new year with new goals.


A better question is: What are you still personally compensating for inside your business?


Because if your calendar is packed and your mind is always “on”, it usually means one of these is missing: Clear ownership. Clear escalation paths. Clear “done” definitions. Clear decision windows When those are missing, effort becomes the default strategy. And effort is a poor substitute for structure.


Abhimanyu fought hard and got trapped. Krishna stayed out of the fight and shaped the field. So, here’s the question to carry into 2026: Are you building a business you can exit… or a loop you keep re-entering?


And if things feel heavy even after all your hard work, maybe the answer is not “work harder”. Maybe it’s: design better.


(The author is Co-founder & Principal Consultant at PPS Consulting and works with growth-stage founders to replace high-effort leadership with system-led scale. Views personal. Reach him at rahul@ppsconsulting.biz.)

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