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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 4:29:04 pm

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a...

Manufactured Martyrs

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly meant to recreate a familiar script where an allegedly unassuming public figure embraces personal sacrifice and a reluctant government buckles under mounting moral pressure. But history does not repeat itself on command. Anna Hazare’s fast in 2011 succeeded not because fasting possesses mystical political powers, but because it rode a tidal wave of public anger against corruption. Millions identified with the cause. That equation is conspicuously absent today. The platform that ought to have belonged to students who suffered from the NEET paper leak, or to parents whose children bore its consequences, instead became crowded with the usual constellation of professional activists, ideological campaigners and political fellow travellers. The faces dominating the stage were not those most directly affected by the scandal. A movement demanding educational accountability gradually came to look like another gathering of Delhi’s permanently aggrieved activist class. Even Wangchuk appeared to sense the contradiction. During the protest he reportedly lamented that while he was observing an indefinite fast, many around him were happily eating meals, urging at least a token one-day fast in solidarity. Successful protest movements depend upon authenticity. Once the public begins suspecting that an individual is being deployed less as a leader than as a moral accessory for someone else’s ideological project, sympathy quickly evaporates. Nor does Wangchuk arrive without controversy. Questions have been raised over the cancellation of the FCRA licence of SECMOL, the educational organisation associated with him, and over allegations regarding subsequent foreign funding arrangements. Critics have also challenged aspects of the carefully cultivated public mythology surrounding his achievements, from the origins of the ice-stupa concept to the popular belief that he inspired the protagonist of 3 Idiots. These matters deserve scrutiny on their own merits rather than hagiography or character assassination. The greater failure here surely belongs to the protest’s organisers. The CJP has mistaken optics for momentum and symbolism for public sentiment. Instead of allowing the victims of the NEET scandal to speak for themselves, they attempted to manufacture another national conscience by placing a familiar face at the centre of the stage. Political legitimacy cannot be outsourced to celebrity. Nor can mass movements be assembled from social-media influencers and habitual protesters. Anna Hazare became powerful because the public chose him. Attempts to manufacture his successor merely underline how rare such moments really are.

The Accidental Manager: When Competence Outruns Capability

Most managers weren’t chosen to lead. They were promoted because someone had to.

The Promotion No One Prepared For. Every small company eventually reaches the awkward middle.


The founder can’t do everything anymore, so the best performers are handed new titles.


They move from doing the work to managing it. And overnight, the organization’s rhythm changes.


At The Workshop … the same design firm we met last week … Meera had just been promoted.


She’d been the backbone of every project: dependable, detail-obsessed, the one who fixed what others missed.


The founder called her into his office and said, “You’ll lead the design team now.


You’ve earned it.” She smiled, said yes, and stayed late that night out of pride.


Two weeks later, she was staying late again … but this time out of confusion.


The Shift Nobody Named

On paper, nothing had changed. Same office. Same colleagues. Same projects. But now, the people who used to brainstorm with her waited for “instructions.” Her inbox filled with questions she didn’t know how to answer.


Her calendar filled with meetings that didn’t move work forward. By month’s end, she wasn’t designing anymore. She was approving, mediating, firefighting.


No one had done anything wrong. But everyone was suddenly off-beat. This is how most leadership layers are born not by design, but by necessity. Competence gets mistaken for readiness. Performance becomes a proxy for potential. And somewhere between enthusiasm and exhaustion, a new creature emerges in every growing team: the accidental manager.


Why Good Performers Struggle

The problem isn’t talent. It’s translation. High performers are wired to fix things themselves. Managers are meant to help others fix things. That’s not a small jump; it’s a psychological migration. But no one tells Meera that.


Her founder assumes she’ll “figure it out.” Her team assumes she already knows. Caught between admiration and expectation, she learns to improvise authority. Soon she’s trying to be everyone’s buffer and everyone’s boss. The team starts avoiding her not because they dislike her, but because they sense her uncertainty.


She starts avoiding them because every conversation now feels like confrontation. This is how chaos enters quietly … not through rebellion, but through inexperience.


The Skill–Role Gap

In most growing companies, the first layer of managers carries the highest invisible risk. They’re skilled enough to lead but untrained to manage. They understand deliverables, not dynamics. They can control outcomes, but not energy.


And because the system hasn’t caught up. No check-ins, no review rhythm, no clear handoff rules … everyone ends up guessing. The founder feels the team is “losing discipline.” The team feels the founder is “micromanaging again.”


Both are right, and both are tired. What’s really broken isn’t intent. It’s scaffolding.


The Reframe

Leadership isn’t a promotion. It’s a change in identity. A good manager doesn’t stop doing work; they start shaping the conditions where work gets done better. They replace intensity with rhythm, pressure with process, instinct with insight. And none of that happens by accident.


Yet in most organizations, the phrase “we’ll train them later” is where growth begins to fray. Because by the time you notice management chaos, it’s already culture.


The Human Moment

One evening, Meera stayed back after everyone left. She opened her laptop, stared at the half-finished design she hadn’t touched since her promotion, and whispered to herself, “I miss being good at my job.”


That line stays with me every time I meet a first-time manager who feels lost inside a title they never trained for. They didn’t fail upward. They were just never taught how to turn authority into rhythm.


The Quiet Reflection

The accidental manager isn’t the villain of growth; they’re its first casualty. They expose the gap between what a company celebrates and what it sustains. Between rewarding effort and equipping evolution.


If The People Paradox began with emotional drift, this chapter is about functional drift, the point where good intentions collide with missing design.


(The writer is co-founder at PPS Consulting. He helps growth-stage leaders design systems where people and performance evolve together. Views personal.)

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