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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.

When Unofficial Influence Silently Bends The Company

Teams don’t follow the org chart. They follow influence.

It began, as distortions often do, with something small. A client asked for a minor tweak. Priya created a plan, aligned the team, and got ready to ship. Twelve minutes later, the direction changed completely. Not because the client updated the brief. Not because Rohit, the founder, intervened. It changed because someone Rohit trusted… a former colleague, not part of the company … dropped a casual suggestion on WhatsApp: “Try a different structure. Might work better.”


A side comment. An informal opinion. And suddenly the team’s work reshuffled.


That’s system distortion:  the moment unofficial influence quietly overrides official structure. The team didn’t complain.


But they did wonder: “Who are we actually taking direction from?” A healthy system bends under strategy. A distorted one bends under proximity.


Every company has an invisible org chart. Titles say one thing. Behaviour says another.


Most teams slowly learn to navigate two structures: The formal org chart and he real influence map. Influence comes from: tenure (“He’s been here forever”), trust (“She knows the founder best”), competence (“He fixes everything”), charisma (“Everyone listens to her”), or external voices (“Mentor said this yesterday…”).


None of these appear in job descriptions. All of them shape decisions.

System distortion is rarely malicious. It is simply unacknowledged power.

 

Three Unofficial Power Nodes

By mid-year, The Workshop operated around three “shadow roles”:


1. The Veteran

Aman had legacy knowledge. People treated his opinion as policy because “he knows how Rohit thinks.”


2. The Interpreter

Meera translated Rohit’s intent better than anyone. Decisions were checked with her “just to be safe.”


3. The External Brain

A consultant Rohit admired occasionally dropped ideas that instantly reshaped priorities … without context or accountability.


None of them misused influence. But influence doesn’t need intention to create impact.

The system didn’t collapse. It simply drifted … subtly, daily, silently.

 

Pattern 1: The Loyalty Weight

Long-time loyalists often hold invisible authority. Not because they’re strongest. Because they’re familiar. Teams adjust around them: “Better check with him first.”, “She knows what Rohit prefers.”, “He’ll influence the decision anyway.”


Loyalty becomes gravity. Gravity shapes behaviour. Newer voices fade… not from lack of talent, but from lack of perceived permission.

 

Pattern 2: The Competence Exception

Sometimes distortion forms around the most capable person. The hyper-performer. The one who delivers under pressure. The one the boss instinctively relies on.


Soon: Nothing moves without their input, managers feel bypassed, systems bend to accommodate one person’s style. On the surface it looks efficient. Underneath, the company becomes brittle. Remove the star, and the organisation shakes.


Pattern 3: The Override Proxy

This is the most subtle distortion of all. The boss doesn’t override decisions. Someone else does it for them: “Trust me, he won’t like this.”, “Let’s realign… this is more his vibe.”, “He’ll want something sharper.” These proxies don’t hold authority. They simply channel it.


But the effect is the same: Managers lose influence, teams stop owning decisions, people optimise for the proxy instead of the structure.


Pattern 4: The External Influence Trap

Even well-meaning external voices can destabilise internal work: A mentor suggests a tweak, an investor questions a KPI, a consultant criticises a slide, a friend shares a “thought” And suddenly six weeks of work feels “misaligned.”


The team begins working against ghosts… unseen opinions that override internal clarity. External insight is valuable. But without boundaries, it becomes internal disturbance.


Why System Distortion Is So Dangerous

Its symptoms are subtle: Decisions feel inconsistent, ownership becomes uneven, managers lose authority, teams second-guess the “real” source of direction, work slows not from laziness, but from navigational anxiety. Systems break quietly long before they break visibly.


Bosses believe they’ve built a clear structure. Teams experience an informal constellation. Bosses think decisions flow through roles. Teams know they flow through influence.

Bosses assume clarity. Teams behave inside ambiguity. A system doesn’t fail because it’s weak. It fails because it’s unclear.


The People Paradox showed how teams drift from leaders. The Boss Paradox shows how leaders distort systems without meaning to. Five hidden fractures. Five mirrors. Not to blame… but to see. Because companies rarely break from incompetence. 


They break from invisibility. Clarity is the beginning. Rebuilding is what comes next.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. She writes about the human mechanics of scaling where workplace behavior quietly shapes business outcomes.)


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