why am I reflecting on the issue of institutional decline when our focus should be on improving their quality and prospects? Maybe we can learn from our mistakes more than from our positive acts, may be.. I have taught institution building to doctoral students at IIMA for over a decade and also help build several institutions in the realm of fostering creativity and innovations for and from the grassroots. I have taught earlier alone and now co-taught courses like #Shodhyatra and also Meeting the unmet Needs through grassroots innovations to doctoral students of CSIR, ICMR and Earth sciences for several years. Some of the factors that seem to explain the decline seem to be: a) unwillingness of institutional teams to work with people better than them b) hesitation in distinguishing the excellence through empirical work versus the recollections or recounting of other excellent works c) inability to deal with difficult but bright people vis-à-vis amiable and mediocre people d) using positional power rather than persuasive power for handling differences e) inability to distinguish that the goal or objective is more important than the institutional identities, so that collaboration is maximised f) inability of leaders to make timely corrections in distracted/diluted means and end equation, thus burdening the executive team with more difficult choices with sub-optimal outcomes g) The line between personal, professional and spiritual responsibilities get blurred with the passage of time, affecting the quality of decision-making, induction of people/projects and delivery of outputs and their outcomes h) Reliance on empirical and rigorous work is reduced with the passage of time, leading to easier options and sustaining lower benchmarks and motivation for continuous improvement i) dilution of community connect or innovator-connect, thus diffusing the focus on other issues, important as they may be, but at the cost of the raison d’etre of setting up the institutions j) unwillingness to participate in periodic debate on directions, means, ends and outcomes openly and inclusively I may be wrong, biased and may be too idealistic, but having failed a few times, i think I have gained the right to self-criticise
anilg@iima.ac.in
