Feature

An Exclusive Interview with Syed Munir Khasru
The Moderator of IBACC

T. Osman

EVER since its inception, IBACC has been credited for coming up with events that set benchmark for others. The most recent triumph of IBACC has been a landmark event through which the upcoming office bearers of IBACC were elected. To know further about the pioneering event, Star Campus interviewed Syed Munir Khasru, Professor, IBA and the man behind the success of IBACC.

Star Campus: What was the reason behind the election?
Syed Munir Khasru: From a broader perspective, Bangladesh is often looked upon as a moderate democratic Muslim state. If democratic values have to be firmly established in a country, then it has to be practiced in every sphere of the society. There is no better place than educational institutions to inculcate democratic norms where seeds of formal learning takes place. In well known academic institutions of the world, student bodies are elected by students to make sure that leaders and office bearers are accountable to general students on whose votes they get elected. Convinced in the same ideals, we felt that IBACC, being the pioneer in many ground breaking activities, should lead the way in encouraging students to have their leaders elected through popular mandate and not arbitrary choices.

SC: What kind of impact can it have on students?
SMK: For the duly elected student leaders, this process is a means of making them acclimatize to a system where they realize that the honor, privilege and power that they enjoy in lieu of the offices they hold are due to the endorsement of the general students who have voted them into the office. This is expected to generate a sense of obligation and accountability in the elected student leaders towards the stakeholders, leading to better performance by the elected.

SC: There are clubs who have a practice of office bearers being selected by either out going office bearers or the club moderators. Is there anything wrong with that?
SMK: There are few instances where such systems may have worked, while there are plenty of examples where this system has been abused to the detriment of the ordinary members. The simple principle is that if aspirants for leadership positions have this belief that by being in the good books of the moderator or their incumbent leaders, they have a better chance of accessing these leadership positions, their accountability to the general members would be weak. This also precludes the possibility of a potential leader to have opportunity to occupy those positions, if he is not particularly close to either the moderator or incumbent office bearers. This is not desirable as every potential leader should have a fair opportunity to represent his/her student community based on his/her acceptability to the general students.

SC: Why did IBACC decide to introduce this system?
SMK: Being the leading business school of this country, IBA believes setting examples of high professional standards which others may be inspired to adopt. Can you tell me if there is any sensible and conscious person who would not subscribe to a process that improves transparency and strengthens accountability of the future leaders? In many student clubs of leading universities we have seen how lack of accountability has resulted in a select group of students holding leadership positions year after year, even when they have completed graduation, with very little scope for the new blood to effectively assume leadership positions. This also has resulted in financial misappropriation and other forms of gross irregularities which the university authorities have later discovered. Such practices are not helpful in generating a healthy process of continued leadership in any institution. Hence, IBA took the mantle of establishing a practice that inspires leadership, ensures accountability, and empowers the ordinary students through their voting rights.

IBACC has set standards in other areas as well. Like after the scale and style with which we did BrandWitz, the branding case competition last year, in collaboration with Unilever Bangladesh, many others who used to organize similar case competitions in a lackluster fashion with low budget had no option but to upgrade their own standard as otherwise they would have lost their appeal. If our high performance standards inspire others to do better, then actually we are not only serving IBA but the greater community of students, universities, and corporate houses.

SC: Did this election have anything to do with National Politics?
SMK: Absolutely not. As you know, the representative student body for all the students of DU is DUCSU. Although currently it's inactive, may be someday it will be active again when circumstances are more conducive. IBACC's election was meant only for current regular IBA students and was completely non-political with no form of campaign and canvassing with political significance allowed. Here, candidates had to convince voters of their eligibility on such criteria as their background and experience, business plan for the next year, resource mobilization initiatives, their marketing strategy etc.