Picture a senior IAS officer, someone who cleared one of the hardest examinations in the country and now administers public institutions, shouting abuse at a junior colleague. The words themselves are ugly enough. What unsettles me more is what the scene reveals: a person can be intellectually accomplished, professionally successful and socially powerful, and still be badly unprepared for life.
We have built an education system that teaches our children to compete, qualify and climb. We push them towards the highest marks, the most prestigious institutions and the toughest examinations. We celebrate their results, put their degrees before their names, and judge their success by the chairs they eventually occupy. Somewhere along the way, we forgot to teach them how to behave once they sit in those chairs.
Who teaches us to disagree without humiliating anyone? To hold authority without turning arrogant? To stay calm when someone makes a mistake, to correct without insulting, to lead without making people afraid? These are hardly minor skills. They separate a person who merely holds power from a person who deserves it.
A degree is not a certificate of character
We tend to assume that education produces maturity, empathy and good judgement as a by-product. It does not. Education can sharpen the mind and leave the heart untouched. It can make us expert in law, medicine, engineering or economics while leaving us strikingly ignorant about our own anger, our pride, and the people around us.
An examination measures memory, reasoning and problem-solving. It cannot tell us how a candidate will treat a subordinate who makes an honest mistake, a colleague who disagrees, or someone who has nothing to offer in return. That test begins after the last exam is over. It has no syllabus, no coaching centre and no merit list. It is set in ordinary moments: how we speak to our staff, how we take criticism, how we handle frustration, how we treat people who cannot answer back.
What we see is the tip of the iceberg
When an incident like this becomes public, it draws outrage and a round of commentary on workplace culture. Most such incidents never become public at all.
In offices, hospitals, universities and government departments, people are shouted at, insulted, threatened and belittled by those above them. Many stay quiet. They worry about transfers, adverse reports, stalled promotions, or being labelled difficult. They have families, loans and careers to protect. A junior doctor humiliated in front of patients on a ward round may go home shaken and return the next morning as though nothing happened. In a hierarchy, silence often becomes a survival strategy.
So the incident fades from view, though not from the life of the person who lived through it. We should not mistake the absence of complaints for the absence of abuse. Equally, a hierarchy is not in itself proof of a problem. The point is narrower: genuine misconduct stays hidden whenever reporting it seems costlier than enduring it.
Authority is not superiority
A designation confers powers. It does not make its holder a more valuable human being than the people beneath them.
Senior officers issue instructions, professors train junior doctors, consultants supervise residents, managers direct teams. All of this demands accountability, discipline and, at times, hard conversations. None of it is a licence to humiliate. Being strict is different from being abusive. Demanding accountability is different from attacking someone’s dignity. Correcting a mistake is different from using it to show who is in charge.
A good leader can be firm without being cruel and can express displeasure without losing composure. The more authority one holds, the more restraint one owes. Courtesy towards someone whose approval we need costs us nothing. Courtesy towards someone who needs our approval is where character shows.
Why do educated people behave like this?
One incident cannot settle the character of one individual, and there is no single explanation. A few patterns do recur.
Some people spend years mastering competition and almost no time examining their own reactions and prejudices. Some hold power without meaningful checks, and behaviour that carries no consequences soon feels normal. Some were humiliated by their own seniors and, once promoted, repeat what they once resented, now calling it discipline or tradition. Some professions glorify toughness, mistaking shouting for leadership and fear for respect. And institutions routinely promote people for technical or academic brilliance without asking whether they can manage people at all.
None of this excuses abuse. It helps explain why abuse survives in institutions full of highly educated professionals.
The bystanders
Then there are those who watch. Colleagues know a line has been crossed and say nothing. They fear being next, tell themselves it is not their business, or laugh along to stay on the right side of power. Where retaliation is a real risk, that silence is understandable. But when everyone stays silent, the person at the top hears a clear message: this is tolerated.
Healthier workplaces cannot depend on the courage of the person being mistreated. Institutions must make it safe for witnesses to speak, assess complaints fairly, and act on misconduct without favouritism. Accountability should not depend on whether a video goes viral.
Rethinking success
When someone clears the civil services, reaches the top of a profession or takes charge of an institution, we rightly praise their intelligence, effort and sacrifice. But our idea of success is incomplete.
What is professional achievement worth if it comes with an inability to treat others with dignity? What does it mean to lead an institution whose people are afraid to speak honestly? This is not an argument against ambition, competition or hierarchy. Society needs capable administrators, demanding teachers and decisive leaders. It is an argument for a fuller definition of achievement, one that honours the person who reached the top without shedding their humility on the way up. Leadership is measured less by how much authority a person commands than by how responsibly they use it.
Educating for life
The fix will not come from a few motivational lectures on empathy, and not every workplace disagreement is abuse. Organisations need clear standards, fair investigations, proportionate consequences and real protection against retaliation.
The deeper work starts earlier. Schools, colleges and professional training should give serious attention to emotional regulation, conflict resolution, ethical decision-making, respectful communication and the responsibilities that come with power. Training should cover managing people, not just managing systems. Leaders should be judged partly by the environments they create; someone who delivers results by intimidating colleagues should not automatically count as effective.
And each of us has to take on the hardest education of all, the education of the self. That means noticing when anger is in control, apologising when we are wrong, correcting without degrading, accepting that rank does not make us infallible, and remembering that a person’s designation or salary says nothing about their worth. None of this is weakness. It is maturity.
The question that matters
The incident should not become an excuse to condemn an entire service. It should prompt a harder look at the cultures we tolerate, the leaders we reward and the behaviour we excuse when it comes from people of standing.
Education has great value. The trouble is that we expect it to do something it was never designed to do on its own. A degree can open doors, a designation can confer authority, and a position can command attention. None of them can teach a person to be humane.
So, after all these years of schooling, how well have we learnt to live with other people? Have we learnt to disagree without contempt and to hold power without arrogance? Or have we only become better at competing with one another?
We spend decades preparing to become somebody in the eyes of the world. We spend far too little time preparing to become somebody worth being around.
The writer is Senior Resident, Department of Endocrinology, Government Medical College, Srinagar. shahmuzaif380@gmail.com