It was one of the usual case studies we have on the MBA. Analysis of management of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison from the management of change perspective. The case lays out a story on how the officer in charge of the prison tried to bring about some positive changes in the prison to make life relatively easier for the detainees and for himself, but despite initial success in securing peace and cooperation from the detainees, things went from bad to worse. The lecturer drew the different frame works for implementing change process and then invited a discussion on the case.
Various points of view about what was to be done and could have been done were being put forward by the cohort, which my all means is one of the most intellectual one can expect on an MBA. All this while I was feeling a parallel between the case and what is happening in the bigger Guantanamo's of the world-the likes of Palestinian occupation by Israel and for that matter what is happening in my homeland Kashmir. The detainees at Guantanamo don't see themselves being tried in the near future and for that matter if at all they can conceive a future for themselves, they are being held indefinitely. Bringing in better food and blankets and expecting cooperation from the detainees in such a situation is a very long shot, the best the authorities can expect from the detainees is to accept the rules of the game superficially and nothing more. Palestine is a big Guantanamo bay for me, Israel calls the shots and gets to decide who lives or dies and expecting cooperation for leaving people alive is again asking too much. Israel's stance is either you comply or you suffer and this is the very point that breeds more resistance, moves like building the walls dividing the Palestinian people and cutting off their water and electricity supplies can never ensure submission not even cooperation, such moves only reinforce peoples resistance-it only becomes more implicit than before. Similar is the Indian influence in Kashmir, She first tried brutal coercion which completely failed and backfired on them. Now she is trying what might work if done the right way (I wonder what the way could be) but will take a lot of time - confidence building measures, but each day as another Kashmiri dies, the resolve of the people and their resistance is even more reinforced - with the only change that the resistance doesn't remain as explicit in its appearance as it must have been before.
As one of my colleagues at the MBA put it and rightly so - they are just trying to treat the symptoms of the disease and not the disease or its cause and unless its done nothing will change.
