The first principle of good governance begins in a classroom.
Dr. Ashraf Zainabi
When we hear the words good governance, our minds usually travel to Parliament, the Secretariat, district offices or courts. We think of governments, policies, budgets and laws. Rarely do we think of a school.Perhaps we should.
A school is one of the smallest yet most influential units of governance in any society. It has rules to uphold, resources to manage, people to serve, conflicts to resolve, and futures to shape. Every morning, a school head makes decisions that affect hundreds of children, dozens of teachers and countless parents. The principles that define good governance in a nation, fairness, accountability, compassion, transparency and public trust, are tested every day within the walls of a school.
This is why the life of Master Ali Mohammad of Naik Bagh Nowgam deserves to be remembered not merely as the story of an educator, but as the story of a remarkable practitioner of good governance. The story began in 1988, not in a modern campus or a well-equipped institution, but in a two-room cowshed turned classrooms with only four students. It was an unlikely place to dream of building a school. Yet history often begins in places that appear too small to matter.
Today, that humble beginning has grown into a campus educating nearly 1,500 students. The buildings are larger, the classrooms are fuller and the responsibilities are greater. But the true achievement is not the expansion itself. It is that the values with which the school began have survived its growth.Growth often changes institutions. Success sometimes changes people even more.
Across India, private education has become increasingly expensive. New campuses compete through advertisements, luxurious infrastructure and ever-rising fees. Education, in many places, has gradually begun to resemble a commercial enterprise. Parents have little choice but to pay because every family wants the best possible future for its children.Yet there are exceptions that quietly challenge this trend.Despite serving around fifteen hundred students, Master Ali Mohammad’s institution, Fayez Educational Institute (FEI) Nowgam continues to charge less than 25% of what many prominent private schools charge today. That decision is not merely about affordability. It reflects a philosophy of governance. It answers a simple moral question.Would I want quality education to become unaffordable if my own child belonged to an ordinary family?The answer appears in the school’s fee structure.
Good governance is often explained through technical language, accountability, transparency, participation and efficiency. These principles certainly matter. But behind every one of them lies something far simpler, respect for the people one serves.The timeless moral principle, Do not do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself, is as relevant to a school as it is to a government. A school administrator should ask the same question that every public servant ought to ask before making a decision, If I were the parent standing on the other side of this table, would I consider this fair? If I were the student affected by this decision, would I accept it with dignity?
This is where governance becomes visible.Every fee fixed, every scholarship awarded, every child encouraged instead of humiliated, every struggling student given another opportunity, every teacher treated with respect and every parent heard patiently becomes an act of governance. Unlike governments, however, schools do not govern citizens for five years. They influence minds that may carry those lessons for a lifetime.That is why the quality of governance inside a school often determines the quality of citizenship outside it.
“The story of Master Ali Mohammad illustrates that good governance is not limited to formal government offices; rather, it exists wherever individuals protect and uplift others. By upholding his principles to grow a school from four students in a cowshed to an institution serving fifteen hundred, he demonstrated that impactful governance can be practiced by anyone—including a teacher—in its most human form.”
The academic achievements of Master Ali Mohammad’s institution are well known. Year after year, students have demonstrated that excellence does not depend entirely on expensive buildings or sophisticated technology. Dedicated teachers, disciplined classrooms and honest leadership remain the strongest foundations of quality education.
But perhaps the greatest lesson did not come from examination results.It came when life itself tested the man who had built the institution.A severe heart stroke brought him to the edge of despair. There were moments when even doctors reportedly feared the worst. For many people, such an ordeal would have marked the end of professional life. Years of service would have given anyone the moral right to retire quietly.Instead, he chose to return.
That decision says as much about leadership as the school’s physical growth. Institutions endure because their leaders refuse to surrender when circumstances become difficult. The same determination that transformed four students into fifteen hundred also helped one educator overcome one of the greatest personal battles of his life.
There is another lesson hidden in this story.Public trust cannot be purchased. Governments spend enormous sums trying to earn it. Businesses invest heavily in branding to create it. Schools, however, earn trust only through consistency. Parents return year after year because they believe their children will be treated fairly. Alumni recommend their alma mater because they remember how they were guided. Communities support institutions because they witness integrity over decades, not during publicity campaigns.
Trust grows slowly. It can disappear quickly.Master Ali Mohammad understood this long before governance experts began speaking of citizen-centric administration. Every child who entered his school was not merely an admission number. Every parent was not simply a fee payer. They were people placing their hopes in an institution. Respecting those hopes became the school’s greatest strength.
As our society debates educational reforms, artificial intelligence, digital classrooms and new policies, we should remember that no technology can replace moral leadership. Smart boards can improve teaching. Software can simplify administration. But neither can substitute for fairness, compassion or integrity.
In the end, every institution reflects the character of the person who leads it. The story of Master Ali Mohammad is therefore larger than one school in Naik Bagh. It reminds us that governance is not confined to government offices. It lives wherever people are entrusted with the welfare of others. Sometimes it is practised by a district administrator. Sometimes by a judge. Sometimes by a village head. And sometimes by a teacher who began with four children in a cowshed and, without abandoning his principles, built an institution that continues to educate nearly fifteen hundred young minds. That is not merely educational success. It is good governance in its most human form.
(The author is a teacher and a researcher based in Gowhar Pora Chadoora of Central Kashmir’s Budgam district. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
