“Are Backbenchers in the Classroom the Bill Gates of India?”

“The entrepreneur builds an enterprise; the technician builds a job.” - Michael Gerber

In every classroom, the educators find three types of students – above average, average and below average students. In fact, the classroom is incomplete without this combination of categories. The above average students often sit in the front rows in the classroom, the average students in the middle, and the below average students in the back benches. When the educators deliver their lectures, the rate of listening decreases gradually from the front row to the last row where you find students in the front rows are found to be great listeners with some of them taking the notes. However, the students from back benches listen less to lectures but talk more among themselves. Most time, the educators are annoyed with backbenchers as they will not be able to concentrate on their lectures due to the noise created by the backbenchers. And some of the frontbenchers don’t appreciate and associate with backbenchers. 

When we look at the results during examinations, the frontbenchers excel greatly while the backbenchers perform poorly. This is one side of the coin. When we look at the other side of the coin, some of the backbenchers become successful politicians and entrepreneurs while the frontbenchers excel greatly as intellectuals and become employees in prestigious companies. Precisely, some of the backbenchers become the employers while the frontbenchers become the employees. There are a number of reasons for this. The frontbenchers follow the rules, and know how to make the rules whereas the backbenchers often don’t follow the rules, and know how to make and break rules.  

When we look at great achievers like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell, they were academically poor but excelled as great entrepreneurs. Hence, it is the emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) which is more important than intelligence quotient (IQ). It seems the backbenchers possess more of EQ than IQ thus excelling as leaders as EQ is one of the major factors for leadership success and effectiveness.  Hereafter, don’t ignore and underestimate the power of backbenchers who might surprise everyone by becoming as successful leaders and entrepreneurs. Hence, we can conclude comfortably that some of the backbenchers might become Bill Gates in future.

“Genius does what it must, and talent does what it can.” - Edward Bulwer-Lytton