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By:

Rashmi Kulkarni

23 March 2025 at 2:58:52 pm

Making a New Normal Feel Obvious

Normal is not what’s written. Normal is what repeats. The temple bell rings at the same time every day. Not everyone prays. Not everyone even walks in. Some people don’t care at all. And yet when that bell rings, the whole neighborhood syncs. Shops open, chores move, calls pause. The bell doesn’t convince anyone. It simply creates rhythm. That’s how “normal” is built inside a legacy MSME too. Not by speeches. By repetition. Quick recap: Week 1: You inherited an equilibrium. Week 2: People...

Making a New Normal Feel Obvious

Normal is not what’s written. Normal is what repeats. The temple bell rings at the same time every day. Not everyone prays. Not everyone even walks in. Some people don’t care at all. And yet when that bell rings, the whole neighborhood syncs. Shops open, chores move, calls pause. The bell doesn’t convince anyone. It simply creates rhythm. That’s how “normal” is built inside a legacy MSME too. Not by speeches. By repetition. Quick recap: Week 1: You inherited an equilibrium. Week 2: People resist loss, not improvement. Week 3: Status quo wins when your new way is harder. Week 4 is the next problem: even when your idea is good and even when it is easy, it can still fail because people don’t move together. One team starts. Another team waits. One person follows. Another person quietly returns to the old way. So, the old normal comes back … not because your idea was wrong, but because your new normal never became normal. Which Seat? • Inherited : people expect direction, but they only shift when they see what you consistently protect. • Hired : people wait for proof “Is this just a corporate habit you’ll drop in a month?” • Promoted : people watch whether you stay consistent under pressure. Now here’s the useful idea from Thomas Schelling: a “focal point”. Don’t worry about the term. In simple words, it means: you don’t need everyone convinced. You need one clear anchor that everyone can align around. In a legacy MSME, that anchor is rarely a policy document. It’s not a rollout email. It’s a ritual. Why Rituals? These firms run on informal rules, relationships, memory, and quick calls. That flexibility keeps work moving, but it also makes change socially risky. Even supportive people hesitate because they’re thinking: “If I follow this and others don’t, I’ll look foolish.” “If I share real numbers, will I become the target?” “If I push this new flow, will I upset a senior person?” “If I do it properly, will it slow me down?” When people feel that risk, they wait. And waiting is how the status quo survives. A focal ritual breaks the waiting. It sends one clean signal: “This is real. This is how we work now.” Focal Ritual It’s a short, fixed review that repeats with the same format. For example: a weekly scoreboard review (15 minutes) a daily dispatch huddle (10 minutes) a fixed purchase-approval window (cutoff + queue) The meeting isn’t the magic. The repetition is. When it repeats without drama, it becomes believable. When it becomes believable, people start syncing to it, even the ones who were unsure. Common Mistake New leaders enter with energy and pressure: “show impact”. So they try to fix reporting, planning, quality, procurement, digitization … everything. The result is predictable. People don’t know what is truly “must follow”. So everything becomes “optional”. They do a little of each, and nothing holds. If you want change to stick, pick one focal ritual and make it sacred. Not forever. Just long enough for the bell to become the bell. Field Test Step 1 : Pick one pain area that creates daily chaos: delayed dispatch, pending purchase approvals, rework, overdue collections. Step 2 : Set the ritual: Fixed time, fixed duration (15 minutes). One scoreboard (one page, one screen). Same three questions every time: – What moved since last time? – What is stuck and why? – What decision is needed today? One owner who closes the loop (decisions + due dates). Step 3 : Protect it for 8 weeks. Don’t cancel because you’re busy. Don’t skip because a VIP came. Don’t “postpone once” because someone complained. I’ve seen a simple weekly dispatch scoreboard die this exact way. Week one was sharp. By week three, it got pushed “just this once” because someone had a client visit. Week four, it moved again for “urgent work”. After that, nobody took it seriously. The old follow-ups returned, and the leader was back to chasing people daily. The first casual cancellation tells the system: “This was a phase”. And the old normal returns fast. One Warning Don’t turn the ritual into policing. If it becomes humiliation, people will hide information. If it becomes shouting, people will stop speaking. If it becomes a lecture, people will mentally leave. Keep it calm. Keep it consistent. Keep it useful. A bell doesn’t shout. It just rings. (The author is Co-founder at PPS Consulting and a business operations advisor. She helps businesses across sectors and geographies improve execution through global best practices. She could be reached at rashmi@ppsconsulting.biz)

10,000 New Medical Seats: Healing India or Risking Collapse?

India is rapidly expanding medical education without investing in the essential infrastructure and faculty needed to educate students effectively.

The Union government has proudly announced 10,000 new medical seats, presenting it as part of its grand promise to “heal India”. State governments are quick to claim credit, press releases multiply, hashtags trend across social media, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies are staged for the cameras. Yet beneath all the pomp, publicity, and political fanfare lies a harsh and inconvenient reality — India is rapidly expanding medical education without simultaneously investing in the essential infrastructure and faculty needed to educate students effectively.


But this then brings up the real question: Who will teach these additional students?


The Centre has recently approved 5,023 MBBS seats and 5,000 postgraduate seats under Phase III of its ambitious medical education expansion drive. It claims that this initiative will help address India’s chronic doctor shortage and improve healthcare access in rural communities. However, the reality is far more complicated: most medical colleges — especially government-run institutions — are already struggling to function effectively, lacking enough qualified faculty to provide students with a proper and high-quality education.


If a hospital were to treat more patients without hiring sufficient doctors, it would rightly be condemned as gross negligence. Yet when governments take the same approach with medical colleges—expanding student seats without increasing faculty or resources—it is conveniently and misleadingly labelled as “development”.


Deep rot

A recent survey by the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences exposes an alarming collapse in medical education. Of the state’s 25 government medical colleges, 10 are functioning with less than half of the required faculty. According to the National Medical Commission, 95 per cent staff strength is mandatory for approval — yet Maharashtra barely reaches half of that standard.


Some of the worst-hit colleges include Ratnagiri Government Medical College, which has filled only 11.76 per cent of its faculty posts, with all 18 professor positions vacant. Sindhudurg and Parbhani colleges have 34.12 per cent of their faculty positions filled, while Satara has just 40 per cent of its posts occupied.


In Ratnagiri, not a single eligible candidate is available to assume the role of Dean. This goes beyond a simple shortage — it represents a total administrative collapse.


Private colleges fare no better—they often borrow local practising doctors temporarily during inspections just to demonstrate “compliance”. Both the Centre and the States are aware of this. Yet these inspections continue to be nothing more than an eyewash ritual.


Centre and states

The Centre is focused on announcing new medical seats without ensuring there are enough teachers to support them. States are busy opening colleges without enforcing any real accountability. Regulators, meanwhile, concentrate on approving infrastructure while overlooking the critical shortage of qualified faculty.


This is not healthcare reform — it is the mass production of degrees without doctors.


Worse still, postgraduate medical education is being expanded without addressing the ongoing shortage of undergraduate faculty. MBBS teachers are already stretched beyond their limits, yet they are now expected to train postgraduate residents as well. Who, then, will be responsible for shaping the next generation of specialists — YouTube?


Deadly Shortcuts

When governments cut corners, it is the patients who ultimately pay with their lives. This reckless, politically driven expansion of medical seats threatens far more than academic standards — it poses a direct and serious risk to patient safety. Poorly trained doctors inevitably deliver substandard care, and the first, most vulnerable victims will be ordinary patients in Tier-2 cities and rural hospitals, who place their trust in a system that is failing to properly equip its doctors.


Before issuing another celebratory press release, both the Centre and State governments must confront one simple question: “Will you fill the faculty seats before filling the student seats?”


If the answer is no, stop calling this “nation-building”. Call it what it truly is — a deregulated disaster waiting to happen.


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Kolhapur. Views personal.)

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