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By:

Rahul Kulkarni

30 March 2025 at 3:32:54 pm

Governance Is Modernization

By now, if you’ve followed this series, you’ve done something rare. You didn’t walk in and start “fixing” blindly. You understood the equilibrium. You reduced the fear of loss. You made the new way easier than the old way. You created rhythm. You built reputation and credibility. You learned to negotiate, build coalitions, digitize in small steps. And the previous article, Rahul spoke about the hidden requirement: psychological safety because without truth, every dashboard becomes theatre....

Governance Is Modernization

By now, if you’ve followed this series, you’ve done something rare. You didn’t walk in and start “fixing” blindly. You understood the equilibrium. You reduced the fear of loss. You made the new way easier than the old way. You created rhythm. You built reputation and credibility. You learned to negotiate, build coalitions, digitize in small steps. And the previous article, Rahul spoke about the hidden requirement: psychological safety because without truth, every dashboard becomes theatre. Now we close the season with the most grounded definition of “professionalization” I know. It’s not ERP. It’s not fancy roles. It’s not a new org chart. Because when power is unclear, everything else becomes unstable. Which seat are you stepping into? • Inherited seat: you may have formal authority, but decision rights are often still “family-managed”. • Hired seat: you may have responsibility without authority. That is the fastest path to frustration. • Promoted seat: you may have influence, but your boundaries are fuzzy, and that creates daily conflict. Different seats. Same reality: the business runs on invisible boundaries. The property boundary line Think about a property boundary line between two neighbors. When the line is clear, people may still argue but disputes are limited. When the line is unclear, every small thing becomes a fight: • “This is my parking space”. • “That tree is mine”. • “This wall belongs to who?” In a company, decision rights are the boundary line. If the boundary is not clear: • approvals become political • escalation becomes emotional • responsibility becomes a trap • people start bypassing • and “urgent” becomes the excuse for everything This is why modernization fails even after you digitize. Because digitization creates visibility, and visibility creates conflict if authority is still fuzzy. Governance sounds heavy, but it’s actually simple When people hear “governance”, they imagine board meetings and legal language. In MSMEs, governance is much simpler: Who can decide what, within which limits, and what happens when there is a conflict. That’s it. If you can answer those three questions, you’re already professionalizing. Why governance matters more in family-influenced firms In many Indian MSMEs, decisions are not purely operational. They are emotional and relational. A pricing exception may be linked to a relationship. A hiring decision may be linked to loyalty. A capex purchase may be linked to ego and legacy. This is not “wrong”. It’s just real. But when the company starts growing, this style doesn’t scale. It creates confusion: • managers don’t know what they can commit to • teams don’t know whose instruction to follow • the owner gets dragged into everything • and the new leader becomes the “bad cop” without any real authority There’s a light-touch academic way to describe this too: Jensen and Meckling wrote about “agency” issues … when decision-makers and owners have different incentives. The fix is not more control. The fix is clearer decision rights. The three decision rights that change everything If you do only three things in governance, do these: 1. Pricing authority Who can approve discounts? Under what limits? What is the exception path? 2. Capex thresholds Who can approve spending? Up to what amount? What needs owner approval? What can be delegated? 3. Hiring approvals Who can hire? Who can approve headcount? What roles require founder/family sign-off? These three create a surprising amount of stability. Why? Because they cover money, investment, and people … the three biggest emotional zones in MSMEs. What happens when these rights are not clear? You’ll recognize these symptoms: • people take decisions and later say “I thought it was okay” • approvals happen through WhatsApp messages that nobody can trace • the owner says “Why did you do this?” after the fact • managers get blamed for decisions they didn’t have the authority to make • teams bypass the system because “it’s urgent” • and your new “process” becomes optional again It’s not because people are undisciplined. It’s because the boundary line is not drawn. Field Test: Negotiate and document three decision rights This week’s field test is not a workshop. It’s a negotiation. If you try to enforce governance without safety, people will hide. If you try to digitize without governance, conflict will explode. This 12-articles season wasn’t about “fixing operations”. It was about how an incoming leader enters a legacy MSME without triggering immune response and then builds rhythm, credibility, coalition, safe digitization, and finally governance. Now that you can enter the system and steady it, the next macro-arc becomes obvious: How do you build the middle layer that sustains it … so the company doesn’t fall back into founder-dependence? That’s where real scale begins. (The writer is a co-founder at PPS Consulting. He is a business transformation consultant. He could be reached at rahul@ppsconsulting.biz.)

A Press Meet without Women

When India bends to Taliban diktats, it betrays not just its journalists, but its own Constitution.

A press conference addressed by Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi recently saw participation restricted to a handful of reporters while women journalists were conspicuous by their absence. The Taliban foreign minister was in India on his first official visit, from October 9 to 16 where he attended a press meet presided over by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar before visiting seminaries in Agra and Deoband.


Muttaqi is not to be blamed because he was an invited guest on a diplomatic mission. But how on earth did our government, the host allow itself to listen to the dictate to keep out women journalists at the press conference? When the outburst among women journalists following the press meet was made public, Muttaqi immediately invited the women press persons to attend another hurriedly organized press conference to mend matters. But will it? Why was this restriction permitted in the first place? Are they afraid of the power of women? Do they think women do not count?


But lo and behold! On Monday morning (October 13), the newspapers announced another press conference including women which, however, was the direct and immediate reaction to the huge uproar by women journalists first in Delhi and then across India. One newspaper went on to state that the UN has referred to the situation in Afghanistan as “gender apartheid” where women and girls are not allowed to attend secondary school or university, visit parks or gyms. The jobs they are allowed to do are increasingly restricted and the Taliban government enforces head-to-toe coverings and restricts their travel.


Article 14 of the Indian Constitution states that all persons, male and female, are equal before the law and shall get equal protection before the law. Article 15 states that there shall be no discrimination against any person on grounds of sex. Article 16 guarantees equality of opportunity in matters of public employment irrespective of sex. But the reality shows that all these constitutional rights exist more so in theory than in practice. The Hindu Code, passed as separate Acts between 1950 and 1955, rewrote for Hindus the laws of marriage, divorce and adoption. Adult suffrage added women to electoral roles, and political parties pledged their commitment to women’s issues. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act enacted in 1971 sought to legalise abortions provided they are carried out under conditions specified in the MTP Act. But illegal abortions have not stopped at all because of unmarried pregnancies and the fear of social stigma they carry.


Gender Equality

The principle of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution in its Preamble, Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles. The Constitution not only grants equality to women, but also empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour of women. Within the framework of a democratic polity, our laws, development policies, plans and programmes have aimed at women’s advancement in different spheres. From the Fifth Five Year Plan (1974–78) onwards, there has been a marked shift in the approach to women’s issues from welfare to development. In recent years, the empowerment of women has been recognised as the central issue in determining the status of women. The National Commission for Women was set up by an Act of Parliament (1990) to safeguard the rights and legal entitlements of women. The 73rd and 74th Amendments (1993) to the Constitution of India have provided for reservation of seats in the local bodies of the Panchayats and Municipalities for women, laying a strong foundation for their participation in decision making at local levels.


India has also ratified various international conventions and human rights instruments committing to secure equal rights of women. Key among them is the ratification of the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1993. The women’s movement and a wide-spread network of non-governmental organisations that have strong grass-roots presence and offer deep insight into women’s concerns have contributed in inspiring initiatives for the empowerment of women.


Wide gap

However, there still exists a wide gap between the goals enunciated in the Constitution, legislation, policies, plans, programmes and related mechanisms on the one hand and the situational reality of the status of women in India on the other. This has been analysed extensively in the Report on the Committee on the Status of Women in India, Towards Equality (1974) and highlighted in the National Perspective Plan for Women 1988–2000, the Shramshakti Report 1988 and the ‘Platform of Action, Five Years After – An Assessment’.


The underlying causes of gender inequality are related to social and economic structures that are based on informal and formal norms and practices. Consequently, the access of women, particularly those belonging to weaker sections including Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes and minorities, majority of whom are in the rural areas and in the informal, unorganised sector – to education, health and productive resources, among others, is inadequate. They remain largely marginalized and socially excluded.


According to a report by Geeta Pandey on BBC News, “The Taliban government, which retook power in 2021, has previously said it respects women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law, but Western diplomats have said their attempts to gain recognition have been hampered by the curbs on women. The suppression of women’s rights under their rule is the harshest in the world.”


What about the leading party of our own country? Are they afraid of women? Who delivered them, then? The Mother of Immaculate Conception? The other day, I heard someone say that ‘Maa’ is the smallest word in any language but the most powerful one that can be imagined. And let’s be clear: only women can be mothers or choose not to be. The choice is theirs alone.


(The author is a noted film scholar who writes extensively on gender issues. She is a double-winner for the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema. Views personal.)

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