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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)

Quota Fraud

In Maharashtra’s roiling politics, scandal is rarely novel. But what distinguishes the affair of NCP leader Manikrao Kokate is not merely its age (three decades old) but the brazenness of its facts and the slipperiness of the response. A serving cabinet minister in the ruling Mahayuti, convicted of cheating and forgery for fraudulently cornering housing meant for the poor, has resigned only after an arrest warrant was issued and the threat of disqualification became unavoidable speaks volumes against the ruling government. Kokate should be formally sacked, swiftly arrested and treated like any other citizen convicted of criminal fraud.


In a case dating back to 1995, Kokate and his brother were found guilty of falsely claiming eligibility under the Chief Minister’s discretionary housing quota, meant for low-income families, to secure two flats in Nashik. The offences are a catalogue of dishonesty: cheating, forgery, using forged documents and acting with common intent. The sessions court upheld the magistrate’s verdict of a two-year sentence and a fine, triggering the Representation of the People Act’s clear provision: a conviction of two years or more brings immediate disqualification unless stayed by a higher court.


What followed was depressingly familiar. An arrest warrant against Kokate was issued, who rushed to the Bombay High Court. Kokate’s chest pain conveniently intervened, producing a hospital bed at Lilavati Hospital and a temporary shield from the police. Meanwhile, allegations surfaced that the State’s machinery was bending over backwards to buy time for a legal reprieve. None of this inspires confidence that the law applies evenly, least of all when ministers are involved.


The Bharatiya Janata Party and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, partners in the ruling Mahayuti, are said to have insisted on Kokate’s exit, acutely aware of the optics of sheltering a convicted man. But Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis must act firmly now.


Kokate’s boss, NCP chief Ajit Pawar, who now holds the sports portfolio along with finance and excise, finds himself once again at the uncomfortable centre of a moral muddle. His faction of the NCP has long claimed pragmatism as its creed. Yet pragmatism that shades into permissiveness corrodes legitimacy, especially given successive scandals involving his aide, Dhananjay Munde and son Parth Pawar.


Housing quotas for the economically weak are among the most tangible expressions of state compassion. To abuse them is thieving from those with the least voice. That such a crime could coexist with ministerial office sends a toxic signal about what Maharashtra’s political class considers tolerable.


Kokate’s past antics, including being caught playing rummy on his phone during an assembly session, add farce to the felony. But this is no laughing matter. The right course is to accept the resignation formally, sack him decisively, ensure the arrest warrant is executed without indulgence, and let the courts run their course without interference. Anything less will confirm the suspicion that in Maharashtra’s politics, a resignation is merely a pause button and justice is a negotiable inconvenience.

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