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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)

Scholarships that go nowhere

Maharashtra’s bureaucratic drift is turning a flagship foreign-study scheme into a machine for wasting talent.

For a government that talks grandly of global exposure and human capital, the foreign merit scholarship scheme run by the Higher and Technical Education Department has acquired an unfortunate reputation. It raises hopes early, dashes them late and teaches students a brutal lesson in administrative indifference.


The scheme’s purpose is admirable. It is meant to help meritorious students from economically weak backgrounds pursue higher education abroad, acquiring skills and experience that India itself struggles to provide at scale. In theory, it is an investment in social mobility and national capability. Yet, in practice, it has become an annual exercise in delay, uncertainty and loss.


Dashed Hopes

Consider the most recent selection cycle. Of the 40 scholarships officially on offer, a final list of only 24 students was published. More striking still, just 82 applications were received from across the entire state. For a programme aimed at one of India’s most aspirational cohorts, those numbers are alarm bells. They suggest not a shortage of talent, but a collapse of confidence. Students are voting with their feet or rather, not applying at all.


Timing makes matters worse. The final list was released as the 2025 academic year was already drawing to a close. Even successful candidates can no longer take up admission abroad in the current cycle. They lose an entire academic year, through no fault of their own. And this is not a one-off aberration. It has become the norm.


Every year, advertisements are issued late. Selection procedures crawl. Senior-level meetings are postponed. Budgetary approvals lag behind the academic calendar they are meant to serve. The consequences are predictable and punishing. Students who should be boarding flights are left waiting for files to move between desks.


The contrast with other departments is telling. Students supported by the Social Welfare Department, the Bahujan Welfare Department and the Sarathi scholarship scheme are already well into their studies abroad. Their selections were completed on time; their funding aligned with university calendars. The difference is not merely financial. It is administrative competence.


The state government has, on paper, adopted a common and comprehensive policy for all foreign scholarship schemes. Yet implementation varies wildly. In the Higher and Technical Education Department’s case, there are no binding timelines, no clearly assigned responsibility, and no penalties for delay. Accountability dissolves into process. The cost is borne entirely by students - academically, financially and psychologically.


Outreach is another weak link. The scheme barely reaches colleges and universities. There is little systematic publicity, no regular guidance camps, and scant counselling for prospective applicants navigating the complexities of foreign admissions. Unsurprisingly, awareness is low and misinformation high. Over time, word spreads that the process is unreliable. Applications dry up. Trust evaporates.


Sclerotic Administration

The numbers tell a quiet story of decline. When the scheme was launched in 2018–19, ten students were sent abroad each year. That figure has since been raised to 40 - on paper at least. In reality, the number of beneficiaries has stagnated. Capacity has expanded without the administrative spine needed to support it.


The paradox is painful. Crores of rupees lie allocated, yet eligible students remain grounded because files move too slowly. An entire academic year can be lost to procedural inertia. This is not just a personal setback for a student; it is a collective failure to convert public money into public good.


What makes the situation more troubling is the absence of urgency. There is little evidence that the administration treats these delays as a crisis. Without fixed deadlines or consequences, postponement becomes routine. The scheme drifts, year after year, from one missed intake to the next.


A foreign scholarship should be a launchpad. Instead, this one has become a holding pen. Unless timeliness, transparency and accountability are built into its operation, it will continue to do the opposite of what it promises: denying opportunity rather than creating it. For a state that aspires to put its students on the global stage, that is an oddly self-defeating choice.


(The writer is a lawyer and president, Student Helping Hands. Views personal.)

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