26-Jan-2022,
Republic Day, Pune
73 years since our country adopted the constitution of India. Today, I was talking to my younger son what Republic day is all about, apart from being a holiday or it being a day of parades at Delhi. It set me thinking what exactly does it entail to our lives? I felt the constitution is best introduced as laying out the vision and mission statement of a country.
From perspective of founding a company ‘Zestorm Technologies Pvt. Ltd.’ and writing the values, mission and vision statement. It was but a trivial attempt. Seriously, what a humungous task it must have been to write the constitution of a young country which had got free in 1947.
Though I was not even born when the constitution was sworn in, like every citizen born in Independent India, I am party to the constitution of India and so is our organization. Our organization is also automatically a signatory to the values laid out in our constitution and I felt that I have never really checked how our company acts and behaves against these values of our country. Let me today hold our company to the ACID Test of just the preamble of our constitution from the last 22 years of being.
Note: The image is the original constitution, the 2 words of Secular and Socialist were added later.
SOVERIGN - Indeed, all our shares of the company rest with either the management or some of the employees....
SECULAR - Proud to say that we have our business partners, customers, employees with a very high diversity of ethnic origins, faiths, languages and we cannot wish for anything else going ahead! more the merrier, indeed.
SOCIALIST - Zestorm has ensured that the social security contributions have been prompt and in full.
DEMOCRACTIC - Though not possible to be democratic in the true sense that the executive is elected, there has been a genuine attempt to have almost all the tactical decisions flow through a consensus rather than an autocratic decision.
To give an example, A simple but easy step was to decide the annual holidays by vote of all existing employees rather than a management decision as it normally is in lot of organizations. Truly by the people and for the people, it leads to most of the holidays being decided by whether it becomes a long weekend ! Sometimes we have celebrated festivals which no one really celebrates in Pune, but is all good as long as holidays for the people, by the people 😊
REPUBLIC - Ahem, here we probably can’t operate as a republic in the true sense of the executive being by the people, so we will let that be.
JUSTICE - Same rules and transparency as a key pillar of Justice is enforced. That said this is highly subjective, but the other value of equality makes it just for all, I guess.
EQUALITY - Absolutely we don’t have any different rules for any cadre of the company and same rules \ employee handbook governs us all. A true meritocracy !
FRATERNITY - We have contributed to the Indian IT fraternity handsomely, maintaining a healthy gender diversity empowering the women who have taken a break for raising a family. Seeing employees buy homes, cars and improve their lives as well as some simply getting their first break, all makes us happy to our contribution to the working classes of our blossoming economy.
An humble attempt to see if I and our organization have done our bit to imbibe the constitution of our great nation! Jai Hind!
#RepublicDay #India #IndianIT #RealityCheck #FromTheHeart
Author : Kedar Deodhar
Entrepreneur, Founder, Managing Director at Zestorm Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
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