Hari Krishna Exports, a family-run concern with 6,000 employees, was the good-news story of the festive season. The Surat-based diamond exporter with a turnover of Rs 6,000 crores has been lionised by the media because it gave 1,200 employees Rs 50 crores in performance incentives, in the form of two-room flats, cars, or jewellery.



The lottery-winner quality of the incentive payments – a home, car and gold that most Indian’s spend lifetimes working for – had the media hyperventilating about the benevolence of the Dholakia, who owned Hari Krishna Exports. One usually thoughtful TV journalist was so awestruck that he asked Savjibhai Dholakia, the company’s founder, if he was a communist, but forgot to ask him how his company selected the 1,200 from its total of 6,000 employees.



Hari Krishna Exports says it set targets for some of its employees over a five-year period. These employees received an incentive payment in kind for meeting these targets. The media, however, persisted in describing the transaction as a “bonus” or a “gift”, when it was neither.



Annual bonus



Under the Payment of Bonus Act, all establishments with more than 20 employees are required to pay an annual bonus to employees whose wages are below Rs 10,000 a month. While the law claims to rest on the premise that employees whose work has contributed to a company’s profits should share in that profit, in effect the wage ceiling it sets makes the mandated bonus a device to force companies’ paying low wages to compensate their workers a little better.



Historically it is trade unions and worker’s associations that have negotiated bonuses in terms of the right of workers to a share of company profits. Tata Steel, for instance, pays annual bonuses to all its unionised employees, which is negotiated with the Tata Workers’ Union. Its’ 2014 bonus payout was over Rs 193 crore and ranged from Rs. 20,498 to Rs. 156,758 per worker.



A “gift” implies an act of altruism. By calling the incentive payment a “gift”, the media suggested that Hari Krishna Exports employees were beneficiaries of their employer’s munificence. In fact, even according to the company, they were being paid in kind for achieving productivity targets.



It seems the media attitude to work and pay fits with what Microsoft’s Satya Nadella told women in the computer industry – don’t ask for more, just rely on your good karma. It celebrates wealth and the wealthy, but is decidedly uncomfortable with employees or workers making a claim or being paid a share of the wealth they help create. That is why Surat’s ghar-gadi-gehna is cast as a Diwali fairytale about a generous employer spreading seasonal cheer among grateful employees, while the hefty festival bonuses negotiated by workers associations in firms like Tata Steel are not news at all.



