A handout photograph shows cars being lined up on Sunday for distribution as Diwali gifts to the employees of Harikrishna Exports. (AFP)

Surat, Oct. 23: Kanak Patel would have been happy with a box of Diwali sweets. Instead, his boss gave him diamond-studded gold jewellery worth Rs 3.6 lakh — worth six months’ salary.

Factory worker Pankaj Jada, who earns Rs 40,000 a month, received as Diwali bonus a Fiat Punto that costs nine times as much.

Surat diamond merchant Savji Dholakia has stunned some 1,260-odd among his employees with a “loyalty and performance incentive” beyond their imagination.

Savji Dholakia

Not that the staff at Harikrishna Exports, among India’s top 10 diamond firms, are unused to their employer’s generosity, which they credit for the company’s success in defying the industry trend of job-hopping.

Nearly two decades ago, when his fledgling company’s turnover was Rs 1 crore, Savji had gifted Marutis to his three best workers on Diwali.

Last year, 72 employees of the now Rs 6,000-crore company received Chevrolet Beats for having met their targets. But this year’s bonus has beaten everything, said Kanak, personal assistant to Savji.

“We were asked to choose from three options: a car, jewellery or a flat, each gift worth Rs 3.6 lakh,” he said.

Those picking a flat would pay the rest of the amount with the help of an interest-free loan from the company. “I opted for jewellery because I have a house and a car,” said Kanak.

Some 570 chose like him while 491 picked the Fiat Puntos and 207 opted for the two-bedroom flats. Overall, the bonuses cost the company Rs 45 crore.

Kanak said that Savji told the workers he was not doing them any favours: “He told us, ‘You’ve performed well, so this is what you deserve’.”

Most leading diamond firms have indeed been offering generous Diwali bonuses over the past decade, which has helped lower the attrition rates the industry was notorious for, former Surat Diamond Association president Rohit Mehta said.

But he said Savji’s gesture was unique and would boost the image and morale of the entire industry in Surat, whose 4,000 units and six lakh workers polish 90 per cent of the world’s diamonds.

“It will help the industry put behind it the memory of the 2008-09 recession,” Mehta said, referring to the so-called “Dark Diwali” when thousands were retrenched and dozens committed suicide.

“We may not have come out of the recession yet but the overall market scene suggests that a positive cycle is emerging, and Savji Dholakia’s gesture will enhance that feeling,” Mehta added.

“It suggests the worst is over and the sparkle of the festival season is here to stay.”

Underlining that upbeat feeling, Dholakia has left for a vacation in the US with 28 relatives, including the families of his three brothers. The company reopens on November 10 after the Diwali vacation.

Mehta said that this year’s spectacular bonus apart, Savji’s company had for decades taken care of its employees, building a tradition of loyalty in its ranks at a time the industry was a stranger to that quality.

Harikrishna has been offering free afternoon meals to its workforce of 6,500 for years. It pays the school fees of its workers’ children, including their book costs.

Every employee is insured for at least Rs 10 lakh against accidental death, and the figure is Rs 1 crore for the 280 senior-most employees, said Kanak, a school dropout like Savji.

But what Kanak values most is the “family-like atmosphere” in the company. The workers — most of them from Savji’s hometown of Amreli in Saurashtra, and 90 per cent of them Patels — address their employer as “Kaka” (uncle).

“But he is strict about two things,” Kanak said.

One, employees who ride two-wheelers must wear helmets. “Three years ago, Savji gifted helmets to 3,000 workers. They can’t enter the compound without helmets if they have come riding motorbikes,” Kanak said.

Two, no one can chew or smoke tobacco on the premises. Savji introduced the rule after cancer claimed a close relative.

A member of the Swaminarayan sect, Savji eats only organic vegetables. Every morning he takes a bath in cow urine, procured from his farm. He also runs a charitable hospital.

His younger brother Ghanshyam, who looks after the company’s global operations, is based in Mumbai. Every day, one employee travels 250km on a train to supply him milk and vegetables from the family farm in Surat.

Three of Savji’s nephews have joined the company with degrees in business management from the US. The company’s current trainees include some 100 MBA graduates.

Mehta said he didn’t know whether the idea for this year’s Diwali bonus was Savji’s own or was suggested by one of the US-trained nephews.

“He is quite capable of coming up with new ideas. Besides, he listens to everyone and if he finds an idea useful, he adopts it.”

Mukesh Vaghani, a diamond worker employed with another company, said Savji was a “generous and kind-hearted man who loves to share his profits”.