Blood Island by Journalist Deep Halder is a breach on the canon of contemporary South Asian History which is dominated by a particular kind of scholar. The book is personal and speaks to the lived experience of the tragedy conveniently erased from the discourse. Unearthing the tragedy, breathes new life in to future work which … More Blood Island: A Review
Some people just amaze you. A cab driver who is a trained archeologist from Sana’a in Dubai gave me a 30 minute crash course on Arab History including dynamics in Yemen to Iran via Oman. He recognised my roots in Oman when I started speaking Arabic with him and he said are you from Oman? … More History Conversations in a Cab
The future of work will be a horrible one, accentuating inequality- no insurance, everyone expected to relearn, no family time, all the power concentrated in a few people. The employee is a replaceable cog. The future of work works for the bosses. Life is at best a lottery for resources. Upward mobility is rare.
The entire discourse about populism from Putin to Trump to Modi to Bolsanaro to Boris is about the purchase of ideas and services to a population feeling left out. Politics and the provision of resources are intrinsic concepts. A narrative of othering and resource capture through primal and primitive identity politics has fuelled populism. All … More The Purchase of Populism
South Asian Migration to the GCC since the 1940’s and even earlier have provided livelihoods for millions of people who did not have an opportunity of a college education, starting with Bahrain and Kuwait with the oil boom. I am not including the centuries of trade from the Banias. The educated lot migrated to the … More Pravasi Lives Matter.
Ever since I was a child, the airline status ticker at the airport fascinated me as the world converged on a tracker although only much later did I realise that on an Indian Passport I would need a visa to most countries including the country I grew up in, and emotional citizenships relegated to sovereign … More Airports and Citizenships.
The Yogi’s appointment as CM is a shock doctrine application of a leader which staunch Hindutva credentials. Such a decision would be unthinkable even in 2014. This is keeping in mind the elections in Gujarat, MP and Chattisgarh as these are the fortresses to win again. A certain Hindutva politics is mainstream in these states, … More Yogi, Ram Rajya and a ‘Political Hindu’ Paradigm
In the era of now Bringing money on the table Buys respect More people Fewer Opportunities In Academia, is grants In the private sector Is called Business Development In the Non Profit space It’s known as Fund Raising The bottom line is the green back Bitcoin or not Money is the fuel of the engine … More Money.
Scholarship is not a popularity contest. It cannot be equated with Facebook shares and retweets.It takes real hard work to publish a top tier paper. We cannot bring in reality TV metrics into academic life. Outreach and Scholarship are both vital.
In my limited sample size of a few dozen Bangladeshi cabbies spoken to in Dubai via non random purposive sampling, the majority don’t view the Hasina Regime as too progressive. That’s pretty consistent with Bangladeshis in the Gulf being not with AL Politics. #urbanethnography #SouthAsiainGulf
