Month: November 2014

From Ferguson to Sydney: interrogating media narratives

Extremely sad to hear the loss of a young cricketers life today. Prayers and condolences to his family. But i am wondering if the same global media hype would have been created if a Zimbabwe batsman would have been hit. A need to interrogate majoratarian media narratives from Sydney to Ferguson.

Feruguson is a case in point regarding fissures beneath the surface emerging every time a social crevice opens up. Class, race, gender inequity and general socio-economic realties aggrevate stresses in society. Media as the fourth estate, too is political and inherits inherent politics biases. These biases drive the conversation. Power dynamics drive communication and subaltern voices such as the African-American Community in Ferguson are drowned out, overpowered by dominant voices such as Fox News or ABC News with the interview of the shooter policeman.

A Black 18th year old’s life is not precious enough but a white man’s argument is upheld by a unrepresentative grand jury.  The media narrative has to be inverted, and this authors humble attempt is in opening up a window in this biased discourse. Social Media and the internet mediums render that platform fortunately.

Reimagine Sustainability : moving beyond tick-box compliance

The only thing sustainable about the brutal reality of the  normative paradigm of sustainability is the ‘green’ colour of cash sadly rather than the altruism of this -ism. Not all that bad as monetary valuations are usually taken more seriously. The philosophical underpinning of sustainability is about inter-generational transferability as per the 1987 Bruntdland Report. The short-termism of financial markets and financial global capitalism does not render sustainability sustainable.

Sustainability ultimately is about better communities and liveability. Sustainability is triple headed : Ecological, Economic and Social are the three strands of the triple helix.  Sustainability has transformed from its normative origins in to a platform for communicating the corporate brand. Activist investors do ask for the Social Return on Investment on their impact bonds but these folks are a trickle in the avalanche of asset classes that global capital changes hands in. Sustainability Reports are prepared as per the GRI Framework to demonstrate sustainability performance to ecologically aware Gen Y retail investors. It is not for the displaced community in Lanjigarh, Odisha but for the analysts at Citi. The pull is from the masters of the market.

The latest flavour of the season in sustainability and corporate citizenship circles is the circular economy & sharing economy. Good old human sharing values and Cradle to Cradle thinking synced to create the latest cool intellectual fad.

Majority of sustainability related investment by private sector companies is to meet the local environmental, health & safety and social sector legislative requirements of the land. Sometimes, even voluntary best practice is beyond the ambit of the C Suite Level executive as the Randian view of shareholder value capture dominates. Green field industrial projects often require IFC funding or any form of Institutional Lender Support such as JICA or any Exim Bank. These financial institutions need the project proponent to adhere to Equator Principles and IFC Performance Standards throughout the Project Lifecycle to address environmental and social concerns. The decision making prowess for a change is with the environmental and social expert panel at IFC offices at Delhi and DC rather than the CFO. EHSS has to move beyond the tick box due diligence check-list to a move term governance led mechanism. The Finance Teams have to get the nuance of the Economics of Environmentalism for them to be truly invested in the process.

Sustainability can only take root if this ethical paradigm can be understood by the CFO over a casual water-cooler chat. Its time for Sustainability to move beyond green washing and be a profit centre SBU from a cost centre. Locking value from Sustainability Initiatives can take place if triple bottom-line thinking could dominate the thinking in strategic planning of SME’s.

Beyond the Technical: Reimagine the Engineer’s Tool Kit

The epistemic character of Engineering is about problem solving and crisis management and by default as an engineer I am expected to possess decent quantitative abilities as the lingua franca of science is mathematics. The social contract between the engineer and the work-place has undergone a transformation through the proportion of jobs shifts from the shop floor to the computer screen. Recently, I had been to a Steel Plant and I found 95% of all operations on the process floor automated (complex industrial process control) and that’s real brick and mortar stuff. The core metallurgical processes have not changed since the industrial revolution.

I have worked in Engineering & Policy Research Consulting for about 6+ years until now, and I have found to my surprise that science as a social institution inhabits a force field of economic, cultural and social realities that lie way beyond the lab.  Often the top leadership, whether technically trained or not (often a lawyer, accountant or a MBA) is merely focused on the quarterly results rather than the long term; a classic business strategy conundrum.  Accountability to the masters of Wall Street is more precious to your epistemic calling.

As the meta-phenomena of globalization and urbanization over the past three decades have desolated steel towns of Pittsburgh and Liverpool in the developed world, and in contrast have led to the tech boom towns of Route 128 and Silicon Valley. Manufacturing has dipped, being shipped off to the ‘Factory Girls’ of China and the automation revolution has stemmed blue-collar job creation. The ‘Myth of Manufacturing’ is real.

Nowadays engineers have to do more project management- resourcing, scheduling, and budgeting than wielding the spanner/shifter. Marine Engineers in the engine room of a Panamax have a lot more technology at their disposal which has reduced the crew of a ship to barely skeletal.

Engineering at the present is doing technology to create products which cater to the clients need, get paid and scaling up. Simple stuff, but it needs a very different mindset.

I have often heard a strain of discontent from my fellow early career technical professionals that they don’t get adequate opportunities to chart/shape the course of their technology product driven organizations. Here are a few suggestions to grow out of that inability:

  • Understand your organizational ecosystem
  • Learn to Negotiate Hard
  • Look and Talk like a Leader
  • Do not have Tunnel Vision mind-set regarding science
  • Learn to read a balance sheet
  • Keep yourself informed

Alas, the ability to learn and be agile is more crucial to your GPA. No one cares a shit about that.

Interstellar : A Film Review

interstellarInterstellar is an intellectually dense film like Nolan’s previous films such as Inception and Dark Knight. Interstellar connects strands of Food Security and Space Exploration; evokes human emotions such as longing, love, parenting, survival instincts and rational scientific thought. A great campus recruitment video for the  and social institution of science, subtly questions the landing on the moon. In a very Nolan-esque stroke of the cinematic brush, various ends have been tied up to dispense a spell binding narrative, albeit 15 minutes too long.

Ann Hathway as the junior Dr. Brand is gorgeous, and plays her cinematic role well. ‘Cooper’ the ex NASA Pilot turned explorer protagonist of the film is grief stricken from the demise of his wife. He is an absentee engineer, reclectant farmer father, in rural US and his daughter ‘Murph’ and son are being mentored by the Grand Dad. There is striking quip by the Grand Dad; saying that ‘parent teacher conferences’ are not grand parent teacher conferences’. There is some super-natural, gravitational phenomena eating away the harvest every year and human kind is dying with every generation. In this context, space research was treated as discretionary. NASA then was needed but had gone under-ground. How Cooper was tracked down by NASA through Morse Code and a constant mention of Murphy’s Law, Newtons Third Law and other high school physics syntax makes science and geek-ism sexy.

The Senior Dr Brand played by Matthew Caine, as the space pioneer has a certain depth to his presence on the screen. Human Politics is depicted in some detail and the quest for survival. The emphasis on love as an emotion greater then the self and as a raw material for making  ‘human’ , human is the signature take-way from this cinematic opus.

The emphasis on science, satiated my intellectual cravings;  not at all a masala entertainer A Must Watch at a theater near you.