In 2010, I enthusiastically watched ‘The Lady’ at the Golden Village in Vivo City Mall in Singapore with an Indo-Burmese Couple. I came out of the movie with a proverbial lump in the throat moment. This is the case of taking the international community for a ride. Ofcourse, I remember, Aunty Suu, speaking a few years back, that she would be rather like to remembered as a politician rather than a Nobel Peace Laureate. The writing was on the wall a long time back.

Theraveda Buddhists are not exactly known for ‘peace’ in the form of Wiranthu.

With India and China betting big on electric cars through legislation drivers, the internal combustion engine based fuel economy will go for a massive overhaul over the next decade. Energy storage, material science, rebooting the infrastructure for electric cars along with automated mobility (a liberal dollop of Extended Intelligence in the words of Joichi Ito) will make the ecosystem game for transformation. Digital makes its way into transportation through automated vehicles.

The petroeconomies from Moscow to Caracas to Ras Khobar reeling under lower oil prices, will have two main consumers of oil, realigning under the climate change umbrella. But, electric energy from which sources? What will be the life cycle costs per unit of LCOE?

These questions have to be addressed. There is no modern civilisation sans energy.

The era of the digital eschews a hollow politics of symbolisms, rhetoric, and of political correctness. All the barrage of likes, shares and comments are click bait activism. Fill in a change.org protest and share, not quite realising that we have successfully registered purse on the surveillance roster. These feel good measures extend to crowdsourcing projects. Some are phenomenally successful, as myself have done a fantastic crowdsourcing initiative in Singapore. The sad reality is, the funds end and people move on to the next flavour of the season.

Real initiatives need real work on the ground; tough, brutal and thankless work in building real skills over years; where it is a digital archive or an activism platform, it requires business skills: fundraising, operations, outreach with the real project activity. There is a reason why successful business people are respected.

All the critique and most of it noise; is lost in the morass that is quarterly capitalism. No incentives cause no action, on Climate Charge and other vexed issues. Disaster Capitalism is all is well. All the trillions of words on equity, gender, conscious capitalism and reform is meaningless without any focus on the long term, where inter generational equity is business and profit making. Having worked in think tanks, university and corporate consulting: all elegant theory is well noise without creating incentive structures for political power elites to bring about transformation. Till then, Apple launches will dominate the news feeds, while genocide in an ASEAN country continues without any real resistance. Rwanda happens in 2017.

India is a story of many diversities, pluralities and possibilities. As a subcontinent with 30 odd sub narratives of sub national identities, the sheer melange is mind boggling. This chaos cannot generate a linear narrative, although the English media sounds monochrome. Modi, the master craftsman of narrative shifts, spin doctor par excellence brings the Bullet Train to his home state, which is economically very prosperous. Surely as an infrastructure professional, massive complex public projects of hype, bring massive ecosystem payoffs. The western coast is the financial nerve centre and the bullet train will add value.

The Bullet Train on a subliminal level is symbolism of the ‘growth story’ which is the mast head of the ‘Performance as Politics’ paradigm championed by the current dispensation. Growth narrative is a chimera, for a politics transforming the cultural DNA of the proverbial Idea of India.

The Bullet Train and The Lankesh Murder are both, India. Depends on which lens to evaluate the chaos called India. This subcontinent is a different beast when we talk to different stakeholders. Celebrate the diversity, the critical and also build basic infrastructure. Only critique does not fill stomachs. This Japanese project is geopolitical as well. The hierarchies converge and diverge in real time, as per the frame. Choose your frame of reference?

Mohsin Hamid for Booker. This Lahore Resident, British National and Lawyer, turned Advertising Consultant is an incredible talent. Such amazing grit and determination. Exit West speaks to our times of forced migration and globalisation.

#ExitWest

#ManBookerShortList

India needs safer tracks and clear platforms, Hundred Thousand Cr for the Bullet train is an ambitious act of diplomacy for Japan. The Japanese equivalent of OBOR is funding all of India’s Metro Rail Urban Initiatives through JICA. That’s buying ones seat at the Gala Dinner, through the check book route. More Japanese restaurants in vegetarian Amdavad though now to facilitate entire crews of technical advisers. Infrastructure Diplomacy does not need a grand strategic push.

#AbeinIndia

Text in Digital versus Text in Print, is meaning, content and context. The format is rather aesthetic. The ability to think beyond the software program should be baked into the text, the thinking, the thought process.

Digital has brought about the east access to quality content for free, giving substantially less time to appreciate and think critically about the politics of the text. The impulse to jump to new reads, spending a few seconds in the car or sipping coffee over the water cooler is thorough injustice to an article researched over months. The focus on the ‘argument’ and the ‘drift of the thought process’ through speed reading is application poor, as the soul of the writing is lost. In an era where the cultural ethos of the text is losing out to video content on social media, writing practice as an art faces severe challenges on one level and opportunity to push back alt facts through reading critically acclaimed academic double blind peer reviewed text. There is no substitute to intellectual and emotional labor where it comes to quality even in this era of listicles.

There is more to text than ‘what is the main argument?’ reductionist tendencies. Text is life, germinating thought and diversity, and in a dollars and cents neoliberal sense, ‘the engine of economic innovation.

Memory of Oman Chips, is as powerful as ever for the migrant who grew up/lived here. Brands have a powerful recall, on a lived experience level.

Great journeys start

With finite steps

Towards infinite potential

Within us

Somewhere along the journey

Infinity is collided with

We don’t feel the throwback

Are we sure of this milestone?

As a skipped heartbeat can feel like an eternity too