In a quest to earn a living over the past decade, especially the rather boisterous and fluid time since 2014, I look back at the birthdays of mine and loved ones that I have missed, the anniversaries and ofcourse the numerous weddings of friends I have missed which I dearly wanted to attend in Yangon, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad. I missed a critical operation of Baba in the recent months just to keep work going. I cannot simply fathom the loss, all to keep work going and pay my bills.

I did not sign in to this when I was an engineering student in Muscat 14 years back. It’s a humongous price. Rather a litany of detritus of rotten tomatoes, my life has turned out to be beneath the glittering resume.

Predictive analytics and community level resilience have to couple up for climate adaptation to occur. Quantify impact of GHG emissions in Dollars and Cents, so that the impact is crystal clear. A lot of our impact assessment is qualitative bordering on vague as meaning making hinges many a time on the context.

For more than a library of research papers on low income migration from the global south, a community organisation with lawyers and doctors do more to help deliver aid, than an academic who writes on the lived experience with out helping out in any tangible manner.

How many papers do labor policy bureaucrats read?

I am glad that the Migrant Culture scene in Singapore has evolved from being an opposition minded anti PAP theatre to one which is thoroughly mainstreamed. The poor migrant workers who are interested in aid and support primarily are spared from being used as a pawn by so called activists.

Big Fat Weddings are good for business and they create jobs in the events sector. MICE is a big urban employment generator from Davos to Singapore. Social theorists who are criticising the large spends would probably vie for an endowed chair in a university sponsored by them. Jobs are real, and jobs created support lives, even if it is through a fancy wedding. It’s very well to read articles on The Wire or Scroll while sipping your mocha in Khan Market or Tiong Bahru and comment on the obscene wealth. It is power that brings HRC and Beyoncé to town. Business people work very hard to earn their money, as it is risk capital. They do better than engaging in flimsy debates.

The role of the Think/Do Tank is the reimagine the role of the knowledge mediator in the Sustainability Ecosystem with the generation of not merely white papers for the PR Mill but to develop actionable intelligence for the practitioner ecosystem whether it is in making science work for policy to guiding the consulting sector with the best tools for business. We are the catalyst for implementation, and we mean action, as rhetoric is for other talk shops.

The migrant culture scene in Singapore and Malaysia has boomed and is indeed very vibrant with amazing talents. A lot of them are known to me and have taught me resilience.

The ‘low skill migrant’ as a case for celebration is however problematic sans interrogation. If one extrapolates these lessons globally, migrants need legal aid and medical aid along with innovative financial inclusion products such as emergency insurance, such as buying a flight ticket back home is often an uphill task.

Let’s help people at the point of need rather than make a theatre out of it.

Without sponsors, mentors and souls willing to support us in our journey to support them, one cannot do anything substantial as every phenomenon, organisation and profession is a network of capital and idea flows. This is something not taught enough in college, as the same professor that one hates, offers a great interview tip a boss that foul mouths is usually the one which offers transformational advice and a great reference letter.

Build relationships, not grades.

A few evenings back, I sat in a cab shuttling between malls, when I flagged down a cab which was driven by Salman, a massive Bollywood buff. When he heard that I was from Mumbai (my passport address is a Navi Mumbai one at least, a bureaucratic anchor for a fluid identity at best) he was very keen to discuss movies. I am a cheap Bollywood movie enthusiast, He said that his favourite actors were Nana Patekar and Mithun Da, and honestly I was startled as usually the Khan’s are a perennial favourite here in the region with locals.

We then moved to the debacle that was Thugs, and in the brief trip spoke about Manoj Bajpayee’s acting in Satya as Bhiku Mhatre and also a scene from Gangs of Wasseypur. The passion regarding movies was palpable and he was really analytical in his feedback.

It’s nice that these events happen spontaneously and makes life lively.

A prolonged conversation on migrant workers with an old friend, based in SE Asia ignited a part of my life which I have parked by the side at this bend of my life. I worked on migrant worker issues for a research think tank in Singapore and am associated remotely with Mohsin Malhar Bhai on his amazing grassroots work, that has none of the fluff but meaty collaboration with the fresh worker from Bangladesh. I am astonished that I remember research paper references to the year and author. It’s in my genes. Migration Studies or Anthropology departments would demand for better grades for a PhD application rather than years of writing and understanding if I plan to write a formal academic work. Hence, I scribble here.

I am raised in the Gulf as a second generation migrant of educator parents. Migrant/Expat/Temporary Guest Worker/Pravasi are terms embedded in the consciousness with Passport, Visa Categories and Labor Cards since I realised that am not a zombie but a thinking human being. Academia churns our lives experiences in to quotes and are reduced by the home countries as remittance data. But migrants live lives at the glorious intersection of transnational labor networks and monetary flows. His life is far more richer than Policy documents from ILO and IOM.

The middle class temporary guest worker is turned in to labor, and his normal life is converted in to a parallel life within the community away from the mainstream. Life is defined by the next trip home. The perennial negotiation to earn and save for his precarious life, is a colourful one, ingesting humiliations and taunts as pickle with sambhar and sadam.

The entrepreneur migrant is a unique species in the gulf, as money making becomes his calling. He listens to election rally speeches on YouTube while commenting on the winning candidate. He listens to BNP campaign songs on Watsapp as Bangladesh goes to the hustings and NaMo speeches as Rajasthan goes to the ballot box as well.

It’s a life defined by risk and uncertainties. He makes his life better with a Biryani after Jumma prayers, on a weekly basis. But, the decision to come and work is his, hence the accountability lies with him.