I have a personal distaste for the oft mentioned lexicon of ‘content’. People who write as much expressive artists as actors and musicians. Content productises the creative process. Every word is bled. It takes creativity to #write

The last week has been a fascinating insight in to how we grieve collectively as a polity, a quam, a desh.

Programs, Riots, Genocide being freely touted across the spectrum of ideologies. Who is allowed to be grieved, channelising Butler is an important anchor for the actual violence to be perpetrated perpetually through politics, rather than remember them as normal people who lost their lives while doing a job, working to bring food on the table as the police man, IB officer or the working poor whose images are haunting digital feeds today.

We have a culture of political violence, Bhagalpur, Bombay, Amdavad, Delhi’84, Assam, Dhule and the list is endless.

We live in a hyper connected era hence each episode of violence is visceral and in the face thanks to Watsapp groups. We need more information literacy than ever and learn to mourn all lives. All lives matter.

As writers and social consulting professionals we grapple with the politics of evidence or data gathering.

Dr Kristen Diwan, resident senior scholar of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington DC, read and ‘enjoyed’ my article on the Qaboos Transition for The Tilak Chronicle which was published in January this year after HM passed away. She is one of the best minds on the political economy of the Gulf, globally. Such an honor 🙏

Rethinking Value in Professional Services

Mainstream #consulting is caught too much into timesheets and the performance of work rather than value. The client has the same access to information as you. Where is the innovation which is going to help your client on the next value venture? The answer is in #research.

The next practice delivery models in consulting will entail that consultants start thinking as entrepreneurs and value creators rather than the usual status quo. Think beyond binaries, look at registers of evidence beyond the top 10 searches on google. Read more, talk to real experts in academia who work on a single topic for their entire careers. Accept failure and embrace intellectual humility to crack open the anti intellectual bent in professional services.

Co create, rather than PowerPoint preach. The MacBook and Armani swag goes only so far. Consultants are going in for practitioners. The disrupters are being disrupted.

A vegetable cart, extending into the public street from the home, a private space which is not too private at all, as the home can be seen.
The cart occupies an informal space, a liminal space into the world.