Health & Safety is an ‘S’ element in ESG. Time to include Mental Health as an ESG matter too.

The Khaleej never leaves us. It is within and we are grateful.

Eid Ul Fitr Dinner with Dum Biryani, Shondesh and home made Siwaiyan.

Happiest to see my Mother joyous, as she misses our life in Masqat the most.

A majority of salon workers, hair stylists and beauticians in Bombay as per purposive non random sampling happen to be Muslims from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and these include women too. Today at a branded salon in an even more branded mall in Navi Mumbai, I found both the staff who tended to me were Muslim on Eid, when I asked them why they were not on leave, they said- ‘jab sabki chutti hoteen hain, hum kaam kartein hain’, he said with a whiff of sadness in his voice, his eyes were sad. As a weekend the salon was packed with patrons and as folks who work on commissions, weekends and public holidays are income generally days. Most of the workers in the salon are Muslim. But they were dressed in glittering salwars, marking the presence of a Muslim holiday among a Savarna clientele.

The articulations of the presence of young Muslims as well as families in the food court with prominent identifiers through clothing and smiles was refreshing as caricatures don’t help us see a polity which wants to express as one, rather than the other. Pathaan has helped in mainstreaming efforts, as well as G20 year in the election run up in 2024 has meant the BJP giving posters wishing Eid Mubarak along with Akshay Tritiya.

I was thinking of the service led sectors who serve us while we are on holiday, and a replacement holiday we all know does not cut it. Wishing solidarity to all who work harder while others chill.

We are all gig workers in a way, only some have normal holidays on weekends.

Pav Bhaji, a Bombay Staple is a creole creation responding to the cultural currents of the maximum city where the Lusophone Goans made home with the Parsis.

The Aam Ras is an ode to the Gujarati presence in the city, a fixture of every thali.

There is always a market for solving hard problems, like climate action, waste management or forced labor. The journey is hard, but one does not have to worry about a career if one solves the issues through science, finance, entrepreneurship, anthropology, or law.

In the wee hours of the morning a stretch of eateries opens to cater to the Ramadan faithful in Asalfa and Sai Naka along the Metro line, which is a glimpse into commonalities of faith which stitch communities the Ummah over. Modernity is stopped in the tracks for a month when faith and family take over, temporalities and spatial configurations jostle for space within the mainstream imagination.

Very rarely one gets the opportunity to represent migrant workers and refugee communities in a room of twelve nonprofits from Cameroon to Argentina to Malaysia to discuss Equity in Evaluation Landscape towards a landmark report by Praxis and Global Change Center commissioned by the Ford Foundation. We were in Johannesburg a few months ago. Looking forward to the public report next month.

Thank you very much Adrian Pereira Sir Ann Beatrice Madam and the North South Initiative Team for the opportunity to bring muted voices to the funder community.

In Solidarity!

PS: I am a third-generation migrant who is perennially on the move from the Gulf to SE Asia unlike academics who theorize migration on the pathos of helpless workers and refugees.

One of the ways I think of the ways one writes about migration from the extraction oriented lens of academic theorising is the non appreciation of lived experiences of workers to publish in journals such as Geoforum. One scholar called Desker road or the migrant worker space on Lembu Road in Singapore as Bordered Security Scapes, where Bangladeshi migrants gather on a Sunday to gather, break Iftar and meet friends.

For me a second generation migrant and non scholar, the Lembu Road space is one of joy and celebration and of celebrating humanity. Every migrant knows that they are under the loving gaze of the cctv camera.

Privileged lens does impact how one writes about bachelor bodies in bordered security scapes (Loong 2018) (Ye 2014).

ESG and it’s meta framework, the good old sustainability has its biggest strengths in transparency and trust which is tied to being responsible in stakeholder capitalism. Businesses exist to deliver value to customers and returns to investors. Sustainability professionals often forget why businesses exist.