I have worked with migrants on the research and emergency welfare side of the spectrum for a decade plus in the Gulf and SE Asia and when I read migration studies literature, I see theorizing which hardly has any representative voices. A literature gap certainly there.

And the removal of the migrant as category separates from the mainstream where these migrants care for the families while parents earn, and build your cities is perpetuation of racial biases, and needs decolonizing. Can it be done with scholars who are western or white or both, while they have the confidence of parachuting in and harvesting data is another question altogether.

I am a third generation migrant and a migration scholar, always in that order.

Onam Ashamkal! Onam takes me back to Sadya lunches at my friend Nikhil’s place during engineering in Muscat and the mad rush at Kerala eateries in the Gulf, where the diaspora celebrates. The Gulf diaspora is the economic spine of the state where NRKs have led a different development model to the rest of the south to a varying degree.

Singapore needs a plural lens to think about its migrant spaces, as the temporary guest worker is not a transient ‘bachelor body’ in a ‘bordered security scape’ (Ye 2013) (Loong 2018). The structured invisibility in terms is being layered by an active digital subaltern social media presence via tik tok, and that most workers are grateful rather than activistic, as the remittance feeds mouths back home. But Singapore is also their home, visa categories are not that important as they will head back to their families in Thanjavur or Kakinada or Panchkula. Citizenship is not their primary purpose, but belonging is a lived experience reality- the chai at Mustafa Cafe or biryani at Fakruddin is transnational belonging, and the dormitories are transnational too next to Johor as the North Coast Lodge. The peripheral centres are transnational if not global, and are an element of the global city, a free port such as Dubai since 1905. The empire made ports as spaces of mobility, as ‘migration infrastructure’ on a city scale.

Conversations with Uber drivers are infrequent in Mumbai as the focus is on the road and the GPS Map. It was a rainy receding monsoon morning when I was watching a CNBC Arabia interview of a former colleague in Muscat on LinkedIn while the volume was turned up. An Uber Driver in a posh salwar and a skull cap, heard Arabic, and asked me in Hindi while smirking, do you understand Arabic, I answered Aiwa, Arabi Maloom? He answered, Zyada Maloom and that triggered an hour-long discursive conversation on Uber riding in Riyadh and Mumbai where he owns two cars in Mumbai investing Saudi Riyal Remittances in recurring income, while he is on a free visa in Riyadh, driving Uber where the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, the PIF. He pays 1500 Saudi Riyals a month to his Kafeel, his sponsor for the Car and pays another three thousand riyals annually for the iqama.

Trained as an Urdu Teacher with a bachelor’s in education from Pune, the Urdu Teacher originally from Allahabad, went to teach in Riyadh a decade back to teach in a private school, and was comfortable until nationalization in Saudi Arabia forced him to become a driver entrepreneur with cars in Riyadh and Mumbai. He spoke about Muslim men looking to the Gulf as a source of employment even now when the economies are recalibrating for the post oil era. He spoke about life as a platform economy ride hailing entreprenuer, and how life is better for a middle-class man in the Gulf. He spoke about supporting his entire extended family with remittances, and that he plans to take his wife, who is also a teacher and his kid to Riyadh and spoke about the money needed for support a family. He spoke about the revolutionary reforms in the Saudi Arabia of Crown Prince MBS and the ‘Dubai-fication’ of Riyadh.

He spoke about his wife’s IPhone 14 being stolen from his car and being distraught with no help from law enforcement when he went to lodge a complaint.

The life of a Khaleeji migrant worker is transnational is feet in two nodes, the homeland, and the host land. The soul and the body are split as well with priorities to support the family and the paucity of economic opportunities for a certain socioeconomic strata and community.

Diasporas are formed when the home itself becomes alienating.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee in his 2023 National Day Rally (the one hour English version) spoke much in detail about public housing ownership with its emphasis on being fair and maintaining the social mix. The clarity of reasoning behind the role of public housing in Singapore as a bedrock of the social contract was a master class in policy communication- GIS Maps, Framework level thinking and the economics of the HDB.

The rally speech brought me back to this book which articulates the origins of mass public housing.

Quiet Birthday Eve.

Happy to have survived the year. Wiser with the bruises and the punches, that life has offered. Grateful for the kindness of people who have held the sail in the middle of a tornado.

Nothing more valuable than clarity of purpose and resolve for bending the world towards slightly towards the moral arc of justice through ESG and impact entrepreneurship.

Be Kind, the world has too many who need the hospital bill to be paid for a loved one while we are fretting over minor conundrums over latte.

Azadi Mubarak, Midnights Children from Peshawar to Delhi to Kolkata to Dhaka to Sittwe. The embers of the Partition linger as transgenerational trauma as a member of family whose cuisine reflects in the quotidian and its conflicts rage on as an uncompleted project.

The unpartitioned South Asia has glimpses in Karama and Bur Dubai in Dubai as the Little Dhaka neighborhood in the Little India district in Singapore. The sounds of the Bengali dialects from current day Bangladesh in the diaspora in Muscat, in the Hamriya or Ghala gave a sense of the similarities as well as the difference which a bloody partition instituted. The political trajectories have clearly differed, and the partition impacted the Panjabis, Sindhis, Bengalis and large parts of Mumbai, my home where Sukkur and other Sindhi names are prominent building names here. The best Sindhi fare can be found in the historic Meena Bazar/ Al Fahidi/Bastakiyah neighborhood in Bur Dubai.

The south was impacted as well, as Hyderabad is felt in Karachi and vice versa. The partition traumas are felt in the everyday politics of South Asia, one just needs to watch prime time news to realize, that the bloody chapter lives on.

Even the latest HBR edition acknowledges that engaging labour issues for businesses is a material ESG issue, given that support for unions is at an all time high including Starbucks where I am sitting and reflecting on the article in a touch of rich irony.

The woke era, is bringing labour front and centre to the boardroom via the ESG lens.

ESG or sustainability is the social license of operate for a business, the degrees of intensity might vary, tick box to innovation spectrum but ESG will persist as it instils the value to do business the right way, caring for your employees, not pollute deliberately. The social or the human rights element within the ‘S’ element is not a derivative of old school trade unionism, although formal labor organizing is making a comeback in the woke era. Human rights with the small ‘r’ are about care, nurturing the communities of practice with solid safety record.

The social element is integral to business value creation, investing in your employees and communities that they are motivated. In a post pandemic era, investing in talent is the easiest route to resilience. Thinking about resilience has a clear ROI, lessons from the pandemic are there for us to internalize.

ESG is reporting, resilience is long term value creation.