Arianna Huffington in a podcast with the Daily of the CEO mentioned that culture is the immunity of an organisation. The S in the ESG focuses indirectly on culture, DEI, Labor, Talent, Human Rights is about Dignity.

Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast.

Conversations which are insightful and intimate about Art for Consumption as part of the KL Design Festival 2024 at the Malaysian Design Archive. The dialogue with a writer-public intellectual , artist and designer turned it into more than that and a brought about fresh thinking about AI, Amar Chitra Katha, Traditions and Cultural Sustainability.

How do we interrogate ideologies behind AI and Sustainability from Malaysia? Where is the deep thinking behind writing and design? Sustainability from the west is colonial power masked as egalitarianism.

The Malaysian Design Archive is critical cultural infrastructure which keeps records of a visual Tarikh of a Malayan Past, slowly being attenuated. KL is a deeply creative city, full of life while maintaining form and substance. A lot of learning during the past year has been through attending talks by Mr. Eddin Khoo and other civil society events and reading group sessions by Prof. Farid, Prof Farish amongst others.

Technology is an ideology and the politics behind it is hidden from plain sight, yet the values need to be thought through before art is created. Technology in the present form creates a version of mediocrity which is regurgitated in popular culture. An exit from technological determinism is much awaited as we trapped in heuristics rather than thinking in depth, which brings conversations forward.

ESG/Sustainability were ethical safeguards in a neoliberal capitalist society, which are at best risk mitigation factors, built into impact weighted accounting models.

It’s a data play, where everything is abstracted into a neat excel sheet. The problem is real risk is on the ground and lurking around the corner. Capitalism needs that to best avoid black swans. Risk needs to be captured in reporting for trust and transparency.

Vellaiyan, captures contemporary themes of Ed tech, NEET, foreign venture funding and human rights in a delicious rojak. The film hits home on a raw note with a RG Kar type of episode.

Watching Rajni Saar in the Tamizh Diaspora in Brickfields in KL is the ultimate pro max migrant worker moment, as I grew up on his films when I did not understand even a word of Tamizh.

Anirudh’s music is a character in the movie itself. Amit ji sharing screen space with Rajni Saar is the stuff of cinematic dreams. Good to catch the movie on the first evening of release on Amit ji’s birthday eve. It is festival season for the Hindu Diaspora with Navratri and it felt like it for a change, even for a short while.

The film has a high powered cast with Fahad and Rana in tow with the cinematic legends.

I watched Kabali in Delhi in 2016 in dubbing mode. Fortunately my understanding of Tamizh is far better as I can figure out the nuances now after years in Singapore.

Kabaali Daaaa!

ESG or the Financialised Data Variant of Sustainability, and the allocation to low carbon projects was never about climate change per say, it is about risk mitigation, which capitalism is good at, from exactly the same externalities it generates. It is the adaptive nature of capitalism in the long term, and not merely about climate adaptation.

There is no capitalism and value creation without a planet to live on.

So glad to have made it to the Third Financial Geography (FinGeo) Workshop at the National University of Singapore next year! Splendid to be joining this group of early career scholars.

Nice to visit my alma mater too, and former teachers and friends with whom I have not met up in over two years.

As a peripheral scholar/researcher with an anchor in consulting such opportunities enable access to the best ideas in the business.

Sustainability was about improving lives of the most in need on the margins while we try to save our planet from sinking, all in framework conducive to market capitalism and globalisation. It was never only about filing reports.

We will all sink while beautiful sustainability reporting documents are published by the best consultants and graphic designers.