The problem and opportunity with FPIC especially for forest based carbon credits and renewable mandates is the gap in understanding between the elites of local communities, the federal power structures and the international banks. Politics which is often erased from the reports is exactly what is needed.
Day: November 16, 2025
Configuration of Barber Subaltern in Malaysia
For the South Asian Man in the diaspora, the barber shop and its ‘thanda thanda cool cool champee’ or head message in Hindi-Urdu-Bangla is therapy, from the quotidian druggery.
The banal jokes cracked over loud 90’s Kumar Shanu, or the latest Anirudh anthem is a few moments of a lightness of being.
For the semi literate south Asian Barber, from Madras, Rangoon or Sadda Panjab the employment is an opportunity to earn in a foreign currency and remit money. The subaltern here is a micro entrepreneurial artist, making money for the shop owner, while keeping in mind the money he needs to support himself in Malaysia, remit money to build a house in the village and also keeping the resources to renew his next permit.
To keep the spark of joy alive in this strategic calculus is indeed resistance.
Change Thinker 