Author: changethinker

Born and raised in Mumbai, India with an undergrad degree from Oman and a masters degree from the National University of Singapore. I am an Environmental Professional with a passion for Sustainability, Social Innovation and Governance related issues. A Change Agent in the making who believes that small is beautiful and that impact can be achieved -one soul at a time.

More than resume bullets

Life is not a resume and obviously can’t be one that is accepted by hiring managers. It is as if we wrap our lives into lines on a resume. There is something called living as well. In all the conversation regarding re-skilling, automation, big or small data, deep learning and smart cities we tend to forget that each journey is unique, have differential set of opportunities influenced by social, economic and cultural capital and habitus.

Life is fuller than reduced caricatures which are essentially lists. We are brands, varnished by LinkedIn, perennial image building is the fuel, but I guess organisations are better off hiring full humans than plastic cvs.

Self.

Survival, short hand for a migrant

Residue of self

Caste, Class,Faith, Race

Find meaning

In art

In the words that are carved

Sculptures of the mind

To hold the person

Deep within

The world outside

Needs paper

Passport,Visa, Bank Statement

To construct the self

Borders and passport stamps

Delineate the migrant

In the amphitheater of life

The border offers opportunity

Also a sense of dissolution

Of the self

Education and Networks

Folks complaining about the decline of public sector higher education in India and globally have to realise that college education is a privilege and social capital does influence outcomes.

In the real world, networks matter and college is a Network. Only the paranoid survive as no one is offering hand outs sans the IRR and ROCE being computed. I realise that having an Ivy League MBA is a huge boost to a professional career but it comes with a price tag. That access to C Suite networks is the opening to talent to access opportunities.

Elections are not theoretical exercises

People react to the circumstances that they encounter whether it is the lack of resources or opportunities. When families can’t put food on the table, the alternative which seeks to demolish the status quo seems viable. People are not interested in theories and policy white papers. Most are interested in the latest Netflix series, rather than evaluating the cost benefit equation of migrants as a value driver in the market economy. People vote against destitution and despair.

Whether it is Naya Pakistan or Malaysia Bahru, or New India; the vote for an alternative imagination is not the sole preserve of the left. Chavez and Lula were not saints. Trump is creating jobs, and Modi leads a fairly popular government. Brazil should be no more worse rather than opeds condemning it from moment zero. Rhetoric during the campaign and governance are different beasts. Left should get out of its theoretical bubble. The battle for democracy is often at the both not in TV studios and critical theory graduate school courses.

Writing as Genealogy

I was always discouraged by my liberal arts/management educator parents to take up the humanities even after I did a NUS engineering masters that too on a scholarship at NTU as it was seen to be not profitable enough. I studied sociology coursework and researched at NTU on a fascinating program. Fortunately, my interest in public policy catalysed in me reading modules at LKYSPP. The story however is slightly deeper.

My interest in history and politics is intrinsic, as read books on WW2 and gobbled up India Today magazine and The Outlook and The Week while I grew up. This interest in the humanities has evolved into writing as a state of being. As I was today renewing the WordPress subscription of my online repository of dispersed meditations aka blog changethinker.com , something struck within me that this blog has been more than a site of cultural production in the form of analysis, aphorisms, criticism, spoken word and photography over the past eight years and 20.5k hits. It has become a genealogical understanding of me a person, an understanding of me as a writing as I believe in Prof Amit Chaudhuri’s writing-living continuum. It has been a way of pivoting out of mediocrity, engineering prominence, that I have a voice sunk under gelf migrant middle class utilitarian thinking expressing in an engineering education. Writing is politics with a small p, activism as a small a and civic engagement for a non important engineering consultant, who scribbles and takes photos on an old I phone.

Writing is entrepreneurship as the market for ideas is crowded. I have used the skills picked up in consulting for thought leadership. Creating content, marketing it on social media and pushing the envelope by lobbying literary, media, non profit and academic gatekeepers to get my word through, literally as have not read a MFA program yet. I am thankful for friends to care to read my work.

My blog has been paradoxically entrepreneurial venture without having earned a single cent out of it. Writing is political, yet deeply personal. It is living and engaging with the wonderful spirit called life.

The Talent Equation.

Having talent is one part of the equation, making money out of it is another. Market needs a lot more than talent ; ability to communicate, be agile to unlearn and relearn, work in teams well, able to mentor and to be mentored, the ability to sell your idea to internal and external clients, go the extra few miles to create value, be well networked to leverage the resources. I am pretty sure no college taught these to to any freshmen.