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 Forbes Interview’s on Demonetisation

Its been lovely to speak with Forbes Contributor Wade Shepard, in his series on Demonetisation crisis in India. These are two more articles which came out earlier this month:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/12/14/inside-indias-cashless-revolution/#30de32e618c7

http://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/12/12/one-month-in-whats-the-impact-of-indias-demonetization-fiasco/#1e6f7d3e62eb

Excerpts of my interview from the above article:

“The unbanked and informal economy is hard hit,” explained Monishankar Prasad, the New Delhi-based author and editor for Alochonaa, an Australian current events publication. “The poor do not have the access to structural and cultural resources to adapt to shock doctrine economics. The poor were taken totally off guard and the banking infrastructure in the hinterland is rather limited. The tech class has poor exposure to critical social theory in order to understand the impact on the ground. There is an empathy deficit.”

“A lot more retail outlets are accepting e-wallets, including my laundry provider and my dabbawala,” commented Prasad. “This is revolutionary, and survival of the fittest.”

“This is a public sector innovation unthought of in history. A cultural-economic revolution in the making!” exclaimed Monishankar Prasad, a New Delhi-based author and editor, about India’s demonetization initiative and subsequent drive towards developing a cashless economy.

Travel Diaries

There is something beautiful about the good old Tarmac, the roar of the A320 engine and the chilly Delhi air on a Thursday evening just reaffirms the feel that I was made for travel and for jotting down the notes from journeys near and far. Fourth city in a week, Kolkata here we meet you after half a year, of turbulences in Rana Dasgupta’s Capital and the Start Up Life.

The Sustainability rhetoric does not work any more

Reimagined or Reimagining Sustainability is often a corporate jargon, as a green washing rhetorical device. Sustainability is social and environmental justice with teeth, and the normative politics is subsumed within the pragmatic instincts of neoliberal capitalism. I have heard always that sustainability is a cost centre than a profit centre and costly measures are taken to cover the compliance requirements as per home country legal architecture. Sustainability as a reputational risk management tool is again pragmatic and does not go far enough. Sustainability is ethics, and is contextual. In a start up or the ICT sector it might be gender diversity and grievance redressal mechanisms, while for a manufacturing stakeholder it might be waste management. Indicator building and Monitoring and Evaluation help, but in a post Truth Trump Era, Sustainability might just mean an ethical work environment.

One month of deconstruction 

One month of mayhem. The push towards the digital economy is happening as a mode of survival. Reflexive rather than proactive. The dabbawala took bank transfer this month. This was a watershed moment for me. The digital economy has a surveillance and a panopticon lens. Inclusion has a mainstreaming effect. The narrative frame is of the ’emancipatory’ spirit. Critical thinking needed, to unravel the various layers of this techno deterministic move. Overall, the common man is so helpless reacting to various top down policy interventions as a clueless lost kid at the train station.

My take on Demonetization on a BBC World Panel Discussion

This is the first video in six years on this blog! My panel discussion on Demonetization yesterday evening  (28th November 2016) on BBC World Flagship Program ‘The Global’. Some plain speaking to puncture the holes of a technocratic dominant discourse where cashless and digital are operative syntax. The common man matters who is in queue for hours as well not only investors in e wallets. Yes, ‘The minor inconvenience’ is not minor. The official BBC video clip helps.

Coping with Political Disruption: Time to build new vocabularies of resilience

This has been a truly unprecedented week for global democracy with Mr. Trump being elected as the president of the US, when no one apart from Micheal Moore out of all folks, gave him a shred of hope to win. Like, Brexit, earlier this year, the intelligentsia was overwhelmed with the disruption from a population who saw no use of global mobility of their passports  while they get by on food stamps. While the liberal elite might snigger at the thought of Nigel Farage or Donald Trump, they certainly have a pulse on the ground. Donald Trump being the charismatic salesman, understood the latent requirements of the consumer.

I have been digesting the volumes of post mortem analysis of the Trump victory, that seeks to be an effort into semiotic reading of the events of the week. The Route 128 or Palo Alto tech tribe might be jittery at the prospect of a vision of a man they do not endorse, but often as i have written, the tech industry does not understand the dynamics on the ground with people who have lost jobs overseas and the old way of living with added automation in shop floor work. The banker on wall street with high frequency algorithmic trades is often disconnected with the margins of cosmopolitanism and that ignorance will cost the tech and finance sectors dearly. The vote against global elites is loud and clear, that the economic realities are far more salient. Realities are embedded in everyday lived experience and are always micro in character. Society is three skipped meals from a revolt, as the old saying goes.  More anthropologists should study the impact of tech disruption on brick and mortar communities to gain a thorough understanding of the impending events.

Times of disruption call for a new aesthetic vocabulary of understanding the present while building empathy, execution and inclusive leadership to re-imagine a future in which subaltern voices shall count. There is a Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, and there is a different politics which might feel that this present politics of dissent is not enough.  The internationalist politics of the left has been inadequate to account for the grievances of the inner cities. In India, Bengaluru, the technology capital of India faced water riots over sharing of the resource with neighboring state of Tamil Nadu shutting down the city for days as on the ground contacts had shared real time experiences. In India, the parliamentary left has been decimated part from Kerala and Tripura with the mantle of anti-globalization politics with the regional players including the Aam Aadmi Party.

We live in a world which is constantly evolving, and business has to adapt with the local political realities of the day. Time to integrate PESTLE analysis in to business continuity risk assessments then and listen and cater to the needs of the community, and not just the token CSR event. Time has come to rethink the lexicon in which we think.

Reclaiming the Narrative Against Hyperbole

In my conversations with the tech wrapped class in Urban India, have a blind spot regarding the members of the informal economy. The informal economy is something to be not considered at all. If Autowallah and Taxi Wallah’s have a union, which is irrelevant in the era of Uber, that tech is a silver bullet against predatory, discretionary pricing, but surge pricing is market economics.

The bank employee who has a stable job is lazy versus a start up employee who is entrepreneurial. We, have something very imprecise in our aesthetics, which seeks to celebrate jobless growth, no medical coverage and one pay check away from homelessness. We have some how allowed Economic Times to frame our discourse. Read some EPW, or even OPEN for a change. The language of activism needs to reclaimed or reframed in this digital era. The food that we eat is still grown by a farmer in the hinterland.

Conversation on Digital Disruption with an Auto Wallah

I was sadly stuck in a terrible traffic snarl today in an auto rickshaw, where I decide to ignite a chat in Bhojpuri infected Hindi. The crux of the conversation was to understand the adaptation of the non digital auto wallah, against their smart phone connected counterparts in OLA or Uber. The auto wallah said, you do not waste time, waiting for the OLA or Uber driver as he is not usually a local from this area. These drivers ask us for directions all the time. We are cheaper and own the roads.

When I asked about air conditioner and other comforts, the middle aged gentlemen quipped ‘there was no OLA five years back, and there were summers in Delhi then as well’ 

He complained about the traffic during the peak hours, as these are the times where they get rides or ‘bhada’. Where the OLA driver can fetch a ride at midnight in a jungle.

The Auto Wallah is strategising against digital disruption. I would like to understand more narratives on the ground of evolving livelihoods on the front lines of automation. Life is not only about numbers in a World Economic Forum Report. Local knowledge is a key USP.