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.

Culture Wars: Goa Style

Last week, I had traveled to Goa and Belgaum in northern Karnataka for work. Well, my day job takes me to interesting places. The hilly drive to Belgaum and back to Goa in a day was simply enriching. Goa is very interesting place for an ad-hoc sociologist such as me who is fascinated by the evolution of culture and its associated norms and values. Goa is 65 percent Hindu, although its Portuguese Catholic Colonial Cultural Legacy is over-powering. North Goa along the Maharashtra Border is scattered with Hindu Shrines and Temples plus a few statues of Shivaji Maharaj- the great Maratha Hindu King dotted the landscape making its symbolic power very poignant. Northern Goa is very Maharashtra-wadi or Maharashtra Centric as the Konkan Culture pre-dominates the region. The Panaji bridge divides Goa geographically and metaphorically in many ways. Christian and significantly Muslim South Goa has the best touristy locales- beaches, churches and the casinos by the river like Deltin Royale. Economically prosperous yes, but it has been also at the receiving end of an exodus due to reverse migration to its former colonial master- Portugal and recently to Canada as a lot of Catholic Goans work in the Persian Gulf and they prefer to migrate to Toronto rather than return to sleepy Goa. The declining birth-rates in Portugal are to contribute for migration from former Lusophone colonies such as Macau and Goa. Globalization shows up another shade.

The BJP government lead by IIT educated technocrat politico Manohar Parrikar has emphasized the importance of improving road infrastructure but then been conservative in its approach in making it tourism friendly which is the economic staple of the Goan People. Upholding the Maharashtrian Konkanasta Sanskruti, is more vital than bringing in tourism dollars for Mr. Parrikar and his cabinet colleagues as our friend Mr. Rajesh who took us around Goa and Belgaum reiterated many a time the importance of the political economy of livelihood rather than the Sociology of Religion. No one including the author of this post is disputing the Hindu Fabric of this Nation and to not exclude Goa taking in to account its unique political history since 1961 when it ceded to the Indian Union, but to make Hindu Identity as the bedrock of governance is a bit far-fetched as about 1/3rd of Goa’s demography is Catholic. During the last Parrikar administration, Good Friday was made a restricted Public Holiday! No wonder Parrikar lost; this time thankfully he has been more accommodating as the Catholics of South Goa voted for him. This is incredibly surprising as Mr. Parrikar has cousins in Angola!

Dona Paula with its Singham memorabilia was noteworthy although Miramar Beach could be improved a bit. The commodification of Goan Cultural Symbols seems complete whenever one I met was out to over-sell Goa in which manner possible, although paradoxically, the place did not seem that way.

Goa as a theatre of Culture War is real, as two distinct cultures are vying for centrality in an area of pan Maharashtrian Regionalism. May the Best of the genteelness and gregarious character of Goan Ethos prevail?

A poster of a passport photo studio in central Panjim said it all about the post-colonial redux in present day Goa.

Post-Colonial Redux in Goa
Post-Colonial Redux in Goa

‘This Divided Island’ by Samanth Subramanian: A Review & more

I rarely write book reviews although I read or attempt to read at least 4 full books a month. I rather distill the insights of different reads to analyse the complex messy reality around me. This approach helps me to write my book on urbanization and globalization and also helps to attract a regular readership on my blog.
This Divided Island by Samanth Subramanian, a Columbia educated India Correspondent of The National, an English Language Newspaper based out of Abu Dhabi is a Tour De Force of Indian Contemporary Writing based on the stark realities of the mess after the Sri Lankan Army’s demolition job of the Tamil Tigers and with it the complete subjugation of the minority Tamils in the East and the Northern Jaffna Peninsula in an aggressively Buddhist Sinhalese Sri Lanka. The Book is based on comprehensive fieldwork throughout the curvature of the Island the shape of a tear drop in two years after the Tigers were crushed with brutal thud of a hammer as if a mosquito is being squatted.
A first hand journalistic, but quasi-ethnographic account of personal accounts of survivors, stakeholders and civil society actors mainly commoners give this book a Pico-Iyereque Feel while the intellectual historiography of the Tamil Struggle in Sri Lanka is Pankaj Mishra-esque; both writers whom I deeply admire. The book reflects the churning of Sri Lankan Society and its new contours as a Buddhist Sinhalese Nation, where Muslims and Tamils of all faiths have to live by the dictate of the Buddhist Sangha and its radical advocates as the Sinhala Ravaya (or the Sinhalese Roar) where the Monks in Robes justify raw violence to squash any ideology other than the majoritarian narrative of the Aryan Sinhalese Race. The culture, politics, discourse and history is being recalibrated in accordance with the victors scale; this time is the Sinhalese Sri Lankan State. The 2000 year Tamil History in Sri Lanka is reduced to a footnote as signboards even in the Tamil North are in English and Sinhalese. The ‘Devala’ or Tamil in Sinhalese is treated as dispensable as can be read from the stories that the author shares in this narrative. The Book is divided into sections and sub-episodes and is aptly inter-linked to carve a smooth drive. The details of the book capture the war as a personal calamity rather than of cold political state-craft. The Terror, The North, The Faith, and Endgames aka the sections of the books are named with a specificity of a physicist gripping the essence of the write-up.
The most engaging elements of the book for me were the episodes narrating heart wrenching expulsions of the native Jaffna Tamil Muslims in 1990 on a summer afternoon and how the Buddhist Monks have justified War against Tamils on a racist/religion based rationale which renders a moral passport for state led so called anti-terror purges. Fanaticism of all shades it seems has the same colour. The racist justification it felt was the same as the Nazis had against the Jews and same fervour of medieval animosity of the Palestinian-Israeli Question. The Identity tangle brews bloodshed and similar non Buddhist activities such as riots against Muslims of the Arakan and Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar by the neocon Buddhist Groups such as 969 have shown that extremism has no rationale.
I would recommend this travelogue thesis on post war Sri Lanka as an add to a serious readers personal library. A sure-shot contender for the South Asian Writing in English awards for 2014.

Trans-national Advocacy Actors: Time to return to core competency?

Recently, there were media reports last month criticizing the Greenpeace Executive who was flying between Brussels and another EU Capital for work every week whereas the commute could be done via a carbon effective route. So, much positive press for being environmentally aggressive on the high seas of the Arctic that Greenpeace is so known for. Last year, the esteemed UK based Charity Oxfam had advertised for an employment position for its Head of Communications with a price-tag of 75K Pounds. Staggering I would contend for a non-profit. But as the tribe of global, corporatized non-profits would retort they need to pay top pound for the best talent in the house. Partially true, but it would certainly not buy sympathy from a college going kid, donating his pocket money to satiate his green conscious. An industry executive whom I to spoke last week was point blank direct in labeling Greenpeace as ‘extortionist’ and questioned about the fuel bills and mobilization costs for the much publicized arctic expeditions. Genuine question indeed raised; which doubts the credibility of the moral entrepreneurship of Greenpeace.
Media Reports of Non Profit Training Seminars in Star Hotels where folks bleed their heart out on poverty while sipping chardonnay is simply not done. Well, one does not have to behave like an acetic, though this does not bring good press to the sector which depends on reputational capital and funder sympathy. Poverty porn creates cynicism and ultimately donor fatigue. In the effort to create ‘Shared-Value’, the non-profit movement has sold its soul to the devil that they so love to mock. The Social Entrepreneurship set-up is commercially not sustainable as there is too little real impact rather than fashionable fluff. They are good souls, but they tend to lose out in the crowd of wannabe do-gooders.
The lack of accountability and transparency in funding as informed by the leaked Indian Governments internal intelligence department report on foreign funding of Activist Non Profits that almost undermined so called developmental progress such as the nuclear power plant in power hungry Tamil Nadu. After Fukushima, the paradigm of risk and nuclear capitalism came to fore and a lot of activists rode the wave against nuclear power. A freshly churned MSF report on developmental interventions in crisis areas indicts non-profits as gunning for funding rather than concentrating on delivering the goods: creating an impact where state actors have failed.
It is time that Non Profits return to their core competence of creating impact, rather than rhetoric and function as true Force Du Resistance in empowering communities to realize their potential.

Land Acquisition & Grammar of Neo-Liberal Rhetoric: Interesting Bedfellows

Every time i switch on to CNBC TV-18 or ET Now, there seems to be a common thread which the business media in India has picked up: portraying the amended Land Acquisition legislation as the demon strangling the animal spirits of Dalal Street Capitalism. Decade long job less growth and economic stagnation of the UPA has given the Modi Administration a free hand in terming every single device of the left of centre resistance as anti-growth. Growth-ism is a totem of our post liberalization culture. Well, there is a chasm between Dalal Street and Main Street. Let the bankers of SoBo visit the chawls of Virar first.

Transnational capitalism has a unique scripture and it has its zealots who preach the word on Bloomberg, Boardrooms and Business Schools. Anyone who has differing opinions is sidelined for un-natural profits at the alter of capitalism by marginalizing communities.
The priests of the bourgeoisie also get relegated to the proletariat of the middle class as was seen during the 2008 financial crisis. India needs manufacturing jobs and that is a reality which cannot be disputed.

Let the ambit of the conversation be broader and expand the boundaries of the discourse. That makes business sense and people are not statistics.

Unpacking the Myth of ‘Shared Value’

The past decade has led to an explosion in tri-sector interaction frame-works in popular business literature with leading American Policy Academic Joseph Nye exalting business leaders to re-frame their capabilities as a ‘Tri-Sector Athlete’; by adapting  the requisite tools required for each sector to maximize shared value.  The Private Sector under the wider conceptual rubric of Corporate Citizenship is working hand in hand with Philanthropic Foundations plus Global NGO’s and diffused citizen grassroots organizations to create an illusion of sensible corporate governance. Some drinking water here, some solar panels there is the current regime of tokenism.  Social Development Professionals who work in corporate funded foundations and think tanks often complain of being sidelined by the marketing team who hijack whatever good can be achieved in a transnational shareholder capitalism context with green washing the naïve consumers. A serious empirical study needs to be done of how effective the rhetoric about ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid’ in the past decade has really been. The black box of management fluff needs to be deconstructed in order to understand whether the ‘real’ shareholders are being hoodwinked in believing thin air rather than real meat.

How real is the ‘Shared Value’ for the citizen sector? Is the value for the 3rd sector only in terms of paying the flight tickets and hotel costs of top honchos of Green peace?  Let’s have some researcher do some Randomized Control Trials in a Monitoring & Evaluation Framework to know its efficacy.

As of now Shared Value has worked for Financial Institutions, FMCG Majors and Retail Chains to expand rural market share and procuring new targets (Grameen Group in Bangladesh has synergistic operating model- microfinance to dairy to telecom and rural renewable energy). I do not see how the power dynamics will work for the underfunded and undermanned non-profit in West Papua where the voices of marginalised communities are erased and co-opted in the name of Development for all in neoliberal governance architecture. Who is this ‘All’ after all?.

In order to operationalize this rather normative argument, let the corporations begin by making their current CSR initiatives more impactful by walking the talk, after all shared value should not be a footnote in its annual sustainability report, right?

 

Lessons in Business from a Bottom up Urban Entrepreneur

The Food & Beverages Sector is the most segregated and stratified in the country as it ranges from the street corner fast food joint to a reasonable eatery to the ephemeral star hotels.  An eatery has severe quality control limitations as an authorised eatery will have to get about 70 odd registrations and licenses done to open one. The F&B sector is glamorous with the Michelin Star Chefs sexing it up. Anyway the contemporary business media discourse is about eulogizing and manufacturing the myth of the entrepreneur. This post is about recognizing the potential for bottom up entrepreneurship in the ‘R’uban space and unpacking the black box of what makes an entrepreneur tick! (a term coined and popularized by Iconic Singaporean Architect & Urban Planner Tay Kheng Soon and recently quoted by Prime Minister Modi in his first Parliamentary speech)

The protagonist of the narrative is a certain Mr. Shyam who runs his corner store eatery in Gurgaon’s upmarket residential neighborhood, where he cooks and sells every single dish which the costumer demands. Costumer is King for him. Whether it is catering lunch to the office goer in the next block or the student who comes in for the rather oily fried Indian Noodles for an evening snack.   23 year old Shyam looks like a teenager due to his youthful dressing sense and negligible facial hair. His corner shop tries to deploy a modicum  of a restaurant with the napkin, the silver foil container for takeaways, proper cutlery and outdoor cane chairs. Well, the family run store tries its best to attract quality crowd. Shyam once quipped that even if folks are not eating and simply sitting on the outdoor cane chairs, it will give a signal to the prospective buyer that the store has a clientele and hence shall infuse confidence aka validation in the store, that He/She may try out the place. 

Brilliant business insight from a guy who just studied till Grade 6. Education has nothing to do with ability. Smriti Irani will make a great Cabinet Minister. A degree from Harvard or an IIT does not make for a good Entrepreneur or a seasoned politico (read some Mr. Kejriwal). Shyam left his town in Northern part of West Bengal at the age of 14 for Bangalore where he worked in a restaurant and learnt the tricks of the trade. In a few years, he moved to Gurgaon to start his corner store and moved up the social ladder.

Fire in the belly and being open to learning fresh ideas is the key to entrepreneurship. Humility, Drive and Risk taking ability are the traits that have distinguished Shyam from others of his habitus.

Simple Folks, Massive Insights. Entrepreneurship is a transformative social elevator.

 

The tough questions for the knowledge sector?

Global Capital is accumulated and dispersed in the hyper-connected superhighways of the ICT Sector-Financial ‘fort’ Industrial Complex. Information Technology, Finance, Consulting are the jobs which the brightest of brains in the developing world are vying for. The Nehruvian Ideal of Industries being the Temples of Modern India are passe. Manufacturing in India has been a non-starter because of draconian labor and land acquisition laws. These sectors are great, but where are the real jobs being nurtured and created?

The knowledge sector’s currency is innovation. But does everyone have the necessary skill-set of communication, analytically thinking and most importantly staying ahead of the curve. Elite academic brands dominate the market, and the elite brand is a network of exclusive contacts. This elite have the key to wealth creation? 

Globalization’s greatest gift is the service sector, but as the world urbanizes, the de-agrification occuring and gini coefficients dipping, is the knowledge sector with its call centres, consulting offices and bank terminals the panacea for growth. Strategic Infrastructure is the key to jobs. Water Supply Plants, Dams, Highways should be the operational hubs of the knowledge economy, and not offices in Palo Alto.

Reimagining the Left of Centre in India

With the triumphant win of the Narendra Modi campaign and the Right riding home with an absolute majority; the Political Right in India has gauged the pulse of the nation by moving away from faith based politics and riding the wave of the strong rhetoric of development and muscular leadership. In contrast, the Left of Centre- the motley bunch of the semi-national players that brandish themselves by secularism, regional pride and somewhat pragmatic definition of secularism were marginalised. AIADMK, TMC and BJD as regional behemoths expanded their space, but the once mighty Congress and the traditional left (read CPM) and quasi-socialist actors in form of the SP, BSP, JDS, JDU, NCP all had to eat humble pie (or halwa for all that matter). The alternative political discourse offered by the Aam Admi Party was silenced by the Tsu-NaMo that wiped it off in the political landscape of Delhi. The indecisive leadership and aborted governance story of Kejriwal was a damp squib. 

The Left of Centre is rudderless such as the BJP after the 2009 polls under an uninspiring campaign under Mr. Advani. The youth factor of Rahul & Co + State Welfarism (i.e Jairam Ramesh administered MNERGA) won the day for UPA. Then it went into self destruct policy paralysis mode and with all the mega scandals time was ripe for a strong decisive leader which the Sangh and the BJP capitalized on. The mood of the nation mandated a message of salvation. A message which was communicated well.

So, What lessons can the Left of Centre political continuum derive to drive its politics in the Modi Age. A few pointers are stated below:

Congress: Rahul Factor was ineffective. With 44 seats, Congress needs a reboot. Priyanka has more charm and will help a lot more. It would be great to have a Jyotiraditya and a Shashi to lead the party region wise, dismantle dynastic high command culture and project a strong leadership orientation. Secularism is a hackneyed horse. Pluralism and Inclusive Growth are values that still resonate. More empowered Regional Leaders and an aspiration oriented message is the need of the hour. In short, wake up or Congress as we know will be history as TMC, NCP and YSRC have more muscle and overpower them.

AAP: A ground up self organised urban movement that had a lot of energy and lost its way in the quest to spread itself thin. Message for AAP; Let Kejriwal be the anarchist and the organizer, and have a Yogendra Yadav lead the political face of the party. Aspirational, Educated, Urbane. Concentrate on a few geographies and expand such as Delhi, Punjab and Haryana where they still have purchase.

Left Front : Ideologue named Prakash Karat is as charismatic as a brick wall. The left is decimated in Bengal and a marginal entity in Kerala. Tripura is a dot on the map with two MPs.  Needs an energetic Young Leader with a national catch phrase. Learn from your ideological cousins in Beijing comrades!

SP, BSP, NCP, JDU : The quasi-socialist gang have exhausted their caste and minority appeasement card. The nation wants a clear cut development agenda. Caste Cauldrons of UP and Bihar have voted for development. Re-structuring of the political message needed.

Values of pluralism and inclusiveness are treasured in the intellectual fabric of the Idea of India. The Demographic youth bulge has spoken. Jobs and Services are tangibles that are political weapons in the gladiatorial theater of Indian Electoral Democracy.

The Left under reformist Buddhadeb won 35 of 42 seats, won urban Bengal in 2004 polls and Left dictated terms for 4 years until the Indo-US Nuclear Deal Fiasco. International Ideological positions over rode energy security. Lessons from History are to be learnt. If the BJP can, i hope the opposition can too.

Why it is a good idea for India to have a Temasek Holdings of its own?

Recently there has been talk of India having its own Sovereign Wealth Fund. The idea espoused by TV 18 Founder Raghav Bahl has attained additional intellectual fuel by Economic Thinker Arun Shourie’s backing of the idea. A Sovereign Wealth Fund for India will be a holding company for the profitable public sector enterprises, and will be a ‘National Champion’ in French parlons extrapolating National Power overseas such as an Alstorm or a Arcelor. According to policy research, the locus of the corporate headquarters helps the organization to leverage national assets in a globalized marketplace of ideas and assets. In short it is an extension of foreign policy and state capitalism. Temasek Holdings and GIC, the Sovereign Wealth Funds of the Republic of Singapore have been vehicles of this meritocratic City-State to help it punch above its weight class in the international financial community. Singaporean Sovereign Wealth Fund’s were one of the biggest investors in the 2008 financial depression. The Changi Naval Base in Singapore regularly hosts US Navy ships.  Financial and Economic might go hand in hand. Recently, Singapore has emerged as the largest offshore trading hub for the Chinese Yuan.

Qatar Holdings is one of the world’s most aggressive sovereign wealth funds snapping up assets across the globe. Although Qataris are incredibly affluent with an absolute monarchy, its prominence in the domain of state craft is a case in point.  A country such as India should not compare with these islands of affluence. China, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico are probably better examples to draw a comparative. As a prominent media commentator from Singapore quipped on my Facebook discussion thread on the same theme as this post,  that India missed the competitive resource nationalism bus vis-a-vis China long time back but an ONGC Videsh would have found it much easier to compete with a CNOOC if India had an over-arching SWF to back it in the international financial markets.

A muscular foreign policy needs the cash of an SWF to enforce its talk. The ability to raise capital and acquire assets at will is crucial towards projecting strength. A good idea whose time is ripe, actually long over due.

 

Urban self-organised movements: what does the AAP case portray?

The Aam Admi Party is a text book case-study in self-organized urban movements that have utilized the power of web 2.0 to the hilt. Aam Aadmi Party metamorphosed from a civil society movement against corruption lead by the political sage Anna Hazare to a political phenomena that stormed Delhi State Politics in the December 2013 polls. It had fresh faces, intellectuals, the real common dweller in Delhi behind it fueled by crowd sourced rupees and dollars with NRI social media and on the ground volunteers coming together as a never before alternative to Indian Political Scene. The 49 day Kejriwal Administration was an extended version of a Bollywood Potboiler aka Nayak starring Anil Kapoor in 2001.

But Real Politik is not the same as reel life. Then , the story unraveled. Against a well oiled PR (Development powered) machinery of Narendra Modi Inc; The AAP activist narrative came a cropper. All its candidates in Delhi and Haryana lost, but it surprised everyone with four parliamentary seats won in Punjab. It is slowly occupying an alternative space between the Akalis and the Congress. It was the silver lining in a sky of gloom. 

Kejriwal’s theatrical antics help in mobilizing media focus. Kejriwal’s Tihar Arrest boosted online donations 35X in one day.  Street Politics is a good thing but the urban voter wishes to have mini Singapore’s in his/her neighborhood and not dharna disrupting his traffic flow back home from office.  

I do agree that the entire point of AAP was about making a point. But in order to scale up a political start up like AAP it needs a product that closes the deal with the voter. A Strong Leader with a sharp oriented focus like Modi is the need of the hour that India needs vis-a-vis a rhetoric based AAP. 

AAP needs to re-calibrate its business plan. Otherwise it shall be relegated to the infamous annals of contemporary Indian Political History as a one hit wonder. I am sure Kejriwal and YY has more bright ideas.