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.

Shamitabh: A Movie Review

This is my first Bollywood movie watching experience (and movie review in a while) after 16 odd months in Singapore; the last being the slapstick comedy ‘Besharam’ on holiday. This time around is an art house-ish film called ‘Shamitabh’ starring the legendary Mr. Amitabh Bachchan and the Southern star Dhanush better known for his ‘Kolveri di’ viral hit in wider India. The film is a satirical, spoof like take on the antics of Bollywood with a quip that why don’t Maharashtrians get a major break in Bollywood and the dual protagonist says that is the way it is in here, an artificial entry barrier. Danish aka Dhanush in the film is mute, but a obsessive film fan since he was a boy breathing cinema (there is a song track in the film conveying that thought process and persona). Amitabh Bachchan aka Amitabh Sinha on screen is a fail actor turned alcoholic who lives in the graveyard who calls it the house in ‘Mumbai with a garden’ at 500 rupees per month.  Mr. Bachchan in real life was turned down by the All India Radio early on in his career due his iconic baritone and there are dialogues in the film eulogising his trademark baritone in his later years . His weakness became his greatest strength.

There are instances in the film where the award ceremony corruption has been mocked and the inevitable casting couch. Akshara Hassan as the enthusiastic Assistant Director does everything to give mute Danish a break in Bollywood. They stumble across a medical technology in Finland that gives the mute an artificial voice if they can find a voice. Amitabh Bachchan is the voice who shadows Dhanush’s character and gives his acting life. So Shamitabh is born, with Amitabh Bachchan’s voice and Dhanush’s fire in the belly to be an actor. His desire is more than his talent he says in the film and the author of this post whole heartedly agrees with the ethos. Amitabh Bchachan’s drunk/injured mirror scene from the 1970’s film ‘Amar, Akbar, Anthony’ is subtly recreated. 

The tension between the voice and the mute actor’s acting explodes with both parting ways and badly faltering as independent entities. Ego tussles are emotively covered in this cinematic landscape. Love is depicted sensitively between Danish and his mother in rural Maharashtra as with Danish and his Assistant Director confidant which is romantic, but more platonic.

The ending of the film is the best as it is disability is sensitively portrayed  when Shamitabh wish to confess to the world that they are two talents working as one person. They meet an accident in which Danish dies and takes up Amitabh’s so called reserved place in the grave where he usually spends his time. Amitabh who is proud of his vocal chords loses his ‘voice’. The irony is well understood. Never be vain about ones talents as it can be snatched away in a matter of seconds.

Akshara Hassan (quite a find i must say) is fresh and holds her ground in capturing screen space while scolding Danish and Amitabh on managing egos. Music is strategically used as a device to convey the story and the southern master Illiyaraja is spot on. The cinematography is documentary-esque in its technical treatment.

Balki, the Director is an Amitabh Fan Boy and he makes no bones about that. It is a sensitive but enjoyable watch in the era of mega commercial hits without any acting prowess.  Amitabh, Dhanush and Akshara make the film an intellectual and entertaining watch. Dhanush is a powerhouse of an acting talent. We should see more of him in Bollywood fare.

Finally, the film is a dedication to the Valets and support staff of the acting superstars who make their life easier. They deserve the dignity. Thats a beautiful message. Kudos, Balki and Mr. Bachchan.

Modi ji is losing his way: views on Nuclear Politics and Culture Wars

(This is my first post since I have moved back to Singapore to start work as a researcher at a prominent global communications hub. I look forward to writing more often on politics, media and life in general. Keep tuned!)

The Modi Government has to understand that a combination of Chicago School Economics with identity Politics is not working as people had voted for hope and aspirations to be fulfilled in May last year and not for the rhetoric of hope. Social Welfare is in the DNA of Public Governance in India. A MNREGA and Food Security Bill as Social Sector Legislations are may be deficient in its implementation but diluting them to make space for the ‘invisible hand’ of the market is simply a mistake as the buck finally lies with the masters of the day. Social Welfare provisions are the final resort of the weak.

The optics with Obama on Republic Day are as wonderful as your speech as the Madison Square Gardens but the Nuclear Industry is (long in) waiting with bated breath to enter India to so called eradicate energy poverty for the cities as the cost of the Uranium mined in Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Chattisgarh in tribal impacted area. Tribals unfortunately have to pay a heavy price for industrialised capitalism as the power generated is sent to light up the cities when their own houses are relegated to medival darkness.

The dilution of the nuclear liability clause is a recipe for another Fukushima. The manner in which Environmental, Social and Process Risk and Safety Assessments are done in India are non comprehensive at best with regulators prone to bureaucratic and corporate influence and with the PMO acting as a facilitator of global capital, the author is at best apprehensive about the due diligence prior to construction of these upcoming nuclear hubs. The North Block will soon transform to a branch office of the Dalal Street.

Culture Wars, Sangh Style is taking over the discourse on values in India now a days with conversations rather than proper healthcare or education equity dominating the chatter. This is a shame as more than 20% of India are minorities and diluting their voice will only weaken our nations fabric, but also corrode the very essence of the idea of India.

Please correct ones course as the biggest lesson can often be the ballot box.

‪

Why ‘Achche Din’ is more ‘India Shining’: A Review

I thought the Hindu Right, had finally changed its spots. I was understandably naive as RSS activists are ultimately running the PMO instead of technocrats. The branding communications win of the Modi Campaign infused the country with a ‘modern’ Nation Building spirit with the ‘Achche Din’ or ‘Better Days shall come’ electoral ethos.  BJP has had a series of electoral home runs from Srinagar to Ranchi. Excellent, in a way as the Secularism with systemic graft model of the Congress sunk big time. The country needed more jobs to be created as policy paralysis had been in place since many many months before the 2014 polls.  Development is the central totem of neo-liberal development and usually the Religious Right fuse Identity Politics with the rhetoric of  infrastructure development. Chicago School Economics is the preferred school of economic thought for leaders of the BJP such as the venerable Arun Jaitley and Yashwant Sinha . Jayant Sinha, a Harvard trained  former Mc Kinsey Consultant turned Politician is in the Finance Ministry with a Hindu Right Wing Ideologue Nitin Gadkari incharge of the infrastructure portfolios. The recent conversion conversation with the objective of polarization for votes is taking the BJP back on the Ram Mandir Movement pathway (read 2016 UP polls), and this will make the hot air of  good governance fizzle out.

Ghar Vapsi or reconversions back to the parent Hindu fold with the lure of money is a petty campaign of the Hindu Right to deflect attention from the pressing concerns of the tribals, minorities and the disenfranchised. A few thousand  minority brethren forcibly reconverted to the  Hindu Fold or calling December 25 as so called ‘Good Governance Day’ will not deter Christians in following ones Faith. The Staines Murder in Baripada, Odisha had shaken the collective conscious of the nation as the Gujarat progrom. The Assam, Dhule and Muzaffarnagar episodes do not auger well for  ‘Swachch Bharat’ or Clean India when some politicians are responsible for riots.

‘The Make In India’ Campaign is glitzy and creative as the ‘India Shining’ campaign (the death knell for the BJP in 2004 in fact), but has no relevance for the farmer suicides afflicted families in Vidarbha. Acchche Din does not mean dilute Environmental and Social Laws without taking in to account the marginalized or saffronize the Education System by trampling rational thought.

We need Inclusive thought, a balance somewhere between the Rabid Right and Extreme Leftist thinking as place for religion is vital but within the four walls of the home.  The separation of the Mandir and the Mantralaya is sacred although our public sector functions start with the lighting of the lamp. Is this the ‘Achche Din’ that you had offered Mr. Modi?

A Writers Year : In Review

This Year has been a year of rapid personal  transformation. Started off the year in the freezer of Delhi’s winter and i  then flew to Muscat and Mumbai for a fortnight in February then back to Delhi to start off a new assignment that became a major M&A news this year. I had the splendid chance to travel to Baroda (the infra in Gujarat is pretty cool) in March then had an amazing Oil & Gas International Assignment from April to June.  I  then had the opportunity to travel to  Mumbai, Nashik and Pune in June, July and August where I experienced the Maharashtra Story prior to the Assembly Polls in an intimate manner. Visiting Trimbakeshwer Temple in Nashik was certainly was one of the highlights of the year.

I studied and wrote about Urban Subaltern community in Nashik, where the politics and the neo-buddhist imagery struck me. This year is of the Year of Narendra Modi and the decline of Brand Kejriwal. I wrote about the communications victory of Modi at the Ballot box and the failure of  Political Start Up called Aam Admi Party.

This year is also the year that I move back to Oman to work and had the opportunity to travel to Duqm in south-central Oman where a new city is rising from the ashes in an effort in Nation Building.

This year is the year, in which I started writing book and movie reviews. Interstellar was the stand out film. Classic Nolan indeed. Samarth Subramanian’s ‘This Divided Island’ on post war Sri Lanka was deep and moving.

A year of change and bonding with friends and family was the hallmark feature of year of this writer. Many more tales to share in 2015. This week also completes four years of this platform. Thank you for your support.

Seasons Greetings Folks.

Eat. Pray and Love more.

This is something that our popular neoliberal , consumerist culture fails to communicate that marriage and love, is not about a rock from tiffany or a honeymoon in the Maldives but its about companionship and sacrifice. A model from GQ only looks good on a magazine cover. In the end it is trust and the ability to reach an extra mile that matters. Do not commoditise love.

Human Values are universal. A Mother cares its child, a couple cares about each other. Globalised Cosmopolitanism have set expectation settings too far.   The sociological imagery of a grand wedding and a life beyond means earned makes things rather unworkable.

Let us all be reasonable and try to understand a shade more.  A relationship is not a product. It has a soul. Feel it.

From Ferguson to Sydney: interrogating media narratives

Extremely sad to hear the loss of a young cricketers life today. Prayers and condolences to his family. But i am wondering if the same global media hype would have been created if a Zimbabwe batsman would have been hit. A need to interrogate majoratarian media narratives from Sydney to Ferguson.

Feruguson is a case in point regarding fissures beneath the surface emerging every time a social crevice opens up. Class, race, gender inequity and general socio-economic realties aggrevate stresses in society. Media as the fourth estate, too is political and inherits inherent politics biases. These biases drive the conversation. Power dynamics drive communication and subaltern voices such as the African-American Community in Ferguson are drowned out, overpowered by dominant voices such as Fox News or ABC News with the interview of the shooter policeman.

A Black 18th year old’s life is not precious enough but a white man’s argument is upheld by a unrepresentative grand jury.  The media narrative has to be inverted, and this authors humble attempt is in opening up a window in this biased discourse. Social Media and the internet mediums render that platform fortunately.

Reimagine Sustainability : moving beyond tick-box compliance

The only thing sustainable about the brutal reality of the  normative paradigm of sustainability is the ‘green’ colour of cash sadly rather than the altruism of this -ism. Not all that bad as monetary valuations are usually taken more seriously. The philosophical underpinning of sustainability is about inter-generational transferability as per the 1987 Bruntdland Report. The short-termism of financial markets and financial global capitalism does not render sustainability sustainable.

Sustainability ultimately is about better communities and liveability. Sustainability is triple headed : Ecological, Economic and Social are the three strands of the triple helix.  Sustainability has transformed from its normative origins in to a platform for communicating the corporate brand. Activist investors do ask for the Social Return on Investment on their impact bonds but these folks are a trickle in the avalanche of asset classes that global capital changes hands in. Sustainability Reports are prepared as per the GRI Framework to demonstrate sustainability performance to ecologically aware Gen Y retail investors. It is not for the displaced community in Lanjigarh, Odisha but for the analysts at Citi. The pull is from the masters of the market.

The latest flavour of the season in sustainability and corporate citizenship circles is the circular economy & sharing economy. Good old human sharing values and Cradle to Cradle thinking synced to create the latest cool intellectual fad.

Majority of sustainability related investment by private sector companies is to meet the local environmental, health & safety and social sector legislative requirements of the land. Sometimes, even voluntary best practice is beyond the ambit of the C Suite Level executive as the Randian view of shareholder value capture dominates. Green field industrial projects often require IFC funding or any form of Institutional Lender Support such as JICA or any Exim Bank. These financial institutions need the project proponent to adhere to Equator Principles and IFC Performance Standards throughout the Project Lifecycle to address environmental and social concerns. The decision making prowess for a change is with the environmental and social expert panel at IFC offices at Delhi and DC rather than the CFO. EHSS has to move beyond the tick box due diligence check-list to a move term governance led mechanism. The Finance Teams have to get the nuance of the Economics of Environmentalism for them to be truly invested in the process.

Sustainability can only take root if this ethical paradigm can be understood by the CFO over a casual water-cooler chat. Its time for Sustainability to move beyond green washing and be a profit centre SBU from a cost centre. Locking value from Sustainability Initiatives can take place if triple bottom-line thinking could dominate the thinking in strategic planning of SME’s.

Beyond the Technical: Reimagine the Engineer’s Tool Kit

The epistemic character of Engineering is about problem solving and crisis management and by default as an engineer I am expected to possess decent quantitative abilities as the lingua franca of science is mathematics. The social contract between the engineer and the work-place has undergone a transformation through the proportion of jobs shifts from the shop floor to the computer screen. Recently, I had been to a Steel Plant and I found 95% of all operations on the process floor automated (complex industrial process control) and that’s real brick and mortar stuff. The core metallurgical processes have not changed since the industrial revolution.

I have worked in Engineering & Policy Research Consulting for about 6+ years until now, and I have found to my surprise that science as a social institution inhabits a force field of economic, cultural and social realities that lie way beyond the lab.  Often the top leadership, whether technically trained or not (often a lawyer, accountant or a MBA) is merely focused on the quarterly results rather than the long term; a classic business strategy conundrum.  Accountability to the masters of Wall Street is more precious to your epistemic calling.

As the meta-phenomena of globalization and urbanization over the past three decades have desolated steel towns of Pittsburgh and Liverpool in the developed world, and in contrast have led to the tech boom towns of Route 128 and Silicon Valley. Manufacturing has dipped, being shipped off to the ‘Factory Girls’ of China and the automation revolution has stemmed blue-collar job creation. The ‘Myth of Manufacturing’ is real.

Nowadays engineers have to do more project management- resourcing, scheduling, and budgeting than wielding the spanner/shifter. Marine Engineers in the engine room of a Panamax have a lot more technology at their disposal which has reduced the crew of a ship to barely skeletal.

Engineering at the present is doing technology to create products which cater to the clients need, get paid and scaling up. Simple stuff, but it needs a very different mindset.

I have often heard a strain of discontent from my fellow early career technical professionals that they don’t get adequate opportunities to chart/shape the course of their technology product driven organizations. Here are a few suggestions to grow out of that inability:

  • Understand your organizational ecosystem
  • Learn to Negotiate Hard
  • Look and Talk like a Leader
  • Do not have Tunnel Vision mind-set regarding science
  • Learn to read a balance sheet
  • Keep yourself informed

Alas, the ability to learn and be agile is more crucial to your GPA. No one cares a shit about that.

Interstellar : A Film Review

interstellarInterstellar is an intellectually dense film like Nolan’s previous films such as Inception and Dark Knight. Interstellar connects strands of Food Security and Space Exploration; evokes human emotions such as longing, love, parenting, survival instincts and rational scientific thought. A great campus recruitment video for the  and social institution of science, subtly questions the landing on the moon. In a very Nolan-esque stroke of the cinematic brush, various ends have been tied up to dispense a spell binding narrative, albeit 15 minutes too long.

Ann Hathway as the junior Dr. Brand is gorgeous, and plays her cinematic role well. ‘Cooper’ the ex NASA Pilot turned explorer protagonist of the film is grief stricken from the demise of his wife. He is an absentee engineer, reclectant farmer father, in rural US and his daughter ‘Murph’ and son are being mentored by the Grand Dad. There is striking quip by the Grand Dad; saying that ‘parent teacher conferences’ are not grand parent teacher conferences’. There is some super-natural, gravitational phenomena eating away the harvest every year and human kind is dying with every generation. In this context, space research was treated as discretionary. NASA then was needed but had gone under-ground. How Cooper was tracked down by NASA through Morse Code and a constant mention of Murphy’s Law, Newtons Third Law and other high school physics syntax makes science and geek-ism sexy.

The Senior Dr Brand played by Matthew Caine, as the space pioneer has a certain depth to his presence on the screen. Human Politics is depicted in some detail and the quest for survival. The emphasis on love as an emotion greater then the self and as a raw material for making  ‘human’ , human is the signature take-way from this cinematic opus.

The emphasis on science, satiated my intellectual cravings;  not at all a masala entertainer A Must Watch at a theater near you.

‘This Changes Everything’ by Naomi Klein : A Book Review

This Changes EverythingI initially came across Naomi Klein’s work in decent detail when I was a tutor to an undergraduate class on Globalization at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore where I had an opportunity to share regarding her iconoclastic work ‘Shock Doctrine’, elucidating the notion of ‘Disaster Capitalism’; where she was critical in deconstructing the Chicago School Style Free Market delusion which created a mess in many a Latin American Economy. The shocks via war and policy interventionism to society and economy by predatory capitalism formed a situation in which capitalism had a free run, often with catastrophic results such as Iraq and Chile.

Naomi Klein extends this train of thought to Climate Change in her latest intellectual work – ‘This Changes Everything’. Her surgical critique of the impacts of extractionary Chicago School Capitalism in aggravating the impacts of the meta, all consuming phenomena called Climate Change. Naomi Klein’s engaging activist commentary focuses on narratives such as extreme weather events. She presents the social and political context in which Climate Change has transformed in to a hot button issue. Naomi Klein labels it as a ‘Civilizational Call’. Normative and Powerful, this read is not meant for the scientific community but for the main street to appreciate the back story of environmental activism.

The book exposes the intricate details of the ideological system of Environmentalism and the various efforts made my climate denialists to dilute the cause of efforts of effective Climate Change Action. The important take away was securitization of the Climate Change discourse in order for it to taken more seriously by heartland USA. It reminds me of the Non Traditional Security Institute seminars at the Rajaratnam School in Singapore in Resilience and Climate Change I had attended as a researcher at the Nanyang Technological University.
The basic assertion which Klein makes it that process and activities triggered by market fundamentalism have accelerated anthropogenic climate change. A thesis tilts towards the left of centre as western culture’s extractivist designs imbued in predatory capitalism is heavily pounded upon. She has the gumption to reveal the paradoxical relationship between the fossil fuel industry that is incredibly carbon intensive and the environmental movement. Hypocrisy is to be exposed for truth to emerge, and normative initiatives to be strengthened. Kudos to Ms. Klein on that point.

The book as her last one, has sharp anecdotes and data points which form the backbone of her story-line. This book is a good addition to the green literature landscape though not as seminal as the ‘Shock Doctrine’.