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.

It is a Difficult Generation to make a mark

Well, the essence of this title of this rather short post has been evoked by previous generations. My grad school teacher in contemporary social theory used to quip in his lecture that when we are young, we are prone to be rebellious and be inspired by Marx. In the family stage of life we are more likely to be inspired by Weber, more spiritual. In the middle age, we are pessimistic as Durkheim. This generation has seen a tsunami of technological advancements from Doordarshan (State Controlled Media) to Direct to Home TV to social media on smart phone. With these advancements in the post liberalization era, the guaranteed life time employment is a thing of the past as technology has changed the fundamental nature of work with some professions relegated to the thrash bin of history . We have more money in hand, but  paradoxically with even more avenues to spend money. This is also the era of the pink slip. Don’t perform; someone else will do your job at a cheaper rate.  Our better gender peers are competing with us shoulder to shoulder, leading to changed equations at home. This is the best part of the generational transformation.  The male attitudes have not changed unfortunately. The Indian Male has not ‘grown up’ to the fact that this is a different era.   My female friends are super achievers: academically brilliant, career wise top notch and family oriented. All ‘Leaned in’ to towards being the next Sheryl Sandberg’s of the world. Very inspiring. The power equations have changed for good. You would have to f**king good to marry one.

In this era of Online Learning, the degree is both under-valued and over-rated. A masters degree is the new under-grad in this recessionary scenario. I was born into the job market in the midst of the 2008 recession. We are expected to learn life long as our smart phone knows more than us. How we apply ourselves is the key.  A married life at 28 to 30 years of age, considered ‘normal’ until 15 years back seems to be passé.  Rentals are so expensive, buying one in a metro is beyond comprehension.  Our Salaries are a ‘slurry’, entering and exiting our accounts in a blink.  Savings are difficult.  And employment opportunities are few and far between. Ones Social and Cultural Capital seems to hold the answer. Where one studies, the brand of the institution , our network and connections with the right information is the ladder to the correct job.

Being a young man has not been any easier as of now.  One has be on ones toe to grapple with the chaos and complexity of everyday life.  Life is truly intoxicating. The game is on.

The Holy Grail of the Sustainability Discourse: Linking Financial and Environment & Social Performance tangibly

Sustainability has graduated from being a definition in the 1987 Brundtland Report to being one which is embedded in to mainstream corporate strategy. A ton of business literature has been dedicated to the ‘cause’ and some companies have truly derived value from being sustainable apart from the green washing aspect, which we all know is the principal driver in most cases. Sustainability has transitioned from a being a rhetorical vantage point to an implementable procedure which could extract some impact on the bottom-line.  Resource savings to better motivated employees, every possible trick in the book has been utilized to promote sustainability. Most of it has been driven from a piecemeal perspective.

Sustainability has grown in currency as often a safety related death, an oil spill or an industrial accident is terrible for the reputational capital of the firm, which is in turn bad for the face value of the stock if it is a publically listed company.  BP collapsed from an industry giant to a takeover target post the deep water horizon disaster. The Indian Multinational Group Mahindra & Mahindra, uses Sustainability as a governing ethos of the enterprise. It is the Harvard read Anand Mahindra’s leadership and foresight to utilize Sustainability as a compass to drive inclusive growth.  In developing nations such as India, sustainability often is a business pre-requisite as an unhappy community of stakeholders will douse the flames of any tentative project flaring up into a profitable venture. POSCO and Singur are a case in point where social inclusion which is critical component of a 360 degree sustainability strategy faltered terribly.

Social Satisfaction, Safety, Happy Employees are issues which are intangible positives which cannot be translated in to the financial bottomline. The triple bottomline is popular, but the only bottomline which matters is the ROI for the share holder.  The era of Sustainability is passé, Corporate Resilience is better paradigm in a discontinuous and networked world.  New indicators will have to be devised for that Environmental & Social Performance is better communicated to shareholders. Resource Extractive Industries are on the frontline of the Sustainability Battle.  Globalization in an uncertain world demands better parameters to generate insights. This is the Holy Grail. Someone needs to unlock it?

May be a PhD topic if a University funds me 🙂

It’s a ‘Dammed’ affair: Energy, Politics and Development in Uttaranchal

In the past couple of weeks we have seen man made environmental disasters in two contrasting ecosystems in the Himalayan north of India and in the Urban & Ecological Jungles of Southern Malaysia and Singapore. The Singapore Haze Story is a man made healthcare scare and has had severe economic implications for the City State with a billion dollar hit according to Barclays. The Indonesians will perennially clear the forests for cropping and the rest of the region will to suffer unless a regional resource commons governance initiative propelled by hard cash is devised. The meritocratic and innovative Singaporean government lead by the PAP kept the population abreast of the air haze news by the minute through social media and a National Environmental Agency Smart Phone App which is commendable and a benchmark for disaster governance. The Government could not have done any more as it is a trans-boundary issue.  Quite a contrast to the abysmal standards of disaster governance at Uttarakhand vis-a-vis Singaporean standards of excellence.

The Tragedy was triggered by a cloud burst and torrential downpours in the Himalayan Uttarakhand State, which is a hydel power hotbed with numerous dams. These dams have amplified the ecological sensitivities which have contributed to the cataclysmic landslides, killing hundreds making the Uttarakhand tragedy a humbling experience for the priests of aggressive developmental drive paradigm. In a rush to feed an energy hungry northern grid, Uttarakhand led by callus leaders who ‘damned’ literally every available water stream dug their own grave, with the temple towns collapsing like a flimsy pack of cards. With job hungry Uttarachalis whose main occupation has traditionally aligned with armed forces, looking for work outside the government, the so called renewable energy industry came to the rescue. The same armed forces, which are India’s only Disaster Management competent agency, are now saving the day, in a nation which is woefully inept at saving ones backside. The Congress which is ruling the state with a wafer thin majority is all set to face the electoral music in 2014, with the state having ten seats for the Lok Sabha.  The important point being, that the congress is competitive in this state where in other places it is losing its deposit.

Environmental Issues are Force Multipliers. They might not win anyone one an election; but it will aggregate a small crisis to a regional disaster, which will surely make one lose a poll. Will the consultants/bureaucrats who did the environmental clearances for the dams be held accountable for this disaster? When will the corporate-political cartel take environmental compliance seriously?

Uttarakhand is an inflection point in the developmental & environmental governance narrative in this nation. It is time that we do not dust these lessons in to garbage bin of history and wait for another one to happen.

Arab Spring is dead

The benefit of hindsight is that it has a perfect 20-20 vision. The neo-con and the conservative lobby who claimed that an invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 shall ensure a tsunami of democracy have got it terribly incorrect with huge costs: Trillions down the drain, thousands of soldiers dead and millions displaced and killed.  The Arab Spring with Mohammaed Bouzizi’s immolation and the historic events at Maidan Al Tahrir to Pearl Square, Manama to Globe Roundabout in Sohar has lead to a democratic transition of sorts but with the wrong revolutionary actors in place. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Al Nur Salafist block have sidelined the liberals like Amr Moosa and have lead to further persecution of  two millennia old Copts in Cairo.  Hosni Mubarak was a secular, army led dictator who safeguarded the interests of Christians.  The Evangelical Right drove the neo con agenda in 2003 saying the liberal and democratic values were needed in the Middle East. They got their premonitions wrong.

Ideas have Consequences, as it is said as it drives decisions. The Wrong ideas can have cataclysmic outcomes. The neocon experiment has shown aptly.

The brothers from Bible belt in the mid western United States were simply ignorantly aiding the detractors of Christians in the Middle East say the Brotherhood to make the transition from the underground to the presidential palace.  The Cultural Context of the Middle East was not understood by the neo con establishment. A steak eating mid westerner from Ames, who has not even travelled to the east coast of the US, cannot comprehend the subtlety and complexity of the social forces at play in Allepo.

The similar story is underway in Syria. The Assads as did fellow Baathists in Baghdad always had a friendly relationship with the progressive, liberal Christian community in the Middle East. Saddam Al Tikriti’s Spokesperson was a certain Mr. Tareq Aziz, a Roman Catholic with excellent links to the Vatican. Basher Assad the Ophthalmologist from London is a secular, western man. The Alawaites are Shia-ites but they have held excellent historical ties with the Druuze and Maronite ethnic Christian Communities unlike the Salafist Sunnis. I recently saw the desecration of an ancient Orthodox Church on BBC World, in a report by Lyse Doucet in Allepo, Syria by the so call ‘Free Syrian Army’. The persecution of Christians in the post Arab Spring Middle East is intense. As the Christians sided with the dictators in the pre 2003 era, the Salafist opposition backed by Gulf States, newly Islamized Turkey and the ignorant Western Leadership are on a witch hunt to eliminate any symbol relevant to Middle Eastern Christianity.

Syria has turn into a metaphor not only for the Arab Spring but for Shia-Sunni divide for geo-political control. It is not a Syrian Control but the war threatens to suck the neighbors in too. Hezbollah, Sunni Jihadis, Gulf Petro Dollars and Western attempts to marginalize Iran all count for an explosive Molotov cocktail with a nuclear Israel along the fringes.  The revolutions in Yemen, Bahrain, and Morocco and to a limited extent Oman have yielded to insignificant changes although reforms have been kick started.

The successes of the Arab Spring are surely Tunisia and Libya. The Success Story also ends there.  Teksim Square is a blip on the radar. Shahbhag is an ongoing ideological battle. A Revolution which had showed great promise but faded out in the cacophony of various actors.

The Arab Spring is dead. We surely need to resolve Syria now to prevent more damage. My appeal to the United States is to not get involved in Damascus by supporting the rebels. Remember, the CIA created ‘the Base’ (Al Qaeda) of the Islamic Terror Movement indirectly via arming the Mujahidin in Afghanistan?

History has many lessons to offer, if we pay an attentive ear.

 

Is Teksim Another Tahrir?

Recently, two of the progressive culturally contrasting Muslim States of Bangladesh and Turkey have seen counter revolutions in a sense to bring back the secular voice in the political discourse.  Shahbhag and now Teksim Square have become metaphors for the non religious actors to act up for their rightful space. Every country has a fundamentalist fringe, but the fundamentalist elements have a tendency to hijack the political conversation with the coercive use of force on the streets such as the Jamaat in Dhaka. Liberals tend to be softer with a lesser inclination for street battles. They like to fight with arguments rather than take to arms.

The conservative block has two allegations to drag down the liberal and secular voice. Firstly, they are influenced by the west and not grounded enough in native values and secondly they are corrupting moral systems by importing an alien ethos. The Justice and Development Party or AKP of Prime Minister Erdogan has been a success in the battlefield of electoral politics winning polls with a wide mandate. As a boy who grew up in a poor family in the shanties of Istanbul, his genre of politics is grounded in mild Political Islam. His Wife wears the Head Scarf, in a country which is essentially secular. The Army, is the vanguard of defending the Ataturkian vision of a modern secular Turkey has been crippled and the Judiciary has been weakened too. The secular minded youth in Turkey has been marginalized. Restrictions have been imposed against so-called immoral activities and Turkey’s overtures to be a regional behemoth with interventions in Gaza and Syria is not being appreciated by a large section of the Turkish Population, which considers it to be more European than Middle Eastern.

The Teksim Square protests originated with Government plans to convert a protest park such as Hong Lim in Singapore in to a mall. AKP has been on the economic development front aggressive and has been known for supercharged infrastructure projects even at the cost of demolishing heritage in old Istanbul.  The ideological cocktail of Faith and Economic Growth has gone heady. Anybody against the ideology of the AKP is being systematically marginalized.  The protests at Teksim Square have been coordinated through Social Media and comparisons with Tahrir or Shabhag are all but obvious.  Erdogan has called Twitter ‘evil’. It seems another Middle Eastern Leader has failed to recognize the power of 140 characters.  This is the beginning of another chapter in the Post Arab Spring Era.

Infrastructure, Welfare & the Rhetoric of Development

A few days back, Mr. L K Advani praised Shivraj Chouhan for his exemplarily efforts in transforming his ‘BIMARU’ state into a development hotbed. The locus of comparison was centered upon the notion that Narendra Bhai’s Gujarat was already progressive as Gujaratis have been culturally entrepreneurial by character. There is a grain of truth certainly in this argument.  Chouhan ji has developed Indore has an industrial hub of central India with major automotive and manufacturing majors operating out of the region. Indore has a fantastic urban transportation system too. Amdavad also has a cool BRT system in place with the Metro project under way. BJP Governments have often equated ‘infrastructure development’ with the paradigm of development. Infrastructure catalyzes regional growth by connecting the rural with the urban; the producers with the consumer. It is a growth multiplier indeed. Welfare hand-outs to the poorest of the poor such as the Right to Work Scheme helps the poor as well as yields political dividends as the UPA win in 2009. Effective public good delivery requires robust infrastructure and institutional controls to seal the leak called graft. The poorest of the poor cannot simply depend on the cruel ‘market’ for the benefits of trickle down to seep down to them. Government welfare schemes are the only way out for the weakest of our society to survive with dignity. The Right to Food Bill is vital although it accounts to humongous expenditure. In the aftermath of the Bastar carnage, the rights of the poorest are again back on the front burner of national conversation. I am just sick of the Spot Fixing Coverage. BCCI and IPL are trivial issues being used to divert the people’s attention from critical issues such as Women’s Rights, Systemic Graft and essential legislative business. India is a sub-continent in terms of religious and ethnic diversity and different solutions will be needed to deliver inclusive development. No Gujarat Model, no MP Model matters as Chairman Mao quipped as long as the cat catches mice, it does not make a difference if it is white or black.

 

Why the Congress will still come to power in 2014?

Yesterday, Congress completed 9 years of (mis?) governance of this nation. Scandals upon scandals, this congress regime knows how to cling on to power at any cost, I guess it is the experience of being in the ruling dispensation for half a century plus years.  It uses the CBI to strong arm its UP rivals, the SP and the BSP to survive as well as its Andhra headache- Jagan Reddy. Its management of coalition politics is quite exemplarily. It manages to get an Ajit Singh or a JMM quite easily. Bolstered by its recent win in Karnataka and with anti-incumbency seeping into Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh which are poll ward, the narrative of the demise of the congress party is pre-mature in spite of its weak leadership on all fronts. A Sanjay Jha and a Manoj Tewari can only do so much by screaming on TV debates all the time.

BJP is a house in disarray. It has a national leadership which cannot win in Lok Sabha elections and hardly have any mass base. Narendra Modi, is the best shot at projecting an image of a transformation which the BJP can give the nation. He is a man who has an indication of the pulse of the nation. BJP will make an enormous mistake if it does not project Narendra Bhai as its PM Candidate in 2014.

 Internal squabbles are sapping BJP’s strength. BJP has alienated its intellectual edge by sidelining a Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh or an Arun Shourie. And Chandan Mitra is not an effective enough orator to cut Congress’s arguments either on TV or in the Rajya Sabha. A Swapan Dasgupta is too elitist for a Rajnath Singh. Varun Gandhi and Smriti Irani are doing a convincing job of defending the mainstream political right in our political conversation.

The ‘Bharat Nirman’ Campaign of the Congress has the same stink as the disastrous ‘India Shining’ program of the NDA.  My personal take as a proponent of a left of centre belief system as far as Indian Politics is concerned is that Mr. Tewari and the Congress are making the same blunder again. There is palpable anger on the streets as far as the feeble leadership of Dr. Singh is brought in the framework of analysis.

Congress will most likely project P Chidambaram or Rahul ji as the PM Candidate. AIADMK, BJD and the MNS will probably support the BJP in case it has the numbers. On the contrary, JDU and JDS will support the Congress. Jagan will end up supporting the Congress in case he has to come out of the jail ever.  But my gut feel is that in case of a fractured mandate, Congress with its coalition management skills will come to power atleast with a slice of the power pie.  The minorities still believe that the Congress is better of the two mainstream parties.  For now, its Advantage Congress in the run up to the polls.

 

Is Globalization, Cultural evolution or an Orientalist Project?

Globalization is an urban sociological phenomenon , which has been well documented by social theorists such as Manuel Castells and Saskia Sassen, Globalization as a force is breaking down traditional values in some societies but at the same time nurturing them in places which are not their ‘home grounds’. Korean Pop for example is superbly popular in SE Asia and with Asian Diaporas globally. Globalization in its cultural avatar, as an expression of soft power started with Satellite TV with CNN beaming the 1990 Gulf War in to our living rooms.  The MTV-ization of popular culture with American TV music and TV shows flooding our TV screens was the first phase of cultural globalization. The internet catalysed the second wave of globalization with Google powering this era. Social Media has been the harbinger of the best aspects of technology surcharged Globality; free information exchange between borders and turning a passive consumer into a prosumer, a person can create content as this blogger and post it online and try to form opinion in the community of the like-minded.  Information cross-fertilization and cross pollination can help evolve cultures. Twitter helped information exchange which led to the Arab Spring making an ordinary ex Google Executive Wael Ghonem a Hero. Well, now Wael Ghonem is an entrepreneur trying to make daily commute in Cairo better.  Cultural Transformation requires the crutches of good old politics to make the ‘change’. Cultural Change is often carried out on a slow, civilization scale based time metric. The FMCG-ization of culture is a by product of globalization but real change and not superficially deep alterations take time and a lot of effort to sink in its roots.

Globalization initially was considered a manifestation of the Americanized Ethos. American ‘Soft Power’ as coined by Joseph Nye, a Harvard Academic has been at the forefront of the trifecta of Culture, Media and Politics shaping cultural conversations globally. Globalization can also be considered An Orientalist Project; a cultural invasion to carve the social landscape of the developing world in the image of the declining west.  With the advent of Web 2.0 with the power of the web in our smartphones, the west is in reverse being exposed to a ‘PSY’ doing his Gangnam Style moves or kids jiving to a A R Rahman track in the clubs of Berlin.

These anecdotes symbolize, the opening up of a two way street which brings out a cultural concoction which is a synergy rather than a subtraction.  Traditional values cannot be stuck up in a time wrap. They are contextual with time-space coupling. Time always progress and technologies will always change and hence alter cultures. Its better to embrace rather than resist.  The Question in the Title is always open for debate.

 

Malaysia Polls: Why does it matter to India?

For us in India, the impression of Malaysia in our heads atleast for the Middle Classes are the beautifully shot ads of ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ with pristine Langkawi and Suria KLCC shopping district shown in them. Or for folks who have watched the Tamil Film ‘Billa’, the scene at the top of the Petronas Twin Towers was captivating. The Bollywood Hit ‘Don’ featuring Shahrukh Khan who is hugely popular in Malaysia had major sequences picturized in Melaka, which remind us of Malaysia. Well, Malaysia is a complex society with even more interesting politics. This post is about it and what does it mean for us.

Recently a feisty Malaysian General Elections just got over and ofcourse the grand old dispensation of the Barisan National won, with a wafer thin margin. This time, at least in Urban Peninsular Malaysia aka Selangor,Johor,  Negeri Sembilan and Penang the opposition alliance the Pakatan Rakyat led by the controversial and charismatic Anwar Ibrahim was expected to clinch power for the first time since 1957. Traditionally East Malaysia; Sabah and Sarawak votes en mass for the Barisan National with the Sarawak People’s Party in Kuching holding sway. Sabah also has its regional party which usually wins. These parties are part of the ruling alliance.  East Malaysia is rural and is the heart of Barisan National’s base, apart from Utara Malaysia (Northern Malaysia) states like Kedah and Terengganu. The southern Thailand bordering states are the crucible of Malay Nationalistic sentiment. If the 2008 General Elections were an inflection point for Malaysian Politics, then the 2013 one is a watershed. The Chinese Community with quarter of the vote abandoned the Barisan constituent The Malaysian Chinese Association and voted in favor of the Opposition Democratic Action Party which is of course ‘Cina man’ dominated. They swept Penang and made major headways in Johor bordering Singapore.

The Grand Old Party UMNO- the behemoth of Malaysian Politics since the pre-independence era, has a membership base of 3 million people. It has roots all over the country like veins (An Indian Equivalent roughly would be the Congress). It instituted the race based affirmative action ‘Bumiputera’ policies which has often pitted the Malay majority versus the entrepreneur centric Chinese community with the ethnic Indian Tamil speaking ‘Makkal’ (or people).

This election has been contested by the opposition because of wide spread allegation of voter fraud.  This has lead to discontentment among the Chinese. Surprisingly the Indian Community voted in favor of Barisan with the Malaysian Indian Congress winning four seats. There were other Indian Candidates who won seats being opposition members too.

India (especially the Tamilakam) has had a historic relationship with Malaysia since ancient times and being colonized by Britain we have always shared a close relationship. Tamil Nadu shares a close bond with Malaysia because of its Diaspora there totaling a million odd residents. Indian Food, Films and Culture is hugely popular there. We are a part of the conversation in KL, but KL is not a major conversation issue here. In fact, as written in Parag Khanna’s ‘Second World’ ; India’s engagement with Malaysia is so poor at the level of the State, that Malaysia does not bother to involve us in any serious strategic affairs matter. In fact, Pakistan is a major actor in Malaysia given the OIC relationship.

We almost have a FTA with Malaysia now and Maxis owns a large stake in Aircel and Sun Networks (call it the Maran connection leh).  Both the countries adhere to Dynastic politics with Najib being the son of a former PM himself. The good old ‘doctor in the house’ Mahathir, is himself half Indian with his Father being a Tamil Muslim.  He is the champion of the Malay cause. Identity politics can get really weird.  Well, the champions of the Marathi cause in Mumbai originally hail from Central India.

We need to maintain good relationship at the level of the State with Malaysia, as it would give us a head start in dealing with ASEAN along with being a big market too for our exports. At this moment, I would like more Malaysian restaurants to open in Mumbai now (Chennai has some orready ah)

I like my Kopio strong !

A Letter to Dr. Singh: a plea from a liberal

Dear Dr. Singh

We had a lot of hopes from you, Dr Manmohan Singh. A stellar career academic, bureaucrat whose track record was too good to be true.  As a RBI Governor, UGC Chairman and Finance Minister; you knew the inner workings of the Indian Economic Establishment like no one else. Your track record as a reformer was stellar from 1991-96, which was a minority government backed by the political brains of a particular Narsimha Rao.  When you had become the prime minister, I thought as everyone else that a clean, technocrat has taken office although with the Congress High Command Culture I had reservations but my heart was filled with hope. During UPA 1, welfare legislations such as MNREGA were passed and the Nuke Deal with the US was a prestige issue and you won with flying colors. The People gave your administration a resounding mandate in 2009 to continue your good work.  The inclusive agenda of the congress inspired me as well. The narrative changes as the UPA 2 began

UPA 2 has been a disaster, sorry to say Sir. Your Government has become a ‘one a day scam regime’. 2G, CWG, Coal Gate and other scams have unique acronyms that have become a part of our daily lexicon. Your silence has become so loud that it is deafening. Sexual Crimes happen every day and you do not speak even as a father of three very successful daughters.  People mock your regime as being in coma, rudderless and without direction.   These are certainly not pretty adjectives to be attributed to an esteemed technocrat like you Sir.

India is also thankful to you for delivering a secular government without riots apart from Assam and Dhule. The 100% FDI in retail legislation was important as did other social sector legislations and other concordant spending increases. But with graft being the main word attributed to your government and with a weak foreign policy with the Chinese incursions and Sarabjeet case; history is going to judge you harshly for being weak and ineffective. Your Reputation is an Indian’s reputation. Please help us to salvage our nation’s reputation.

All your good work is certainly getting wiped off the Indian citizen’s psyche with the performance of UPA2. Your name will definitely be registered with IK Gujral and HD Deve Gowda in the club of weak PM’s.

Please once again, do not let this happen. We would like you to speak up.

Yours Sincerely

An Indian Liberal