This trip is a akin to a trip back home and a pilgrimage, the space and the teachers who shaped me, the masters in engineering, the PhD coursework in Human Geography with masters of the discipline while doing work on a SSHRC research project on labor and automation, the work has been published in an Antipode paper, super chuffed to have my name there. I also was a research staff at a health communication think tank at CNM FASS on a Bangladeshi migrant worker food security project for a couple of years.

A long term relationship, which keeps giving.

It was great to meet friends today as well, and learn from their wisdom.

Thanks a ton to the Red Lantern Analytica team, for the invite to engage in a dialogue with the Indian diaspora topic with Dr Sonali this evening from Singapore, from the NUS campus.

Migration is embodied, in the meals we eat and the transnational lives we live. Over the last year in Malaysia, Indian migrant workers can be seen from the unlikeliest of places which we were not traditionally migrant sending areas especially in diaspora Malaysian Foodscapes in the Nasi Kandar- Mamak, or Tamizh Muslim eateries from Thanjavur to Karnal to Tripura to the outskirts of Kolkata.

I have also met folks from Panchkula in a Pakistani restaurant in Singapore. There are plantation workers from Bihar and UP as well as from West Bengal especially Muslim.

The presence of migrant workers in the diaspora, often is a sign of the economy at home, atleast for vulnerable communities. Food workers are often missing from the literature, the theorising often misses trends on the ground as academics spend more time in faculty clubs than with communities.

The photo is from Seremban in Malaysia, where I was served Madras Coffee by a young man from Haryana in India, who is an electrician by training.

A town which looks like KL thirty years back, and even Mauritian.

Excellent presentation at the Sustainable Development Soutions Network, Sunway University today afternoon on Transparency in Voluntary Carbon Markets in Malaysia by Mr. Yi Jian. Lots to ponder on integrity issues in Global Carbon Markets!

The social licence to operate is critical for any carbon project to be trust worthy.