Stories of migration within Tamilakam are encountered each day in KL and the wider Nusantara as today the only person who speaks fluent Hindi in a Hindu Tamizh Saapadu space, lived in Dharavi in Mumbai for a decade and is from Tirunelveli which is a region known for outward migration to Mumbai, especially Dharavi, Matunga and Bhandup areas. Mr. Murthy, now works in a Thambi eatery in KL which could well be a spatial extension of Ramashreya in Matunga or Prata Planet next to Clementi MRT.

An influencer ready atas fine dining place with ok food and view of the twin towers. More for IG than for the palate. The manager was from Chandigarh and the service staff from Nepal, hospitality workers are a site of migration research that stitch transnational spaces and lives of the desi diaspora.

At the ASEAN Forum for Migrant Labour AFML- Malaysia Civil Society Organisation Consultation today with representatives from ILO, NGOs, Migrant Leaders on issues of grassroots Business & Human Rights such as recruitment fees, grievance mechanisms and how different communities shape responsible supply chains.

Real ESG is on the ground, beneath the indicators and the data deluge and BHR risks need a ear on the ground.

Law is always the weapon of an ESG consultant, everything is risk and material risk is tangible transnational strategic litigation risk.

Diverse Faith scapes of Brickfields/Little India, Kuala Lumpur.

Ethnic enclaves of the Indian Ocean, is imbued with their diversity within a small district was a tour into the faith commons of the various communities.

The Navratri spirit was on display while it was my first time inside a large Buddhist Vihara helmed by the Sinhalese community. The church scape from Mar Thoma to Lutheran within a few metres was a glimpse into the varied faith communities.

The small temples tucked around the corners of fields and street corners, shows that the Indian Ocean is a faith grid as a circuit for commodities and commerce.

Many thanks to Aaron and Anis for spending their Sunday with a newbie to show me the insights on this walking tour of Brickfields.

Spoke at an esteemed petroleum industry event on a human rights and worker well being with esteemed peers in KL.

First Chatham House Rules event. Thank you to Adrian Sir and the North South Initiative for the opportunity.

ESG for the poly crisis would need new registers and new methods to understand the complexity of risk as ESG is only one layer of risk even though it is an evolving actor network itself.

There is a reason migration is an eternal business model, people want jobs and businesses want cheap hands and it is a perfect marriage of demand and supply. Global labor chains are fragmented based on skill and race (Iskander 2021). There is a migration industry operating in the billions of dollars facilitating this transition between multiple migration corridors. There is an implicit tendency to look at migration through remittances or the security lens, but it is this meta business paradigm which sustains migration through inherent embedded precarity, vulnerability which creates disposability of limbs and life, just look at construction sites in the gulf and southeast Asia which are memorials and graveyards of labor. The remittances sent home bolster the current trade balance of many countries and stabilize the currency. This is soaked in blood, toil, and humiliation of the labor migrant, seen across a phone screen where the call is taken from the back of the bus 67 on a late Sunday evening from Little India to the ulu dorms in Tuas.

This Punjabi diasporic space was a space time compression with Punjabi tilted Hindi and Bollywood tracks from the early 90s to the nearly millennium; from Aashiqui to Mohabatein which took the feel to a different decade.

As a person who writes on food spaces in the Indian Diaspora, the connection of Indian restaurants to the desi imagination is palpable.