In the era of ChatGPT, one of the crucial skills needed will be deep expertise in a field that does not come cheap with experience and depth in learning. For all the talk about reskilling, I wonder how much of it is applicable. Like one does not become an ESG expert overnight or by having an English major, you got to have serious training in chemical engineering or biology to understand the basics.

Competence Green Washing is itself a regulatory risk, full of ill-equipped sustainability professionals in the era of climate litigation.

In the era where one’s climate action can be taken to court in some other part of the world, reporting and disclosing ESG information is imbued with a certain legal valency. The terrain is moving to the law firms as technical professionals are being hired to advise on the science. Hybrid lawyers plus scientists is the new combination to understand emergent risks in the BHR and Climate domains.

ESG is thus an regular business risk, albeit non financial however carbon data is as mainstream as financial data. As financial information has not stopped fraud so will increasingly vibrant climate data will not cease green washing. Assurance will be a prerequisite for ESG data, as BRSR regime in India has shown.

We should not conflate disclosure for climate action, as innovation for climate action is a moon shot and a society as a whole issue. ESG at its heart is trust and transparency play in line with the zeitgeist towards responsible capitalism.

Regeneration is an approach to be future savvy, in a world with climate emergency, the future of work, pandemic preparedness, general AI and migration. It’s time to think beyond static sustainability and use the ESG data to prepare for the future.

Baseline data is fantastic, where do we do with that is the value creation imperative.

Gulf and Indian Ocean History is a lifelong passion, I am a child of the Indian Ocean with nodes from Muscat, Dubai, Bombay, Calcutta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. My training is an engineer and ethnographer, and an entrepreneur by day, writer by night. Hope to write a few articles on the transnational circuits of migrants.

At the heart of organizations are people who are fuel led by emotions and have agency. Platform companies are huge employment generators especially for the non-college educated youth and have made visible the informal sector work of micro entrepreneurs to the surface.

People are usually hesitant to hierarchy or control, and if people are under the whims of an algorithm which they do not understand, it is the basic premise for labor issues to trigger. The cut back on the funding is leading to reduced team sizes which might reduce the care work needed in trouble shooting.

What is needed to perform the S in the ESG is to operationalize dignity in the approach. Make it evident that platform riders and not merely blips on a map. They matter, as ultimately platform companies are in the delivery business and drones are not making that delivery, but people.

In the summer, make sure that riders have access to water and resting areas, and make insurance access easy rather than hard. There are easier ways to build brands.

This IPL the presence of the Khaleej is palpable, Qatar Airways sponsoring RCB (not a great choice) and Saudi Tourism and Aramco are title sponsors of the IPL along with Tata.

Riyadh flexing its soft power in India through the IPL is a sign of Delhi’s position as a market. Al Ula is magical and the Red Sea Film Festival attracted the best names from Bombay. Relationship between the Gulf is more than stereotypes of oil and remittances. The repositioning towards multipolar world from Riyadh’s perspective includes the recent warming up with Tehran through Beijing. It was in the works since Saudi’s renewable energy powerhouse ACWA Power, has investment from the Silk Road Fund, an OBOR investment vehicle and uses Chinese contractors throughout its project portfolio and AIIB has been a financier of its Solar Park in Oman.

Health & Safety is an ‘S’ element in ESG. Time to include Mental Health as an ESG matter too.

The Khaleej never leaves us. It is within and we are grateful.

Eid Ul Fitr Dinner with Dum Biryani, Shondesh and home made Siwaiyan.

Happiest to see my Mother joyous, as she misses our life in Masqat the most.

A majority of salon workers, hair stylists and beauticians in Bombay as per purposive non random sampling happen to be Muslims from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and these include women too. Today at a branded salon in an even more branded mall in Navi Mumbai, I found both the staff who tended to me were Muslim on Eid, when I asked them why they were not on leave, they said- ‘jab sabki chutti hoteen hain, hum kaam kartein hain’, he said with a whiff of sadness in his voice, his eyes were sad. As a weekend the salon was packed with patrons and as folks who work on commissions, weekends and public holidays are income generally days. Most of the workers in the salon are Muslim. But they were dressed in glittering salwars, marking the presence of a Muslim holiday among a Savarna clientele.

The articulations of the presence of young Muslims as well as families in the food court with prominent identifiers through clothing and smiles was refreshing as caricatures don’t help us see a polity which wants to express as one, rather than the other. Pathaan has helped in mainstreaming efforts, as well as G20 year in the election run up in 2024 has meant the BJP giving posters wishing Eid Mubarak along with Akshay Tritiya.

I was thinking of the service led sectors who serve us while we are on holiday, and a replacement holiday we all know does not cut it. Wishing solidarity to all who work harder while others chill.

We are all gig workers in a way, only some have normal holidays on weekends.