Sustainability or ESG is either the end or the means to an end. ESG needs to be viewed as a web of risks with each node as varied gradients. ESG is about risk related to investor value capture. Sustainability is a normative and fuzzy. The ends need to be defined, as sustainability can be an opening into restoration, rejuvenation, and resilience.

Climate resilience is a real goal, and everything converges around it.

#sustainability

Bengali Christians have been celebrating the ‘Boro Din’ through payesh and plum cake, and mangshor bhat in the afternoon in an act of creolization forever. The term ‘Boro Din’ or Big Day denotes a monumental event in the calendar as does Selamat Hari Natal for Christians in the Nusantara. ‘Hari’ again denotes the big day in Bahasa Indonesia, which is also deployed for Eid.

Christmas for Copts and Levantine Arabs is Eid as well.

Cultures share common traits, which render humanity richer.

From Payesh to Muklabia to Kueh, do soak in the Joy.

The SEBI mapping of green bonds akin to Article 8 of the EU Taxonomy is the part of inter-operability of sustainability disclosure standards. The local and the global weave into a seamless tapestry of regulatory topologies. The Indian ‘Atma-Nirbhar’ variant of ESG Reporting mandated by SEBI, the Business Responsibility & Sustainability Reporting (BRSR) is mapped to CDP, GRI, TCFD and SASB frameworks.

And even better it is mandatory for the top thousand publicly listed firms on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). This in line with mandatory sustainability disclosures at the SGX and stringent measures by the MAS in Singapore. The terrain of global capital is truly ‘flat’, Thomas Friedman would be proud.

#sustainability#singapore#india#brsr#esgreporting#eutaxonomy#business

Dreams linger

They ember

Till the next dream

They flare again

As themselves are the fire

#spokenword

Happy International Migrants Day!

One of the few days in the calendar which is of significant meaning to me. Mobility is a frame of life, as aspiration and a will to do better for our families. On a personal note, I work with organizations who care for the the transnational subaltern at the scale of the homeland and the host land.

As a second-generation Gulf kid, migration is more than theory for the h index. Lived experience trumps the discourse on remittances.

From the girmitiya to the partition impacted to the tech folks on the H1B, precarity frames the migration journey.

Such an honor to be a discussant to a labor in platform economy panel with stalwart labor researchers organized by the Just Economy Labor Institute, Thailand. It was truly a global panel with Hong Kong, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the US present.

I owe my debt to Prof Neil Coe for the learning.

As a para-academic, I am indebted to such opportunities.

Thank you so much Pak Fahmi for the invitation.

A Zoomed Knowledge Conversation

I have a sense after a fair bit of entrepreneurship that there is a massive delta between what is taught in university and the skills needed in a real job. The basics of problem solving, communication, stakeholder management, self-managing, risk taking are hard to get.

The executive education scene is also made up of the same set of academics.

Coaches are too pushy for the sale. Where are people who can be a blend of an academic, executive, entrepreneur, and coach. Solutions would need to be bespoke, artisanal, and specific, akin to a therapist on call.

The professionals on the job are often lost as mentoring and real learning is not available. There is a market opportunity somewhere.

#entrepreneurship#learning

When a person leaves home, migrates the body only leaves as shards of the soul stick behind. The home and the host land are a part of a continuum, and never sharp binaries. We see this in Saravana Bhavan’s in the Gulf and Singapore, or the Hyderabadi Biryani places on the weekend.

Mumbai, the city of aspirations
Saturates the Air
Ever changing, mutating cartographies
The despair to survive
Etched on to the skylines of hope
The animal spirits of capitalism
Breeds circulatory flows of migrants
Keeps hopes fresh
And despair alive.

#mumbai

#spokenword

I have been talking and thinking about loss, pain, and failure recently and the manner we process it has an important bearing on how we experience life. As an impact driven entrepreneurial hack, failures have been frequent and fast leading to questions about where are you going?

The only certainty is uncertainty and the notion of stability which the previous generation took for granted is now past fast. Unstable can be reframed as being on the move, and mobility is a frame of reference and lens rather than the curated resume that hiring managers look for.

Well impact is determined in outcomes and not in years as the social contract has evolved. We are all on a platform where human talent is service on demand to the purveyors of power and capital.

A friend who is in HR recently equipped, why have you changed jobs?

Well, it is a function of the opportunities generated and the impact one wishes to imagine.

Well, most HR functions can be replaced by algorithms. Rain making is an art.

There is new white space to create each day.