The line between academic research grants, think tanks and consultants is blurred as the playbook seems congruent. I hope impact is centered in the knowledge that is produced rather than h-index temple runs.

The way a city is felt and experienced is rather ‘close’ in an auto or kaali peeli as the sounds and the senses are saturated. Mumbai has a constant hum about people being on the move. The conversations in Bhojpuri that the mobility sector professionals speak while driving make for an interesting peek into the migrant city which is the maximum city.

There are many Mumbai’s within the Maximum City. It feels like a functioning patchwork that is precarious yet incredibly motile.

In the green workspace (ESG/Sustainability/Clean Tech/Climate Tech/EHS/Safeguards), we are the tech sector in the early 1990s, on the cusp of becoming quotidian as culture.

Knowledge work is a mainstream occupation globally, however, many of the skills and the expectations are not well defined either at school or the workplace. The work consists of research and writing, business development, coding or evaluation which is subjective.

Sustainability needs a rebranding effort as an aspect that is linked to the quotidian rhythms of life and that quality of living and health outcomes at the scale of the human is impacted among various degrees on a spectrum. Sustainability is an operational meta framework to better lives for common people.

Emissions lead to bad air quality first and then global warming ramifications kick in, so the question of scale is critical, at the local and the planetary.

#sustainability

Rishi Bhai, Kamala Akka and Leo Dada remind me of the power of skilled migration. Rishi Sunak is a poster child of double diaspora Indian Ocean Imperial Circulations, on the lines of Thomas Metcalf’s book. Migration histories are empirical and real.

As the UK gets Ready for Rishi, it takes a couple of generations of diaspora life with the right Oxon PPE and Stanford MBA education to reach the levels where the outlier odds favor him. The challenge for the PM post was ambitious as a brown rich non-Christian man with little political capital.

As a person with a PE background, he ran as an activist investor waiting for the right M&A window. His family story of the double diaspora in Dr Maya Parmar ‘s words from the colonial East Africa to the UK is a testimony to Indian grit riding on the coat tails of Indian Ocean Tarikh.

We had Indian origin leaders in the former girmitya empire grid from Fiji to Trinidad to Guyana. Senior Minister Tharman and Defense Minister Sajjan are recent examples of diaspora successes.

I have always been rejected by gate keepers and have found that the space beyond the gate can be an opportunity to create a new category, disrupt the mainstream and take your own chair to the table when you are not invited to one. I do not take no for an answer 🙂

In a fact which is subliminal or foregrounded that in the knowledge worker space such as digital, consulting, and financial services there is a translation of brain power into products. While there is a low entry barrier to starting up, it is a crowded space and needs intellectual and execution excellence on a different level to sustain and thrive.

A person will always have well-paid work if one is oriented towards solving problems of intractable pain points and is ready to do everything it takes to build. The ability to do multiple Zero to One at every stage, in projects, verticals, scale ups is a superpower.

Industries will be disrupted but problems will be there to be hacked.

Dr Tharoor played a losing game to win. He used the trick which US Presidential candidates in primary season use to get noticed for other public offices like Pete or Akka.

Dr Tharoor is now a mainstream political name in India with a political renewal beyond Trivandrum.