A Majestic Afternoon of Ideas with the global humanitarian leader, Bapak Adrian Pereira , a consistent mentor to me for many years. So much to learn from his rich legacy of social change as he runs his non profit, The North South Initiative for the past decade with areas of intervention in the refugee, migrant worker and platform worker space.

Usually at the cutting edge of advocacy backed by empirical research, Bapak Adrian does the slow work, by cutting across scales from the Kampung to the Dunia.

Till our next check in, Solidarity 👋👋👋

It was an honor to moderate a panel on the rights of nature, with three honchos of environmental law in Asia, with Dr Georgina of UNEP, Dr Linda of NUS APCEL and Ms. Abe of Client Earth. This technical panel had a full house with a non law background undergraduate audience had an intellectual feast of ideas regarding the rights of nature. @abe.1 had an incredible presentation with case studies from Perak!

Sometimes in a panel full of key insights, the job of a moderator is to allow space in a tight schedule, for the engagement to happen. The audience was engaged with questions from students from China and Thailand. Dr Linda’s insights regarding green courts in China was useful. Dr Georgina set up the panel with an excellent context driving conversation.

Regen Asia 2025 was a Grand Prix of a sustainability event of 600 participants from all over Asia and eighty speakers who were the brightest congregation of talent under one roof. Excellent work by the organising team of all enterprising students. Fabulous work by Bernise and Shaun as mentors. It was great to meet sustainability friends from the NUS ecosystem after years!

Learnt a great deal about the latest ideas on regeneration and resilience. Quite a paradigm shifting event.

Such an honor to be with the stalwarts at Regen Asia at the National University of Singapore. Day One was an intellectual treat for sustainability nerd, yes even after two decades sustainability as a conceptual paradigm evolves at rapid pace.

Regeneration is a key update to the sustainability vocabulary as healing the existing damage ecosystem is critical in addition to plain preservation, which is sustainability inter generation wide as per the Brundtland Report. Sustainability is like so 1990s, actually.

It was great to hear YB Yeo, the former Malaysian Environmental Minister on Rooftop Solar, and economic logic as well as Louis Ng, former Singaporean Member of Parliament on his journey from activism to politics to academia now where he is engaging ASEAN policymakers think climate action.

Learnt also about the tragedy of the commons through a workshop. President Tharman in a conversation panel was the most articulate about trade offs and innovation to reduce the delta regarding the trade offs was inspiring.

Sustainability is more than reporting, it is a lens to view future opportunities.

A spectacular ethnography of a special city, that is close to my heart- Dubai ❤️

Professor @rana_almutawa has gone under the bonnet of this global city, and it has been a joy to have the hard copy of this classic in my hands in Bombay. I have been mentioned in the acknowledgments with other senior scholars such as Professor @nehavora1 @sultanalqassemi among others in the book. So utterly generous.

Can’t wait for it to be signed by the good Professor herself!

Barber Shop conversations are much a reality check on middle and working class notions of masculinity and aesthetics. They are also spaces which offer work to migrants without any schooling, but with skill. No AI here.

Zohran ran his Democratic Party primary election campaign for mayor of the city of New York, in the most creative transnational way possible, reflecting of the global melting pot the Big Apple is. A city of capitalism is also a city which attracts the world for work, and the world arrived at Staten Island or JFK airport to chase the American dream. Zohran, a recent naturalised American citizen is of Gujarati Ugandan and Indian Punjabi heritage. A former rapper, he utilised his Bollywood roots to good use to record campaign reels in Hindi-Urdu and Bangla with Shahana Hanif. His Spanish and Mandarin Chinese campaigns are on point as well.

A template for global city working class politics, as Sadiq Khan in London had shown the way. Their politics might not be compatible with global capitalism, but capitalism needs the very workers that vote for Zohran, the taxi drivers and public housing residents for instance need the social protection and welfare under the precarious neoliberal conditions they serve in.

The November election will be interesting to follow.

Writing is trapped in the lexicon of the h-index, I index and other impact metrics such as grant dollars won, prizes won and so on. There is a life of the mind, beyond the violence of the metric, an Arundhati Roy never did a PhD, but PhDs are written on her work.

Scholarship has lost it’s way, weaponised beyond redemption, whereas it was supposed to offer alternative futures such as the era of wars, or as Roy wrote in the FT article during the pandemic, a portal to a future.

Writing is about giving hope for an alternative, when we are in the midst of polycrisis. Where are the new frameworks or models to grapple with the change, apart from recycling the same ad nauseum?

Is academia truly doing its job, beyond this ranking and that publication? And a grant proposal to be won?

In the age of AI, the knowledge in our communities and cultures will be of utmost value. Meaningful stakeholder engagement is key to understanding materiality and FPIC, as the risk hidden in our communities, through body language and reading between the lines is key to black swan weak signals.

In a poly/perma crisis, each data point can get amplified in a turbulent context of tariffs and hard conflicts. Speak to your communities, do your human rights due diligence and materiality assessments.

Mawsim (Monsoon in Arabic)

The Khareef is here in Monsoon Asia. Tarikh and Trade are intertwined with the Monsoon season, in the pre coal era of globalisation, and there was a globalised world before European colonialism.

Bombay, which was a dowry turned out to the jewel of the Crown on the Western Indian Ocean, as can be read from Nile Green’s Bombay Islam.

As one looks beyond the edges of Bandra Bandstand, a tourist magnet thanks for Bollywood celebrities having one of their homes, the Sea towards Aden, Salalah and Mombasa gives hope, and the Dhow trade continues through Vahan’s as given in Nidhi Mahajan’s book- Moorings.

Looking forward to Fahad Bishara’s new book coming up soon as well.