Really glad that the Sri Lankan Cricket Team brought the smog issue up. The people of Delhi breathe poison does not mean that visitors can be bullied into breathing it, for all the pull of the BCCI in the ICC. May be we should take Environmental Quality issues more seriously.

Environmentalists and Social Development Professionals are interlocutors of conversations between science, economics and law. The challenge would be in reframing the conversation towards solution building. Environmentalists are often perceived as advocacy and research professionals who raise issues, bring them in to the limelight but are limited upto suggesting alternatives. The disconnect with the market is evident with the chasm in the language used by the two communities of practitioners; the environmentalists and the business community. The focus on the bottom line and the long term focus on conservation clash.

The consulting community also tries to bridge the gap, but are often facilitators in the regulatory sphere; rendering services to the project owners. The challenge is however to be conversant with a lingo which understands ecosystem issues and the costs with the regulatory drivers. It’s time for Environmentalists to move beyond being rubble rousers and give practical solutions to industry and policy makers regarding the environmental issues of the day.

In recent times, I enjoy reading independent, progressive boutique platforms rather than mainstream media which carry mainly syndicated news feeds. The exception is Wade Shepard’s writing as a Forbes contributor where he travels the world covering the impulses from the ground.

The main issues of the day get invariably lost in the cacophony of news, instead of covering real change makers and the issues which make an impact. Padmavati, Love Yudh and some leaders belief system are not issues to grab national mind space, nor does CNN’s obsession with the Trump Presidency.

Narratives covered by platforms such as Riot, Cafe Dissensus edited by Bhaswati Ghosh and Mosarrap Hossain Khan as well as The Polis Project Founders Asim Rafiqui and Suchitra Vijayan are doing amazing work, and captures by imagination with Indian Cultural Forum and Kafila.

Swarajya of Amar Govindarajan share a different perspective. The questions raised are relevant and pointed/focused by these different voices. Scale of these voices for me is not a deal breaker, the quality of the data and the analysis is certainly.

Ofcourse the New Yorker and the Paris Review and its tribe is classy. The digital era has made mainstream problematic and questionable. What is exactly mainstream? Is a blogger with credibility not mainstream enough, if he/she writes well, only because it’s reach is not wide enough?

The business model might be broken (FT and Monocle make money though), but the canvas is larger. I would like more meat (carbon light certainly) in the Sustainability thought leadership space.

The best Ideas come from the interface/intersectionalities of praxis and preceding theory. Walking the streets, and having feet on the ground helps. Read widely, and speak humbly. Kill your own ideas, if needed.

There are impulses of the rational and the creative/whimsical

In every event that we see

Only, the frame of reference differs

Paradigms collapse

New lens emerge

Binaries are meaningless

Complexities are beautiful

Life is a melange of flavours

Equity as rhetoric (in the democratic left context) is the yeast to knead the neoliberal dough. The academics of the card carrying Global Left do enjoy the wine and cheese after the pricey conferences (which they should and rather privilege should not be limited to bankers and tech VC’s)

Money makes the world go around, even the pro market NITI Aayog Vice Chair went back to his secure job in New York while he supported neoliberal policies.

Real world activism has a price. Nifty theory is just incredible intellectual stimulation. Just limited to that.

Vashi, Al Khuwair and Clementi

Areas, in three cities

Three countries, rather

We belong to places

Memories, images, nostalgia

Globalisation does not meaning a thing

Hyper local, is the identity

The tapri, The kopitiam and the tea corner

Cutting chai, Tea Halia and Karak Chai

Zoom in on the human experience

The consciousnesses is a tapestry

Of sounds, attachments and flavours

Niall Ferguson for all his conservative follys has taken History to the Wall Street and now to Silicon Valley with the ‘Square and the Tower’ with mapping networks. When History is conversing with Neural Networks and Social Media, we know interdisciplinary thinking has moved STEM to the Humanities. Power, Digital, Fake News, Networks, Reformation, Enlightenment, Kissinger, Trump all converging in one Networks Narrative.

Prof Parag Khanna has taken the networks thesis to international relations with Connectography, with amazing mapping with the liberal assistance of AutoDesk. It is really encouraging to read theories/frameworks which have an implication in the real world.

It would be interesting to imagine how historians would write about fake news and alt facts, and these digital algorithms impacting electoral discourse, as democracy in mainstream politics revolves around the ritual called elections. Brexit and Catexit were elections too.

Some exciting reads are out to read up:

Blind Spot by Teju Cole

The Bengalis by Sudeep Chakravarti

The ants among elephants

Tishani Doshi book of poems

Dr Parthiban Muniandy book on Migration in Malaysia

Satya Nadella’s Book

Sudeepa Chakrabarti’s book of essays

Suggestions welcome in this crowd sourcing exercise to curate titles!