Students according to the Indian Right should be students, then work as employees, pay taxes as consumers and die rather than be active citizens participating in the discourse on ideas as they would not be conducive for ‘Make in India’. Students should aspire to be good loyal employees sipping coke and eating burgers for lunch in their call center housed in a fancy office block in Whitefield/Cybercity/Airoli/Saltlake.

Reflection on one year of my Singapore 2.0 journey. Last year on the 28th of January I landed up in Singapore to join work CARE NUS which is a research hub on social change communications after a few years in consulting for the big boys. CARE has taught me the language of community led action and how multi stakeholder engagement leads to results on vexed issues. Mentored by a kind and talented boss, I have learnt to think on development the alternative way. The community partners have taught me guts but also the limitations of the ‘agenda’. As I move ahead, I would like to build on these valuable experiences to help frame policies for better communities.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,200 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 53 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

This day marks five years of this platform. I started the year with an audit in Sohar, Oman. Writing is what keeps me alive. In the latter part of January i moved to work at a Health Communications Think Tank in Singapore. This place gives me an opportunity to work on migration and health issues at the community level in Singapore. I love the work as it helps me to carve a dent in the ecosystem; work with non profits, activists, agencies and a superb boss who is an inspiration. I learn loads everyday. It is blessing.

I have failed too. Every new journey, tests me to the brink. I fail more and fail fast. I stretch myself, but i learn. But this has been an amazing year as i narrate below.

This year I started writing for Huff Post India, Corporate Citizenship Briefing UK and Banglar Kantha Singapore. I wrote about issues and matters which I am passionate about; migration, the region, sustainability & development and even forayed in unchartered intellectual territory such as International Relations. I have been volunteering and pro bono consulting with non profits this year, and these engagements give me the vantage point into unstructured learning and thinking a new.

I have certainly grown as a writer and researcher over the past year. I got married this year, and i have grown as a person thanks to my beautiful wife. This year has been very generous in terms of learning and growth. I pray for the same in the new year and hope to create a lasting impact in the years to come.

I end this year and half a decade of writing with almost 13000 hits. I thank my friends a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

13^th of December 2015 evening was cloudy and rainy, but for the migrant poets of Singapore it was an event to celebrate their voices with the Singaporean mainstream. With 74 entries this year in Bangla, Bahasa, Tagalog, Tamil, Mandarin and Punjabi up from 28 last year, and with 65 percent submissions by women; the competition expanded this year.

The competition was organized by Banglar Kantha, the only Bengali Language Newspaper in South East Asia and a group of volunteers that included Shivaji Das, writer and consultant and Charmaine Poh, a photographer. Banglar Kantha has been at the forefront of migrant literature and culture over the past decade and has been curating competitions/events in the field of migrant writing and literature since 2011. The concept of the competition was scaled up in 2014 to the general Singaporean public and hence 2014 was not technically the first migrant poetry competition. The event had 14 finalists from 6 languages and recitations included themes of separation from families, sacrifices, angst and somewhere an aspiration for a better life. The illustrious trio of judges were Academic Kripal Singh, Poet Alvin Pang and Translator Madam Goh Beng Choo. Shivaji Das opened the event evening by commenting that more has to be done to include other marginalised migrant workers.

The women finalists from Indonesia, Philippines and India spoke about guilt due to separation from their children and romantic love. The male participants spoke about sacrifice and nostalgia from home. They differed from their female counterparts in acknowledging disappointment from their anticipated experience of life in Singapore. One of two Chinese finalists wrote about how the egg he eats with his noodle in Singapore reminds him of the food of his hometown back home.  Last year’s second runner up Rengarajan from Tamil Nadu, India (a member of Banglar Kantha Literary Association) recited his narrative poem about the economic calculations of migrant life; the indebtedness that a migrant has to go through to make it overseas and how relationships never are normal for a migrant, as the transactional nature is always evident. He spoke:

“Ours is not a foreign life.

Our lives are foreign to us.”

Finalist Sandeep Kaur wrote in Punjabi about Female Infanticide in her untitled poem where she laid bare the patriarchal nature of society through an evocative plea from an unborn child.  The 3^rd prize winner this year was a woman finalist from Indonesia who wrote about the angst of love in her poem ‘You’ which she passionately recited with great fervour. Her performance was powerful and shook the overflowing Level Five Possibility Room of the National Library Building at Bugis.

The male finalists are involved in construction work in Singapore and their female counterparts are Foreign Domestic Workers here.

All the Bangladeshi Finalists Mohar Khan, Zakir Hossain Kokhon and Sromik Monir were finalists in last year’s competition too. All the three are mentored and nurtured by Mr. AKM Mohsin as members of the Banglar Kantha Literary Association; a volunteer writers group discussing migrant literature in Bangla.

While Sromik Monir (spoke about the labour of a migrant) won a consolation prize this year, Mohar Khan won the 1^st runner up award for his poem ‘Lamp Post’ where he narrates that he is not merely a migrant but a financial support for his family back home. He wrote:

“Day after day, my labour,

Has built this city layer by layer”

Zakir Hossain Khokon, last year’s winner repeated his feat this time around as well with his poem ‘I am Sorry’, where he paints an apologetic portrait of migrant’s work.  Both Mohar and Zakir’s poems were sophisticated in form and intense in meaning, and hence they stood out of the crowd in spite of the Philippine Finalists writing in English, which has greater audience appeal.

The evening had a small performance by Banglar Kantha artists on a 1971 Liberation War Song prior to the winners being announced. There were poems recited by migrant poets from similar competitions in Malaysia (organised by Banglar Kantha), Kuwait and China. The English translations were recited by students from United World College of South East Asia.

The event had sharing’s by the Cultural Affairs in charge of the United States Embassy in Singapore, who had sponsored the event. Melinda Page, shared that all should acknowledge the role of migrants in Singaporean Society. An American origin representative of the local Singaporean NGO TWC2 also spoke about the talents of migrants in the Singaporean workplace.

Banglar Kantha Editor in Chief AKM Mohsin in his speech first spoke in Bangla exalting the Bangladeshi Community to unite in efforts to work for the flock. He then spoke in English delineating the difference between migrant literature and mainstream literature. Migrant Literature in his words was a platform to empower the migrant through culture. Most of the work written by the migrant is abstract and needs ‘curating to polish it into a gem’. Which in layman speak is mentoring and nurturing.

He encouraged the civil society to introspect in order to be impactful. Quoting from his speech:

“The question today to ask ourselves: Are we being authentic in helping our migrant brothers and sisters? Or is it cool to do this work. “

This call to move beyond ‘event activism’, is timely as the migrant needs continuous support for his cultural pursuits rather than a tiny blip on the radar, which is useful, but simply not enough.

Photos: Lopamudra Chakraborty Prasad

Today I met a super smart Chinese decent Taxi Uncle whose geopolitical understanding is better than an International Relations expert. Spoke about Narendra Modi and his developmental agenda and his ideological convergence with east Asia. He said that ‘Development leads to peace’. He said he admired Narendra Modi as he was trying to clean up the Ganges by studying the Singapore model (Singapore River and Marina Barrage), and by beating lethargy out of the system on the same lines as Late Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

He also noted that Development in Singapore is about taking down 20 year old buildings to build new structures with the latest technology such as replacing copper wires with fiber optic cables. He said that newer MRT lines impact taxi driver incomes, especially along the more affluent Bukit Timah Road.

A proud Singaporean who said that his first duty is to protect the country. Respect. ‪#‎Sg‬ 

Spectre is a neat conclusion to Casino Royale, The Quantum of Solace and Skyfall series. The global canvas is impressive and the focus on information politics and surveillance (think Snowden, Assange and Foucault) is raw and contemporary. Sam Mendes has a slow method to story telling, which makes Bond human. Neat watch, better than Skyfall. ‪#‎changethinker‬ ‪#‎spectre‬‪#‎bond‬