Cabbies according to me are the most interesting people, they meet a wide variety of folks from the prestigious to the bizarre. They see things that professional policy analysts cannot, and make better sociologists than a PhD in the domain atleast in terms of feildwork. A Singaporean cabbie will analyse the Hougang By Election better or on par as Cherian George! Today I was driven home by a hindi speaking migrant from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh who is a former farmer, graduate turned cabbie when things turned economically sour back home in his village. He is educating a son in an engineering college in Bhopal which is costing him a phenomenal amount in comparison to what he earns. He has three more children and wishes to direct his younger son to write the civil services exam to become a IAS Officer; the ultimate symbol of success and power. This is what emerging India is, a cabbie’s son studying in an engineering college, unthinkable a generation ago. He dissects Yadav-Dalit political dynamics with a biased scalpel although precise as a surgeon. He asks me, why dont i attempt to write the civil services exam and i tell him that i am a freelance writer by night, and normalcy is what i wish to attain. The zest for growth was infectious. Singaporean cabbies are better news sources than Temasek Times and Straits Times put together. They make for enlightening conversation from Politics to which place makes Roti Prata the best lah! I have met many a cabbie in Singapore whose children study in NTU and NUS and have met a NUS Sociology Grad who drives a cab!  Cabbies give me a reality check, a sense that there is more to attain. Certaily there is a lot to learn from the Taxi wala or the ‘Taxi Uncle’ in the Tiny Red Dot.

I have not succeeded 99% of the times, i have attempted to do things the first time around. A lot of relatives wrote me off after my 10th standard exams. Every few years i have faced this conundrum; starting fresh on a clean slate. There are loads of challenges in working out of your comfort zone, but the learning curve is enormous. But this world, requires a CV, a track record to boot. Experimentation is hardly encouraged. No wonder Innovation is confined to academic research papers, which researchers themselves do not adhere to itself.

Failure offers a new opportunity to start anew. Social Stigma kills, very much but there is no more joy in outproving who doubt us.  new road is thrilling to explore, the chances of failure are huge and the hormonal kick is mind blowing. A NEW CHALLENGE IS A NEW REASON TO LIVE.  So get a challenge to stretch ones limits. Get dumped, sacked, thrown out but for the right sentiment, purpose and motivation. The next turn ahead then will be a much smoother drive. Fail, Fail Forward.

I have moved again, yes this time to the city of my birth and a place where i partly spent my childhood: Mumbai. Its a sense of Deja vu  i am experiencing coming back and living in the same place where I lived a decade back and had never consciously tried to come back ever since I left for tertiary education overseas.  This time around I am back with a job, after three years of grad school- exams, research papers, final exams and working on a research project the past 18 months in which I made my living. I had a terrific time in Singapore, a city which made me into what i am. I had friends who cared about me in the Tiny Red Dot, superb mentors and a platform to explore myself. Still why the painful decision to come back. I realized this since a while that India in-spite of all its drawbacks is a young country, booming with energy  and everyone around here in Mumbai is on the go to make a living and a zest to make it big. I love this buzz about the city which otherwise is a text book example of income inequalities and urban rich-poor gulf. Its better to be in a growth market.

The roads are certainly better, although the traffic is still very bad. Prices have shot through the roof as i feel as i am paying everything in dollar terms although the salary is in rupees, which is terrible.  It was great to catch up with a couple of child hood friends and realize or come to terms that time and distance have nothing to do with human emotion, they are still the same old thing.  I am trying to rebuild my life here, where as everyone else seems to have one here. I will write about my journey here and my past experiences as a diasporic boy struggling to carve a fluid identity in the Middle East and SE Asia. I feel great to be back here but have a tinge of sadness as I had to leave a life painstakingly built overseas. I look forward to my ‘Re”-Discovery of India.

Its time again to move again. The time i take to build meaningful relationships, connections, partnerships and get emotionally settled in a place is pain staking and its sheer hard work.  And before, i realize its again time to move on once more in the journey called life. This time again i will be moving in a few days to the city of my birth. I am moving from the Lion City, the place i called home and had a real life to call my own. This city has given me an identity, a platform to engage with life. I have commenced the process of catching up with folks who made a difference in my life over the past three years. Some very recent friends and some who i had met just upon landing here in the tiny red dot. I love this city, probably the only place in the world where i can grab a meal safely at 4am after having more than a drink on a public holiday eve. The stability and safety of this city is legendary. I adore ‘Food-ing’ or makan-ing in the city, where food is the national passion here. Kopi-tiams are packed all over the city at any time of the city. Even heartlands such as Chua Chu Kang, have a unique charm. Espanade Theaters by the Bay and Orchard are just too blissful to express in words.  I luv Singlish lah too 🙂 Mustafa Centre has been a centre for pilgrimage over the past three years 😛

Clementi is where i call home in Singapore, and i will miss it dearly. Dempsey Hill and Boat Quay have given me a great time on weekends.

NUS has made me what I am. NTU has taught me valuable life lessons and paid me to survive in this expensive city. I will be always grateful to this country and its people for the person i am now. I take back with me Singapore in my heart and the spirit of pragmatism which will lead me on from now.

As i wind up this post, I would like to quote a line from Corrine May’s National Day 2010 song- a beautiful, heartfelt rendition indeed:

I want to sing, sing a song for Singapore, you are brother, you are my Sister, I am thankful for Singapore.

Cities are our cradle of civilization in the post agricultural economy information era that we live in.  NASA Climate scientist has called climate change a ‘moral issue on par with slavery’ [1].  The recent discourse on Climate Change has primarily focused on rural areas in the developing world. Climate Change as a phenomenon is systemic; its impacts are to be seen in all shades of colours and across different time scales. Climate Change in a very simple nuance concerns with extreme weather events. Sociological characteristics of society such as class, gender, cultural and economic capital are brought in the spotlight, in the canvas of Climate Change. Extreme weather events threaten normalcy, such as flooding, drought and earthquakes. The focus of this paper is to re-direct the climate change conversation to urban communities and especially the urban poor. According to a recent Mc Kinsey study, by the year 2030 majority of the world’s population will be based in urban centres. China’s population as per newspaper reports has tipped over to the urban part. Climate Change cannot be compartmentalised within intellectual silos. It has to be dealt with in an inter-disciplinary manner. When rural folk move to urban areas in search of livelihood leaving their lands behind as they are not lucrative enough as a career path, an additional ecological cum economic load is added upon the urban ecosystem. Urban planners design city infrastructure for a certain population and model population growth over a period of time. These assumptions are usually confined to reports as reality is often stranger than fiction.

The main stress on urban infrastructure is not land scarcity, but water. It is either too much or too little of it. Variations in precipitation are climate controlled events. The urban poor who live in shanty towns of Mumbai and Manila often share similar issues. The slum dweller in Dharavi, Mumbai is so vulnerable of a single heavy shower which can wipe out these efforts for life.  The recent Bangkok floods have shown the kind of disruption to the economy an extreme weather event can have.  City level governance is often weak and hence more vulnerable. Centralized governance mechanisms are fragile, as the capital cities are in land entities and the cities on the frontline of climate change are on the coasts. These cities are positioned on the global maritime highways of commerce and since old coastal cities are economic centres, drawing inland rural folk. Urban resilience is a function of additional capacity to withstand shock. Spatial planning of cities also add to the climate change divide between the have and have not’s. The affluent will always be positioned on higher ground than the poor folk, struggling for survival.  The case of Mumbai and Manila exemplifies climate change needs in the governance discourse.

References:

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/06/nasa-scientist-climate-change?CMP=twt_fd (information retrieved on 6/04/2012)

We live in the social era. Everyone is one Facebook ‘liking’ each others posts, tweets about developments as they happen and professional networking on Linkedin while searching for jobs. Content creation too has been democratized beyond our imagination. Recently a superior showed his daughters blog on poetry, and she is all of nine. The stuff she wrote was good. She is a poet/writer from her pre-teen years. Unthinkable when i was growing up about a decade and a half back. I would have to type the article, send it over to the editor of the prospective magazine and wait for months before publication. Now a days, an aspiring singer/musician practices his/her craft, records it on the smart phone and uploads it on You Tube and it goes viral. The movie song ‘Kolaveri Di’ became an international phenomenon spurring derivatives of the original one.  Disruptive innovation is transforming creative production and distribution.  The era of intellectual property protection is diluted to no extent, as peer to peer websites have everything money can buy.

Amazon has changed the way we buy books. It has destroyed book store chains such as Borders and Barnes & Noble to close its business. Authors have their revenue streams cut. The royalty on an e book download is a fraction of its hardcopy counterpart. Authors publish their works for free by letting Amazon publish it only for the tremendous reach the website has. Book Publishing in its traditional sense is gone as is the Music Business. The Apple devices changed the dynamics of the music industry by i tunes. These are legitimate sources of revenue. Pirated music and books are available at a click of a Google search.  Internet Piracy websites are being shut and the owners prosecuted but another dozen copycats arise in a week’s time. Legislative mechanisms cannot keep track with the lightening pace of technology.

Good ideas are no one’s monopoly. Even if rampant copying of content takes place apart from an academic setting its fine with me as more the information spreads the better it is. Knowledge is there is enlighten us and individual egos are simply too trivial . Although this is bad news for musicians and authors, we would have to deal with it. New revenue streams have to be figured out. There is a positive that everyone has access to information which was earlier the privy of the intellectual elite.

The magazine or the newspaper which I earlier used to buy of the stands is now available online. Movies can be livestreamed as can TV shows. Businesses in this sector would have to be ‘really’ creative to make money apart from the construct of IP protection to make themselves survive.

Bollywood for me is not simply an cinematic art form, but has been an integral part of understanding about life. One of my earliest memories as a toddler, was watching the Subhash Ghai film ‘Ram Lakkhan’ and the Ajay Devgun debut film: ‘Phool aur Kaante’.  Since then, i have hooked to the song and dance, melodramatic genre of cinema called Bollywood. Well Amitabh Bacchchan detests the term and he prefers to term it the Indian Film Industry. I would rather call it the Hind ‘Phillum’ Industry, as there are other regional vernacular film industries that are bigger such as Tamil and Telugu film industries.  Films are a part of the rubric of contemporary Indian Culture. The trajectory of post liberalization India can be charted through Bollywood films from Darr to Dostana to Dabangg.

I am not a purist, nor claim to be a student of cinema but I am a affecionado of Bollywood fims. I have watched films from the brilliant to the bizzare. This term ‘Bolly Holic’ has been coined by my graduate student colleague in English Literature at the Nanyang Technological University Mr. JX Ho over a heated conversation over Rang De Basanti with another opinionated Colleague from India (ex JNU).  The beauty of a Dulhe Raja or a Partner by David Dhawan, cannot be expressed by a rational mind. A Dabangg or a Wanted is simply too entertaining for words. Bollywood has progressed with a better educated audience watching films like Kahaani or a Dirty Picture.

Bollywood is India’s Soft Power as is American films. A DON franchise film or an Agneepath, was shown in Singaporean theaters with non South Asian viewers.  Bollywood films emote so well, that the language gap is transcended. I have watched films in theaters across, South East Asia and the Middle East. There is a theater exhibiting Bollywood fare across almost every major capital across the Globe. As an expat kid in the Persian Gulf, Bollywood as a medium to connect to my cultural ethos. Watching ‘D’ and ‘Company’ connected me to Mumbai, the city of my Birth as does ‘Kahaani’, the city of my ethnicity.

The emotions expressed in a Bollywood film from a  mediocre student in 3 Idiots to the heartbreak in Rockstar all resonate with me and many millions. The quest to be someone and the zest for life in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara is so refreshing. These are all cinematic experiences which make my life richer.

People should not compare Bollywood with Hollywood films, they are as different as having parathas and pizzas. Let us enjoy them for what they are for.

Over the past few days, a lot of equations in Indian politics seem to be changing since the verdict of the recent provincial polls came out. Samajwadi Party is King in Uttar Pradesh led by the unassuming environmental engineer by training Akhilesh Yadav. A 38 year old, led the party from the front changing many a perception of the archaic old school politics of the Lohia-ites, or the socialists. He spoke the lingo of the ‘aam admi’, although thoroughly populist rhetoric. It is certainly a breath of fresh air. The Trinamool Congress, the major player in West Bengal made a dent as the principal opposition force in the North Eastern state of Manipur.  It is slowly expanding its base in the Bengali speaking areas in the North East and filling the vacuum in the fragmented clan oriented politics of the region.

The Akali Dal in Punjab won the elections this without much of the contribution from the BJP. Odisha has seen a single party dominate the political landscape over the last 15 years with the BJD. It looks like that the dominance is set to continue. What Trinanamool Congress offered Bengal is not only an option from the ineffective governance of the Left over the last three decades but also an opportunity for the Bengali Identity to emerge from the Left rubric. Bengal used to contribute the maximum number of Left MP’s to Sansad Bhawan, but the power centre of the Left remained in Kerala. In short Bengal lost its voice in National politics. Its voice got drowned out in the cacophony of leftist jargon. Regional Parties are vital for regional development, Tamil Nadu and Bihar have showed the way in this respect.  Regional Identity with aspiration based politics is what made the JDU successful in Bihar. Regional identity based politics transcends religion, hence is a strong adhesive.

The Third Front is a political experiment bound to fail as it would require either of the national parties to prop up the arrangement. In the following days we can see the two major National Parties decline, as they have been unable to live up their promises. Most of the regional parties have charismatic leaders. From Nitish to Mamata to Naveen to now Akhilesh, they are populist with governance at the heart of their agenda. The National players lack strong presentable leadership as the top leadership in the BJP are competent but indecisive, and the Congress unable to convert Rahulji’s popularity in to votes.

May be we are heading towards a more federal structure indeed.

Recently i had attended a symposium on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy where the EU Commissionaire on Science and Technology spoke.  One of the startling things to note was the intellectual transition from the paradigm of  ‘Research and Development’ to ‘Research, Innovation and Enterprise’.  That the role of knowledge creation is towards job creation and monetary ends. Everything in the scientific en devour is for the knowledge economy. The best scientific minds it seems will shift globally for research funding and the correct innovation ecosystem. As Marx said, a man’s labor is for capital accumulation. seems fit in this regard.

Science is a game changing social institution, there is no two ways about that.  Scientific talent have changed society for the better mostly. Apart from Nuclear Technology which has a potential for destruction is also a source for energy independence from Oil.  The question which came to my mind is, where is the patience for fundamental scientific research if every piece of intellectual property  is geared towards capital generation. Core fundamental scientific research takes a long time to be of any use in a commercial form. The market does not have the time for such experimentation. Not all research is as easy as creating an i phone app, quantum physics to cancer biology research; things take time.  We have been sold the story about the IT phenomenon, but innovation has a price and real innovation needs persistence.  Good Science takes time.

Every technology has a unique epistemology which is followed. Core Science research cannot be open source totally. The main element which i find lacking in the current innovation discourse is the missing social centric approach. Application of Science towards developmental needs is critical. It is about time, that Innovation planners account for what kind of scientific solutions which communities shall require in the upcoming decades. Market is excellent when it comes towards disseminating a technology, not when it comes to a breakthrough. Defense Research created the Internet, Nuclear Energy came from the Manhattan Project; Its time to be Social Constructionist in Nature not Technologically Deterministic. A radical rethink is indeed required.

Sir V S Naipaul at the Tehelka Goa Think Fest a few months back while in conversation with Tarun Tejpal commented in response to his question regarding the best advice he can provide writers: and the venerable Mr. Naipaul said that it would the best thing for a potential writer to skip university. Thats a radical suggestion from all dimensions. The rationale which VS Naipaul gave that university shapes a person to think in a particular manner. The distinctive style of writing is thus lost which a person is born with, an artistic flair that is not manufactured and is thus a breath of fresh air. Education presents us cognitive frameworks to think, analyse content, data and situations. But the talent cannot be given birth in a creative writing class. It is the raw marble slab which is polished fine in an English literature program.   Education gives us certification, and the time to grow up to be what we are; but these things can be done after high school taking up an apprenticeship  and working up the ranks.  The Citadels of Higher Education are creating non functional beings, unable to think for themselves and hence becoming slaves of the market.

Innovative talent gets lost in the quagmire of structured learning as teachers want us to think in a particular manner. Its the teachers perspective which prevails. As a person shifting from Engineering to Sociology, I have faced the brunt of this treatment. I have miserably done in assignments as i ‘did not meet’ the teachers expectation. Is this grad school all about? Is it about social control and conditioning or about value creation and learning at the end of the day. So much for the oxymoron called ‘inter-disciplinary-learning’.  It takes time, effort and energy to make a domain transition and for cross-pollination of intellectual ideas. Structured learning does not have any room for that, and then these folks expect ‘out of the box thinking and learning’.

I am equally amused, bewildered and frustrated in equal measure. The Iron Towers of High Table Academia are impossible to breach as people need PhD’s and Post Docs to make it even to a reasonable university to teach. The paradigm of publish and perish makes it hard to hire good teachers which ultimately becomes difficult to create a generation of informed citizens as profs are more inclined towards writing papers and not towards teaching. Its a battle for tenure than teaching well at the end of the day. Do not blame them, we all have bills to pay and families to feed.

I have come across high profile managers who are doing good with an undergrad degree in their careers, who teach adjunct in universities and teach better than career academics. Salman Rushdie’s books are taught in post colonial literature PhD level modules in English Literature programs globally, and he himself is a history major from Cambridge and teaches at Emory in the USA. I support the Stanford Prof in Computer Science who quit his tenured post and started a open digital university offering courses. The Un College movement started by Dale Stephens, a Thiel Fellowship recipient offers training which is free and open source, which an average college student in US is raking up debt which they cannot pay back for years after graduating.

I feel as education has under-delivered when it comes to skills really needed in the market, an undergrad degree is equal to a diploma 30 years back. A double masters holder gets offered an entry level job. What the hell is going on? I feel saddened at the state of affairs, truly….