ESG is the flavor of the corporate zeitgeist for all kinds of drivers and is often treated as an acronym which might be a temperature check for ethics. Environment as a domain when double clicked on, leads to drop down menu of number of sub domains starting from climate change to biodiversity to waste management. Governance is a vast sea of knowledge of their own from anti-graft to board diversity to compensation matters.

As an environmental engineer who retrained as an ethnographer by reading PhD level coursework in Human Geography and Sociology while working on Policy Projects, the S is my area of expertise. However Social itself has several buckets from Health & Safety to DEI to BHR to Community Stakeholder Engagement to Inclusive Governance. Now a days i focus on responsible supply chains and modern slavery concerns including decolonizing HRDD.

The intertwined nature of the various elements and their effect brings about the real nature of the weak signals that ESG as a riskfication paradigm is trying to achieve. All these elements need to be mapped along a spectrum and drawn from the ESIA playbook; the cumulative impact is a vital measure. The interpretive nature of the assessment requires an appreciation of the organizational context.

Ratings and rankings are bundled value judgements; thus, the methodology matters in the way that assessments are done, rather than looking at the rankings at face value. Important questions to ask as a ready reckoner are:

Who is assessing?

To what end is assessment driven data utilized in decision making calculus?

For ESG to move from risk to resilience, power dynamics need to be included.

The dialogue on just transition is vague if communities upstream and downstream with varying degrees of social capital comprising their habitus (invoking Bourdieu) are not involved in decision making that could rip apart the fabric of the everyday for them.

The anti ESG movement has its roots in coal and oil dependent communities seeking survival through politics. As a global movement ESG needs to include diverse voices by relating to the disenfranchised too. The notion of the global is rooted in the planetary risk politics of the hyper risk society. The vote that individuals cast is still local, as jobs are local albeit dependent on transnational flows of capital and resources.

Global is great, however local is better.

#esg#socialcapital

The Diaspora or the host land is always a space time capsule of the past, as home rides new waves.

The Sustainability/Engineering Consulting business is ripe for disruption itself, as many innovative professionals and initiatives are occupying intellectual real estate which was the preserve of the consultant. Little investment in learning ossifies the tool kit.

Climate Migration has been occurring for decades without the term being coined. Communities have been moving to escape famine, drought, and flooding since times immemorial. Rich and Poor both will need to move, as low-lying areas will flood, and vulnerabilities manifest a lived dimension. The business cost is clear to the insurance sector and banks, as well as real estate.

#climate

This year has been one of the most challenging with transitions in terms of geographies, health, and professional moves. The metric for growth has evolved and being anti fragile is the one which dominates the internal dashboard. What makes us wake up each morning with the same energy each day?

What is the impact that we ought to create?

Keep walking is someone’s only thing we can do in the most challenging of circumstances.

After one plus years of zooming about Khaleeji Tarikh with Sana Quadri from Dubai with Revati; it was surreal to meet Historian and Writer Revati Tiwari herself in Mumbai over pav bhaji to discuss the role that South Asians have played in the trade histories of the Gulf.

Revati is fresh off her Fifty-Two article success on Dubai Bania Histories which is her area of doctoral research too. I have a long-term intellectual interest in the Bania Oral Histories Archive in Masqat with Hardik Ramaiya Bhai.

Histories of a Desi Gulf can be written from Bombay too as the ‘Informal Raj’ was run from here (Onley 2007).

To more conversations among Gelf kids on the region we call home.

#research #dubai #trade #mumbai #home

A lot of things which I did not expect to be sincere I was a teacher’s kid, who grew up in a relaxed Gulf capital, where the social and the racial differences were visible. Life since I was a pre-teen has been a hustle to be better and punching above one’s weight category has been the norm rather than the exception as doors were slammed as one was considered miskeen. The choice was not there at all, fight or accept the mediocrity. All the things I have done from engineering to winning three prestigious scholarships in Singapore and Holland (for my masters which I did not take up), have been one start up after another.

A nonlinear career is not one with complete agency, but a way to do the things which I wanted to do as an Ivy League or an Oxbridge education due to financial reasons was out of reach at points of my life. Entrepreneurship and hustle are a state of mind. Each day still happens to be day one after having contributed to nurturing a couple of turnarounds and a couple more start/scale ups in the Gulf and SE Asia.

When i started writing, I was shown the door. But i stayed on long enough to have a hundred plus media articles and thirty odd journal and conference papers. The superpower sometimes keeps writing each day. A lot of kind souls (you know who you are) are angels in disguise.

The Art of the Sale is the most important skill, we are selling subtly a value proposition all the time. It is not a bad word.

Keep Building.

There needs to be better care in terms of medical treatment for injured members of the labor diaspora in the Hindi Heartland. Transnational Social Protection indeed falls short as their nonprofits are struggling for survival themselves. I was interacting with an injured migrant who had an accident at work and no compensation in a major destination country in SE Asia. There are too many people who fall through the gaps. The labor diaspora sends back much needed remittances that are lifesaving though they are back to penury once they head back home.

The south is better organized as migrant worker NGOs and think tanks are present in Kerala and Telangana are they is deeper social capital to bank into as political parties make note. I hope we learn from our eastern and northern neighbor which has a robust civil society which intervenes.

On the trajectory towards something tangible, interdisciplinary, and nonlinear mapped in career across ten countries and three graduate programs in engineering & public policy, sociology, and human geography I have been cancelled and told unmentionables. I still stand here on the crease building ecosystem capacity in sustainability and migration governance. Who said entrepreneurship is easy, however much needed.

#entrepreneurship#sustainability