Sunday Posts

It is hard to explain my feelings about the war in Iran.  I have no particular love for the regime, growing up, as I did, with the shadow of Khomeini's fatwa on Salman Rushdie. But like many others, I saw the Islamic Revolution as a part of anti-colonial movement. When Saddam, backed by the Americans, attacked Iran, my sympathies were with the Iranians. That Persia/ Iran is standing on a civilisation thousands of years old, and with which, as a Bengali, my own has a great affinity, was an idea that was ingrained in my thinking. It was an integral part of how I think: East vs West, Coloniser vs the Colonised, Old world vs the New world! But I see Trump's war not so much against Iran but against the rules that we were all supposed to follow, and this is why I am even more upset. Since when 'eliminating' a country's leadership by assassination become a legitimate thing to talk about? If they didn't know that they were starting a forever war, they were stupid: And o...

 Are we in a new world, or witnessing the end of the old one? As I write this, the US and Israeli forces have attacked Iran. Iran has retaliated by sending missile barrages towards Baharin, Qatar, UAE and Israel. Trump is calling for a regime change in Iran and wants to install the son of deposed Shah. Not quite the way of the world I knew, where there was at least the figleaf of international law used by countries wanting to attack one another. I feel pity for Keir Starmer. As far as I am aware, his government is trying to fix Britain's institutions after the stupidity of Brexit and fifteen years of Tory assault on public economy and straightlaced corruption. But Sir Keir has no courage to do something or say something openly. He appears like Trump's poodle, and Trump is a difficult master even to be a poodle too. Therefore, notwithstanding whatever his government is doing, he looks like a joke. He is hollowness personified, and at moments like this, he could as well be a holo...

My New Year's resolution is not to wait any longer, but to get on with what I have always wanted to do: set up a new higher-education institution. I have been waiting forever. Not that I haven't tried, but I have ended up taking the wrong route a few times. Each time I learnt, I have learnt about the merits and considerable challenges of for-profit higher education, and how to balance the different interests to do something innovative. I have learnt about international markets and the rapidly changing expectations of the students. I have taught and know firsthand what social media has done to students' attention and commitment. Having tried project-based learning, I have seen its possibilities and also why it does not work at scale. But, in the learning mode, I was forever waiting - doing various projects adjacent to what I r...

The opening of international university campuses in India has a distinct gold rush feel to it. There are 17 universities whose applications are already through and the projects are at several stages of implementation. Several are in the pipeline. The British universities were quick to move in, given their historical affinity. The Australians followed suit, taking advantage of the geopolitical bonhomie between the two nations. The Canadian universities, despite Canada being a top destination of Indian students in the last decade, were hampered by the rift between the two nations around an alleged state-sponsored assassination of a Canadian citizen. But they feel left behind, and will soon turn up in force at the India AI Summit in February, looking for deals. And, finally, the US universities, ever so inward-looking (international students at US universities make up only 6% of the population, compared to about a quarter in UK or Australia), are slower, but some, like the Illinois Instit...

It feels like another life but I used to be all-in for microcredentials not so long ago. That was the effect of Australia for me. The Australian national framework and the buzz around Microcredentials converted me. I loved its flexibility and the focus on practical stuff. In the UK, where a Masters could be achieved through negotiated learning, it is possible to build a course as close to practical life and work as possible. And, yet, not many people can afford multi-year commitment that such postgrad degrees offer. Microcredentials were that sweet everything - short, flexible, close to real-life and daily work, and in theory, stackable, to make a full qualification! But the standard formula was not exciting enough. Work needed to be team-based and collaborative, otherwise it was to become academic and make-believe. And, therefore, the assessment was meant to be complex. I saw the MCs which are meant to be practical but ended up in reflective essays marked by academic mentors - that wa...

As I set down to write a sequence of paragraphs - I promised to myself not to call it a book - on what makes a person today successfully negotiate life and work over the next 20 or 30 years, I should start with an admission: I have nothing new or insightful to say about how such future lives would pan out to be. I simply don't know.  Therefore, unlike the other 'books' of this kind, I can't start this project with a confident posture, peppered with quotations from McKinsey, PwC or the World Economic Forum. Not that I don't find what they publish useful, but they are useful to me for a different reason. I don't look so much into the Executive Summary and the bold claims these make, but more to the footnotes and the methodology they followed. The methodology often tells a story very different: That these reports, presented as guides for the future of humanity, reflect the views of a very small number of people, drawn from mostly similar backgrounds. They reflect a...