Sunday Posts

I was in India for a week and I heard one word repeated over and over again: Scale!  India is trying to do something unique. It is trying to create a prosperous society with a huge scale. This isn't about a small proportion of a small population of a small European nation becoming rich: This is about hundreds of millions of people being pulled out of deprivation and empowered to shape their own lives. The ambition is staggering. My engagement, I should admit, is only with higher education. I am not as familiar with the workings of the other sectors of the economy. And Indian higher education is, in many ways, peculiar: While the commercial activities of the country have been 'liberalised' and faced global competition and benchmarking, Indian higher education is still very protected. It has been privatised but through a license raj where politicians called the shots. Indian higher education is, therefore, a strange beast: It has the characteristics of the pre-90s Indian busi

Sir Keir Starmer is a man in a hurry, as he sets upon his task. He seems to know that he needs to get things done quickly, or otherwise his government may crumble under its own weight. That's what super-majorities such as these do - they allow the hangover to spoil the work-day. Britain is in decline and another decade later, when the rest of the world has fixed its financial infrastructure and the Americans have finally gone home, no one will care about this little isle. This last opportunity to reverse that fate lies with this government. Supermajorities do another thing. For example, I shall now be voting Green, as I would feel no longer threatened that my vote can give a little filip to people like Sunak. And so will do millions of others next time, as thousand parties may bloom in the aftermath. Labour's big win is obscuring the other stories - the growth of Greens - and the Reform party is being seen as a breakaway faction of the Conservatives, and not as the up-and-comin

Despite all my worries, I woke up happy today. It seems all of the UK has finally woken up and paid back the Tories for their freak show.  We have paid them back for Brexit. It is justice that Nigel Farage spoilt their party and Reform got 14% of the votes. Conservatives let Fascists in, of course - isn't that how it always happens! No one, of course, has a clue what to do with the UK. But the labour is likely to look for a new playback, because they are not tied to any dogma. Rachel Reeves can be trusted to take some kind of Green New Deal path, which I presume the only option to get out of the morass. I also look forward to David Lamy as Foreign Secretary to end the empire hangover finally. Yvette Cooper has a brain and known to have used it, so we may have a Home Secretary who has more to offer than some flights to Rwanda as the solution to all our problems.  I am also happy that the two-track campaign of Rishi Sunak - appearing hurt when someone (one of the Fascists of Reform)

One of the great regrets of my life has been that history ended too soon. I was not even out of college when Soviet Union collapsed, and all ideology seemed to end. Everyone, right and left, agreed that there is no point arguing about how to build a good society and all difference is about the difference in emphasis. But I was already past twenty and arrived in this post-ideology world rather stuck in old-fashioned cocktail of idealism, values etc.  Worse still, I found my nirvana in Internet. That became my place to run away from life. My Indian suburban life, all its expectations, restrictions and pre-conceptions, could be left behind at the first crack of modem handshake. After that, I was transported to the world where people spoke my language, a different type of friendship, dream of an unmoored life. I could be ideological again, at least for those connection minutes I could afford to pay for.  But then it became more user-friendly. The browser was the start of the framing of my

I did more or less abandon this blog. Not because I was writing less - I was writing more. I was writing a lot actually. And speaking a lot. Doing workshops and meeting a lot of people. It was too exciting for me to find time to reflect. Predictably though, that phase is now over. I have done a lot and learnt, but now it is time for me to get back to blogging. And as I restart, I confront the question again: Why am I doing it? These posts were supposed to be breadcrumbs for remembering, so that I remain grounded. They served this purpose wonderfully well when I look back. But several years now, I fell into the public/private persona trap. There is so much I can't write about, and that made honest writing almost impossible. But I am also at that stage, in life and professionally, when being crazy isn't a bad thing. I have always been on the unreasonable side, trying to push the envelop and eschewing security and money and conventional things, but always followed the rules. My gr

International student migration ebbs and flows. We have seen the tide rise just before the pandemic and just after. But what goes up always comes down. The international student flow is a big industry where fortunes have been made. The sector has its conferences, awards, rankings, Gurus, retreats, and the works! It has grown manifold over the years and expanded in lockstep with the growth of China, India, and the rest. The middle classes grew precisely at the time when managerialism and retrenchment of public funds hit the universities in Europe, North America, and Australia. So, Champagne flowed! The sector is built on a set of interlocking stories: The destination countries, such as the UK, get access to skilled professionals. The diversity of the student population helps the universities and students get opportunities and exposure. Last but not the least, most students eventually go back, and their home countries gain in expertise and enterprise that come with education and exposure

Katy Milkman points out that the Spring solstice is a good time to start new things. Certain days work well, her research shows, to start new endeavours: New year's day, birthday, anniversary of something significant! I have missed this year's start to do anything new; right now is my next best chance. I am in the middle of a big change. I, along with a few other people, built a business over the years. But it was flawed from the start. My partners had different aims, which they, self-declaredly, did not disclose. It was more like an academic project put together, without proper structures. I went along with it, acknowledging the limits of my power and boundaries of my engagement. The goal for me was learning and doing, which I have done in abundance. But it was never meant to be a successful in its original aims because of its structural shortcomings, and right now, it is being morphed into something other than its intended form. It is painful, as it will be for any creator in

  Are skills dead? It is awkward to ask just when everyone is talking about skills. In our post-GPT age, the consensus is that while ‘higher education’ may be over, we are entering the age of ‘skills’. Governments worldwide are pouring money into skills education, multinational agencies and think tanks are publishing reports on which skills are needed, and even university leaders are straying into the skills language. Yet, the same reports, employers, and experts are talking about the ‘half-life of skills’. That skills get outdated was known, but we are now talking about them getting outdated faster than it takes to master them. For example, a programming language becoming outdated in 2.5 years would mean that it would not be required by the time one gets to a level of professional maturity in programming with that language. One can argue th