2017-11-02 12:16
Automation sounds like Science Fiction. There is an eerie feeling watching a Humanoid Robot on stage. It's indeed there, all over Facebook, but like the other strange things, it is easy to a… Read More
Blog Directory > Politics Blogs > Government Blogs > Sunday Posts government Blog >
Sunday Posts Blog
sundayposts.blogspot.com
Tags:
college
education
hiring
professional education
earlier
politics
pratik
culture
university
higher
Books; People; Ideas : These are few of my favourite things. As I live between day-to-day compromises and change-the-world aspirations, this is the chronicle of my journey, full of moments of despair and of discoveries, of connections and creations, of the quest of knowledge-as-conversation.
2017-10-29 12:41
In an earlier post, I pointed out that the application of 'platform thinking' in education misses the mark, as it fails to understand how value is created in education. Since this apparently… Read More
2017-10-28 12:39
I have come back where I started. I decided to write this blog in a diary mode yet again. This is how I started anyway, but abandoned the banter as I got more people reading the blog. But I… Read More
2017-10-23 21:03
There is not much we agree upon these days, except that more and more people should go to college. This has become the self-evident truth of the late Twentieth century, and achieved the stat… Read More
2017-10-17 10:06
It only seems natural to hire people who fit the organisation's culture. In fact, the most common excuse for executive failure is the inability to fit into the culture of an organisation. We… Read More
2017-10-03 15:29
The inspiration behind this post comes from several conversations with my colleague Pratik Dattani, the former UK Director of FICCI, an Indian trade body. Pratik, in a regular column he writ… Read More
2017-10-02 10:49
It is possible to see the recent history as an interplay between Politics and Economics, and 2016 as some kind of inflection point that made politics interesting again.
Allowing for a bro… Read More
2017-09-28 11:24
This has been the best and worst of the times for Higher and Professional Education. While people pursuing Higher and Professional Education has attained a new peak globally, new questions a… Read More
2017-09-27 12:34
I wrote previously about the College Trap (see here) - how college can't be denied to anyone in a democratic society and yet, the prevalence of college may privilege one kind of learning ove… Read More
2017-09-26 15:53
Over the last several decades, the politics of college has reached a consensus: Everyone seemed to agree that more people attending college is a good thing. The usual conservative position… Read More
2017-09-21 10:47
I came across the term, 'self-colonialization', in a news report on Arundhati Roy's recent speech in Berlin. She was speaking at the launch of her book, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, in… Read More
2017-09-14 12:25
It may seem a strange question, but this is one of the key debates in Education: Should Education be about acquiring knowledge or developing skills?
One side of the debate are peopl… Read More
2017-09-05 13:16
Earlier, I claimed Ed-Tech is over-rated: It promises too much and delivers too little. Worse, the noise of EdTech obscures Education Innovation, which encompasses lot more than gadgets and… Read More
2017-08-30 17:27
I hope some people will agree with me if I say EdTech is over-rated. It's a nifty term, much broader than the older, nerdy, E-Learning; it is also a conscious claim to affinity with its famo… Read More
2017-08-29 14:16
It is easy to overestimate the potential impact of urban development initiatives, public or private. Because as high level concepts, we delve in a culture-free world, assuming that everyone… Read More
2017-08-28 13:57
Kolkata needs a fresh start.
One of the first mega-cities in Asia, and $150 Billion economy, has fallen from grace, somewhat. It is no way a 'dying city' as Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime… Read More
2017-08-23 16:03
Don't be perplexed. I know you may be wondering how on earth can someone love bureaucracy, which stands for all the bad things - slowness, indifference, complexity, lethargy - but I argue ba… Read More
2017-08-18 12:20
Working in Education, I have to confront the conversations about Automation all the time: Are there enough jobs there for us to educate so many people?
As with other things in life, there… Read More
2017-08-13 22:38
As Brexit starts to bite, the politics of it has come alive again.
There are some clear signs that the British economy has started cooling. In a way, the experts were right: We have… Read More
2017-08-12 15:42
The idea came to me from various conversations in China and India: That teacher training in Higher Education is an urgent need and a significant opportunity.
This is counter-intuitive. Mo… Read More
2017-08-11 10:08
I remember this awkward dinner conversation. I was with my colleague in Northern Ireland, and a friend of his joined our table. After we were introduced, he wondered at my name and asked me… Read More
2017-07-30 09:27
I am now in India, after a gap of several months. A lot has changed in the few months since I was last here. Most visibly, the money has changed - the Rs. 1000 notes have vanished and the ub… Read More
2017-07-12 13:58
Automation is Capitalism's great new prize and its most potent challenge. At once, it breaks the back of organised labour but puts into disarray the carefully constructed social system that… Read More
2017-07-12 09:14
As the crisis in jobs becomes apparent, many think that the way to maintain the Middle Class society is to be found in entrepreneurship. In their mind, it is a straightforward transition: Pe… Read More
2017-07-11 22:00
Last week, voice recording of an HR executive firing an employee at Tech Mahindra, a big Indian IT company, went viral. The employee was told that he is being fired not because of any perfor… Read More
2017-07-11 12:25
The world of politics is changing profoundly. It is not just about the rise of the strongmen rulers - President Xi of China, Prime Minister Abe of Japan, Prime Minister Modi of India or Pres… Read More
2017-07-10 12:08
Ideas are fascinating and exciting. We live in a culture that celebrates ideas. In a sense, we see all history as history of ideas now. It is ideas that make men great, and the great men are… Read More
2017-07-06 17:42
Introduction
In the second decade of the new millennium - now - new questions about human abilities and human worth have arisen. A vast industry of computerisation and gradual rise of… Read More
2017-07-06 16:28
For the last year or so, I was trying to achieve a balance between my academic and commercial work. I am lucky in a way because I love the work I do, so it's more than the usual striving for… Read More
2017-07-02 11:26
A week into my 100 day plan, I have kept most of my pledges except doing a daily update on this blog. And, that is perhaps for better: It is best to let the mind settle when embarking on a n… Read More
2017-06-25 12:43
My attempts to write a true Sunday Post failed in the past.
I started this blog to maintain a scrapbook of ideas, as I live through my immigrant life (which, presumed I, would only… Read More
2017-06-23 17:54
Indian Higher Education needs reform, and urgently. The post-Independence system of education, built on the edifice of the colonial structure, largely made of State-owned and State-supported… Read More
2017-06-19 09:20
Education will be transformed by technology, but not until the technologists have fully appreciated the Culture question.
This is EdTech's blind spot. Culture is 'soft' - it is hard to ca… Read More
2017-06-11 12:43
One big conversation in India is about its resurgence, of its getting back to Global top table. However, the very conversation also indicate an admission of a fall, that there is a period of… Read More
2017-06-10 09:47
As one of my correspondents accurately pointed out, responding my earlier post on UK General Elections, one big loser on the 8th June was Centrist politics. The Labour Party, under a now sec… Read More
2017-06-09 10:18
UK General Elections are over.
It is hard to say who has won. The Party with most seats in Parliament is looking very much the loser, and the Party which came second, now thre… Read More
2017-06-08 17:42
The British Hindus, particularly the first generation ones, vote Conservative.
This is strange, because most of them, yours truly included, are in this country because of the Immigr… Read More
2017-06-08 12:54
President Trump wants to withdraw from the UN Convention of Human Rights. Theresa May in Britain is promising to sweep aside Human Rights legislation. The governments in France, Germany and… Read More
2017-06-08 11:34
Democracy is endangered, from itself. Or, more specifically, myths about democracy is now threatening the continuation of the democratic system.
Myth, such as that modern democracy is a t… Read More
2017-06-03 18:37
Wrong question, perhaps! Some of the times I asked the question, I got awkward pauses in return. This is a dinosaur question, so dated, reactions indicated: Going global means being on the C… Read More
2017-06-02 12:13
There was a way of developing a business: A company captured its local market first and then went abroad. Indeed, we are excluding Trading Companies such as the East India Company, which was… Read More
2017-05-31 10:16
Here are five main reasons I shall vote Labour, in UK General Election due on 8th June.
First, the Conservative Government under Theresa May is, contrary to its claim, neither strong nor… Read More
2017-05-23 10:48
Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax
That the Board of Control of East India Company, the parliamentary body supervising the affairs of the East India Company from London, sent a famous dispa… Read More
2017-05-22 07:32
Two things trigger this thought. First, the conversation I have been recently engaged into, and particularly the question, why is Indian IT Industry is not more innovative. And, second, this… Read More
2017-05-19 13:20
I wrote a post yesterday on the 'crisis' of the Indian IT industry. My essential point in this was that while the Indian media sees a sudden crisis in the Indian IT sector and summarily blam… Read More
2017-05-18 17:54
Indian IT is in a crisis, or so the newsmen claim.
A string of layoffs, some at very senior level, and the new and proposed visa measures in the United States, United Kingdom, Austr… Read More
2017-05-16 09:17
I am finally onto a project I always wanted to do: Write a history of the Colonial Universities.
Indeed, I start with a very modest work - an essay on the establishment of metropolitan un… Read More
2017-05-14 10:46
Three building blocks of the world order we are accustomed to are Global Financial System, Nation States and Democracy.
This is what we have built over the last 150 years. The Globa… Read More
2017-05-12 11:50
Technological unemployment was a long time coming. When Keynes used the term, he was not speculating about the future: He saw machine replacing humans in his own time. And, before him too, o… Read More
2017-05-09 13:30
Seventy years on, the Republic of India is now at one of those crossroads when its foundational ideas are being questioned. Its middle classes, in the throes of an existential crisis as the… Read More
2017-05-05 13:52
In India, people demand that there should be more universities. Why, they point out, India has only 600-odd universities, whereas United States as 6 times as many for one-fifth of the popula… Read More
2017-04-27 09:43
University making in India is entering a new phase. The rushed expansion of the Higher Education system is perhaps over, with many of those new colleges and universities in crisis. There is… Read More
2017-04-24 11:23
Introduction
“Nationalism is a doctrine invented in Europe at the beginning of Nineteenth Century” is the opening statement of Elie Kedourie’s history of the idea of Natio… Read More
2017-04-24 11:17
The ‘Why’ Question?
Adolf Hitler was appointed the German Chancellor by President Von Hindenburg on 30th January 1933. This was an extraordinary turn of events. Previously, Pres… Read More
2017-04-24 09:17
As much as we, expats, try to deny it, we are at an inflexion point. The great global wave of migration, that set off in the 90s and that many of us leave home and settle abroad, is beginnin… Read More
2017-04-11 19:17
Calcutta Coffee House - Famed but Forgotten
One of the key arguments in favour of urbanisation is that cities can be creative and innovative in a way the rural life may never be.
T… Read More
2017-04-06 09:47
There are two reasons why I am writing this post, which is really a retake of an earlier post - Should Britain Apologise? - which I recently shared on Social Media.
The first is tha… Read More
2017-04-04 10:46
There is no longer an automatic progression from higher education to work. There was perhaps never was one, but usually the jobs that needed middle level cognitive skills usually outnumbered… Read More
2017-04-02 12:27
2016 has been a watershed year for many 'Liberals' - with its paradigm shifting events such as Brexit and Trump - but the writing was perhaps on the wall. And, it is not just an Anglo-Americ… Read More
2017-03-27 10:21
Shashi Tharoor, Author and Indian Politician, has touched a number of raw nerves when he compared Churchill and Hitler, maintaining “Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler… Read More
2017-03-26 11:47
Stayzilla, an Indian start-up which offered homestays, like AirBnB, is in the news, for wrong reasons. That Stayzilla decided to down shutters would have made it to the trade press, and furt… Read More
2017-03-22 18:58
Remote Work was once the future. With falling costs of communication, cool technologies and devices that are increasingly capable, and a need for specialised talent that may not be geographi… Read More
2017-03-21 11:07
We knew this anecdotally: That Engineering graduates can not find a job in India. Now, we have some numbers: AICTE says that 60% of the 800,000 engineering graduates every year remain unempl… Read More
2017-03-20 19:41
Calcutta needs a new start.
The city which I call home has earned a bad name, but its reputational problems have more to do with the politics of India than economic fundamentals.
The c… Read More
2017-03-19 13:06
It is common to hear - Globalization is not working for everyone! The Right says it, and believes that closed societies with open economies is the answer; the Left says it too, though they b… Read More
2017-03-18 20:35
I am sure 'career indulgences' appears an oxymoron, there can't be such a thing!
But in my quest to do things I love, and also to work with people I like, I have created, at least, the po… Read More
2017-03-16 08:03
Dr Liam Fox, the smooth talking Tory Secretary of International Trade, apparently tweeted, and then denied he 'tweeted', that "the United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European… Read More
2017-03-14 12:13
India is in the middle of a great transformation, driven by the aspirations of its young people.
This transformation is apparent to any visitor in India, primarily through its business pa… Read More
2017-03-11 18:12
Today's election results in five Indian states may or may not be noticed by the world media, but they are, in a way, no less significant than the Brexit vote or Trump's victory in November… Read More
2017-03-08 21:30
Here is a conversation in preparation: What have I learnt about Product Development through my years of hustle in my quest to build Education-to-Employment and Education-to-Enterprise pathwa… Read More
2017-03-06 11:09
If Margaret Thatcher's legacy is sealed as "there is no such thing as society", Theresa May may have already given us something to remember her for: "But if you believe you are a citizen of… Read More
2017-03-05 13:32
I have been reading Mark Lilla's The Reckless Mind (New York Review of Books, 2016), which is an insightful portrait of six intellectuals in Politics. Lilla's broad point is that seeking the… Read More
2017-03-02 14:49
When facts change..
I enthused when Labour Party chose Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. It promised an escape from politics as usual, a break from the smooth-talking career politicians… Read More
2017-02-28 10:21
Or, I could have said - why I can't read business books. At least, not anymore.
This may seem inconsequential, but it is not for me. In fact, it is an existential problem that I face now:… Read More
2017-02-26 19:15
Everything is business, we are told. Business, the discipline of making profits, is, to us, a higher ethic to strive for. In fact, it is the only ethic left standing. The Governments and its… Read More
2017-02-22 16:50
For those who accept that the structure of the world economy is undergoing a change - automation and political imperatives in developed countries putting a stop to expansion and even reversi… Read More
2017-02-21 13:37
We have grown up with the 'Tragedy of The Commons' programmed in our brains.
If something is common property, no one cares for it - we have taken it for granted. It is because the w… Read More
2017-02-19 19:11
My previous post, on whether Hinduism is the only thing to unite India, to which my answer was negative, was based on the idea that Indian culture is quite distinct from 'Hinduism'. It is th… Read More
2017-02-18 13:25
The title of this post is in quotes because someone told me this. This was some days ago, over lunch in London, something that I stayed with me since. This is one post I started writing, and… Read More
2017-02-14 16:50
In 2013, when we started U-Aspire, I developed a certification for Global Business Professional. This was endorsed by UK's Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) and subsequently, we g… Read More
2017-02-13 13:23
The paradox at the heart of middle class lives is this - it is an unending pursuit of mediocrity.
I know we want to see it differently. The great middle class dream is the pursuit of ha… Read More
2017-02-10 13:36
There are other ways of describing them. An inexact 'millennial', approximating the year they were born in; a condescending 'young'; a technologically determined 'Digital Native'; or some ot… Read More
2017-02-07 12:26
The work and careers are changing. As most process-based jobs get automated, it seems the winners will be those with greater intellectual skills. In the meantime, the salary premium for coll… Read More
2017-02-06 13:40
The conversation in India today is centred on exporting workers. The Indian government is funding Skills Development centres across the country with a mandate for training young people so th… Read More
2017-02-04 19:06
For being global, this is the worst of the time and the best of the time.
The worst part is obvious: Various countries now want to put themselves 'First' and that is not an ideal sc… Read More
2017-02-03 11:35
Should we compare Trump to Hitler?
Hitler is a real historical figure, but he is also a symbol, something we invoke perhaps a bit too often. Anyone disagreeable in government is called Hi… Read More
2017-01-31 20:14
There are people who would proclaim 'End of Capitalism' as each new crisis breaks, only to be proved wrong. Just as Marx did in his time, they see this end coming in every war or revolution… Read More
2017-01-31 09:52
EdTech was one of the fancy terms that took hold in the last decade. It succeeded 'e-Learning', which started the journey around the time of 'e-Commerce', but failed to get a second life in… Read More
2017-01-30 10:23
Is it important to have an independent Indian imagination?
The question may be too obvious and too jarring at the same time. Too obvious, because the imagination of the Indian Republic was… Read More
2017-01-28 19:30
The UK Supreme Court's ruling that the Houses of Parliament must have its say in UK's invoking Article 50 caused trouble, yet again, for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour Leader, just as our Prime M… Read More
2017-01-27 12:40
'Post-Truth' was the international word for the year 2016 for the OED. And, 2017 is firmly entrenching the idea, with 'alternative facts' being a popular expression with the new Trump admini… Read More
2017-01-20 16:05
(Image Courtsey: The Economist)
As we wait for the Trump Presidency, the transformation of the American Corporatist State into a Corporation, with a billionaire-filled Cabinet. It is one… Read More
2017-01-09 13:25
2017 has brought out all those Nostradamus and other doomsday predictions out of closet yet again, and this is because, rather ironically, 2016 has proved most predictions wrong and doomed t… Read More
2017-01-05 12:12
The UK Government's proposed Higher Education Bill, which, among other things, makes it easy for For-Profit Universities to get degree-granting status, is expected to face steep opposition a… Read More
2017-01-03 07:32
As one must, I look out to 2017 for a new start. The time is appropriate to think what this should look like, on the morning of the first working day of 2017.
2016 was a strange year. I… Read More
2017-01-02 13:08
BRICS, the acronym fashioned by Jim O'Neill to signify a special set of 'emerging' economies that would drive global growth, had better days. There was a time, in the immediate aftermath of… Read More
2016-12-31 10:07
All our politics is Politics of Welfare.
For, all our difference, between Liberals and Conservatives, the Left and the Right, can be summarised as this:
1. The Liberals want the State… Read More
2016-12-20 11:53
I wrote a post earlier about my reading enterprise in 2016 (see here), something of a narrative account of my book diary and a Goodread's Reading Challenge that I indulged myself with. As an… Read More
2016-12-19 11:57
There is a talent problem in our economies. Speak to any employer in almost any country, and they will tell you how hard it is to find good employees with appropriate skills. And, this happe… Read More
2016-12-18 13:03
I started 2016 with a surprise discovery: That Bill Gates reads a book a week! I love reading books, yes, the old fashioned paper books, and spend most of my time and money on books. And, ye… Read More
Subscribe to Sunday Posts
Get updates delivered right to your inbox!