Essays written from thirty years of environmental and sustainability consulting: governance, regulation, institutional failure, and the everyday gap between what a policy promises and what actually gets built, funded or enforced. Many of these pieces are openly sceptical of the industry they come from, questioning fashionable language, weak accountability, and the distance between sustainability as spoken about and sustainability as practised.
Indian cities do not suffer from a shortage of concern about air pollution. They suffer from an excess of watching. Screens refresh, apps ping, colours change. Masks go on and off depending on thresholds; schools shut when numbers cross a line and reopen when they fall. Rarely does anyone pause to ask what exactly changed, why it changed, or whether lungs noticed at all. Now…
Read the full post →The Choreographed Failure of Environmental Governance A Satirical Tour Through Our Perfectly Dysfunctional System My Professor Friend and I were sipping coffee in our usual café on Sunday morning. As always, our conversation slipped into familiar territory: the people who turn weaknesses in environmental governance into convenient opportunities. “Dr Modak,” the Professor said, stirring his coffee with a biodegradable wooden stirrer coated with multilayered plastic.…
Read the full post →Singapore’s aviation regulator, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), will introduce a new “Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Levy” on flights departing Singapore starting in April 2026 (for bookings from that date) and applying to departures from 1 October 2026. The levy is designed to cover the expected premium cost of SAF needed to meet an initial 1 % blending target in 2026 and will be charged…
Read the full post →In today’s world of climate urgency, resource insecurity, and widening social inequalities, sustainability has emerged as the lighthouse—a symbol of moral and strategic direction for responsible growth. It reminds us that we must change course amidst the storms of environmental and economic disruption. But a lighthouse, no matter how bright, cannot move us forward. You still need powerful ships to sail. In the world of…
Read the full post →It was a wet Sunday morning of July in Mumbai when the Professor heard the doorbell ring. A bulky parcel lay at the doorstep — neatly wrapped in shimmering golden plastic, adorned with glossy ribbons and an expensive-looking tag that read: “Let’s go green this Ganesh Chaturthi!” Ganesh Chaturthi is one of India’s most cherished festivals, celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha, the remover of…
Read the full post →*A Professor’s Take on GenZ, AI, and the Art and Science of Building a Real Team* It was a Sunday morning, and I was seated, as usual, in my favourite corner of the Irani café, sipping a weak English breakfast tea and my even weaker optimism about the next generation of professionals. We will call them GenZ. That’s when the Professor walked in. “Good morning,…
Read the full post →Over the past two decades, sustainability has evolved from a feel-good emotion to a heavily institutionalized and acronym-laden discipline. With every passing year, a new abbreviation emerged — often in response to a global event, regulatory shift, or a declaration. The party arguably began with the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) in 2000, which laid the groundwork for their more famous successor, the SDGs (Sustainable Development…
Read the full post →It was a Sunday morning and me and Professor Friend were at our usual coffee shop. We needed something interesting and different to talk about. We had enough discussions on rising prices, increasing poverty, territorial tensions and of course the omnipresent challenge of corruption. So I asked Professor “Do you have something to confess?” We were sipping coffee from reusable bamboo cups. Professor leaned in,…
Read the full post →There is something beautifully brave about choosing to live together. We often romanticize the idea: breakfasts together, laughter echoing in rooms, a sense of "home" that has little to do with the furniture and everything to do with presence. But living together is a subtle, evolved and evolving art. It’s not just about cohabiting — it’s about coexisting with intention, compassion, and awareness. That’s what…
Read the full post →Readers you probably know who Donald Trump is. He is the President of the currently not so great America. He desperately wants America to become a great country. To make this transformation, he recently introduced stringent tariffs across the world that shook the nations, stock exchanges, both rich and poor and even the Penguins in Heart Island and McDonald. He didn’t even spare them and…
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