Caffeine high!

A bad day to have a second cup of coffee. My brain is just too active!

Thoughts and more thoughts. Have tasks to complete? Yes. I made a list of them too - the first thing I did as I came to work. Yet, my mind is wandering in a web of unanswered questions!

Global Value Chains, Trade for Development and Rural Livelihoods, Market Linkages... these are the things that stir me inside out. Feel like someone is shaking off the mundane slumber and compelling me to follow thy path. 

I see so much activity happening in India. I know it is the right time to be home, to be part of a bigger whole and to play my teeny tiny part in the change game. To think, to do, to learn. Ha!

Am I not doing the same here? Probably yes, but may be I am not the global citizen yet. My heart and mind are trapped back home. 

Well well, sitting in a metro was never my idea of an ideal job, and that made it easy to migrate to a foreign land. But I am glad, really glad to have made that move. I would never have realised my true calling had I not stepped out of my comfort zone. The last two years have confirmed and reconfirmed my passion in trade as a tool for development. The Trade Justice course has opened my mind to a whole lot of perspectives. Trade deals never crossed my mind when I thought of development. SDGs always meant good. May be glorified entities, but the course brought to light the darker shades which were otherwise not discussed in public spaces. 

I was reading about GVCs, and never wondered the climate angle to it. The carbon footprint a t-shirt creates just to make it cheaper results in been extremely expensive for the planet. I am also wondering about the returns an enterprise in the developing country would get if the product is completed in their own country. In terms of monetary as well as skill based returns. Wouldn't that make the enterprise/ a collective of enterprises more self sustaining? They have the capacities to produce a whole over mechanically producing parts of the whole.

Aaahh!! What a relief. I feel lot more stable now. Should quickly get back to my To Do list now. 

Why I join the band wagon?

Yesterday Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee along with Micheal Kremer had won the Nobel Prize for Economics - ironically with the aid of Poor Economics!

I see the entire development community trying to post their alliance with the Nobel Laureates on social media, and I, unlike what I usually do, have joined the band in posting my alliance to them. Opportunist, yes. But I am seriously proud to be associated with the growing tribe of development professionals who are committed in tackling the global poverty in their own stride.  

On a very personal level, I am re-ensured that the decision I made 9 years ago, based on pure instinct is not in vain. I am in a sector with no godparents, no one to guide. All decisions were gut instincts and I knew deep inside if I didn't want to do something, or if I was inclined towards something. Choosing and leaving SELCO, Kudumbashree, SERP and CGG was that easy or tough, and gave me more clarity as I moved on. Bumping into Global Value Chains was an accident, a happy one, for it again showed me the way forward. 

In the same exploratory mode, I bumped into Impact Evaluation, and just like Rural Management, which I knew nothing about when I chose to do a Masters in it, I narrowed it on Impact Evaluation as a Technical area that I want to specialise in. I did a summer school at IRMA in 2015 to get introduced to Impact Evaluation, but that was that. Never had the time to put into practice what I learned. 

I was lucky to bump into the MIT online course on Data, Economics, Development Policy micromasters course and started doing the course in bits and pieces. Well, this is where I was introduced to the nobel laureates,  Esther and Abhijit. I was pleasantly surprised to see an Indian heading The Abdul Lateef Jamal Poverty Action Lab in MIT, J-PAL for short. Consequently, J-PAL became I place I wanted to be associated with, and a Masters in Development Practice seemed my ticket to the organisation. This been said, choosing not to study came with its loooong thought process. I did do another Summer School on Impact evaluation in Trinity College, and did spend a bomb on it. I definitely have a better understanding than before, but I also know my gaps and need to work on them. Only if I get a chance to work on a live project!

Anyways, now that Poor Economics is all over the Development spectra, I am both happy and sad. Happy that the sector and the work is recognised and sad that well, in a saturated small sector, competition is only going to increase! Buckle up Sammy.. Pull your socks up and run the rat race, join the band wagon :D

For now, I am excited, high spirited and just glad that I am on the right track. And as always, trying to mentally isolate from the crowd and run my own marathon ;)