IMPERMANENCE

 

Pic Taken at Pashupati Arya Ghat, Kathmandu, Nepal.

“Up to the doorway, kin will walk with you.

Up to the street, your wife will stand beside you.

Up to the graveyard, children will follow in tears.

But at the final step, who is left with you?

 

Dance as long as you can dance,

Speak as long as words will carry.

Gather wealth, gather friends,

But none will travel past the fire.

 

For the cradle, there is the mother’s care,

For the bed, there is the maiden’s love.

For hunger, there is food,

For sorrow, there is wisdom.

 

Ask the one who has left this world,

He will call you to follow.

Ask the one who has just arrived,

He will beg you to stay.

 

The body will fall, the soul will slip away,

The flame will rise, ashes will scatter,

And what remains?

Only silence,

Teaching us what endures, nothing but truth.”

(Translated from Kavignar Kannadasan’s Veedu Varai Uravu-1962)

 

Kannadasan’s “Veedu Varai Uruvu” is not just a song, it is a mirror held up to life’s impermanence. Written for the film Paadha Kaanikkai, the lyric glimmers with the wisdom of Advaita Vedanta philosophy, echoing the truths of detachment and mortality that have shaped centuries of thought. What lends the song its quiet power is its unflinching honesty, family, friends, wealth, and possessions accompany us only so far, and no further. They walk beside us to the doorstep, to the street, perhaps even to the cremation ground but when the final threshold is reached, we are left alone. This stark recognition punctures the illusions we wrap ourselves in, the illusions that relationships and riches can shield us from the inevitable.

Yet Kannadasan, in his genius, does not plunge the listener into despair. Instead, he offers a wider lens. He speaks of the cycles of existence, birth, nurture, desire, and finally, the wisdom that mortality affords. The song is not a lament but a call, to live clearly, to live wisely, and to remember that truth alone outlasts the pageant of life. In this way, impermanence becomes not a shadow, but a lantern.

The resonance of these words was felt with chilling force during the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, mortality was no longer an abstraction reserved for philosophy or poetry. It was intimate, palpable, threaded through the air we breathe. Streets fell silent, hospitals overflowed, and the news became a litany of loss. For a fleeting moment, humanity seemed awakened to impermanence. We saw, perhaps more starkly than ever before, how fragile life is, how thin the veil of certainty really was. And yet, as swiftly as this awareness descended, it evaporated. Like morning dew dissolving under the sun, the clarity faded. Greed returned, ego reclaimed its throne, and the world rushed back into the arms of acquisition and pride, as though nothing had been learned.

The larger world tells the same story, only on a grander stage. A World Bank study now lists 39 fragile and conflict-affected countries that have been driven into deeper turmoil since 2020, where it is witnessing economies collapsing, violence rising, humanitarian crises swelling. The Peace Research Institute (Oslo) reports that battlefield deaths have reached a 30 year high, spurred by wars that escalated or reignited in the wake of the pandemic. What could have been a moment of global reckoning instead became  a return to old appetites, power, possession, and domination.

Into this fragile landscape, step leaders who amplify denial rather than humility. When Donald Trump declares that climate change is a hoax, or sneers that Europe is “going to hell,” it is not simply bluster, it is the voice of a culture unwilling to confront impermanence. His words echo the very pride and carelessness Kannadasan warned against, and the fact that such rhetoric carries weight in the world’s largest economy speaks to the perilous path humanity treads.

And still, even with more international institutions than at any point in history, bodies designed to safeguard peace, health, and justice, the world remains more fragmented than ever. These institutions, too, fall prey to self-interest, each absorbed in its own orbit, each chasing narrow agendas. The irony is striking. Humanity has never had more mechanisms for unity, yet it has rarely felt more divided.

Can it be otherwise? Perhaps. But only if we allow impermanence to be more than an idea. If we see it not as a gloomy shadow but as the absolute truth on which all else rests. To live with this awareness is to strip life of its vanities, to loosen the grip of greed and ego, to seek instead what endures beyond death’s boundary: compassion, wisdom, and clarity.

Kannadasan’s lyrics, in its gentle cadence, whispers what our times demand in a thunderous voice, all that we cling to will dissolve, but in embracing this truth, we may finally learn how to live. Like a river returning to the sea, our journey is not one of loss but of return, of flowing back to the source from which we came, carrying nothing but the wisdom of having passed through the world with open eyes.

What we may lose is borrowed time, but instead we will gain the clarity of return.

Cheers.

 

ravivarmman@1304260920253.0567° N, 101.5851° E

Cheap Migrant Labour or Structural Malaise? Rethinking U.S. Policy on Work Visas and Sustainable Employment

 

Pic from my Refrigerator Magnet

In recent years, the US administration has voiced increasing concern that foreign workers are undercutting American employees, particularly in high-skilled sectors such as information technology. Policymakers argue that this influx of international talent not only threatens job security for American graduates but also constitutes a broader economic and national security risk. The statistics appear to support these anxieties, for example H-1B visa allocations in the IT sector rose from 32% in 2003 to over 65% by 2024, while unemployment among U.S. IT graduates has climbed to 7.5%, a rate higher than most other fields of study. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of foreign STEM workers in the United States more than doubled, even though overall STEM employment only grew by 44.5% during that period.

These figures, coupled with reports of American IT workers being compelled to train their foreign replacements under nondisclosure agreements, suggest to many observers a systemic effort by U.S. companies to replace domestic employees with cheaper foreign labour. Critics warn that such practices may discourage young Americans from pursuing careers in STEM fields, thereby creating vulnerabilities in national security, as critical data and digital infrastructure could increasingly come under the management of non US nationals.

Yet while the fear is understandable, focusing exclusively on “cheap migrant labour” misidentifies the root of the problem. What is framed as a labour market distortion caused by immigration is, in reality, a symptom of deeper structural choices within American capitalism. The more fundamental challenge is the reluctance of employers to internalize the true costs of production, whether through paying wages that reflect U.S. living standards or through consumers, especially the affluent, accepting higher prices for domestically produced goods and services. So long as this underlying dynamic persists, reliance on foreign labour will remain attractive to firms, regardless of how restrictive immigration policy becomes.

Symptom versus Disease

The rhetoric around “cheap migrant labour” is politically potent because it offers a visible, tangible culprit. But the displacement of US workers is not driven solely by immigration policy. It is driven by the structural incentive of capital to minimize costs in pursuit of shareholder value. Employers resist paying wages that align with the dignity of American living standards, while consumers, particularly in higher income brackets, refuse to absorb the higher prices that would make domestically produced goods and services viable. The result is a systemic reliance on cheaper labour, whether sourced abroad or imported through visa programs.

To confuse this symptom with the disease is to risk designing policies that address appearances rather than causes. Attempts to restrict visas or penalize companies for hiring foreign workers may yield short-term political wins, but they fail to alter the structural drivers that make outsourcing or migrant labour economically rational in the first place.

The Risks of Protectionist Policy

This blind spot is evident in the recent policy statement under the Trump administration to impose a $100,000 fee on each work visa issued to foreign employees. The intent is clear, to create financial disincentives for companies reliant on international labour and to redirect opportunities toward American workers. But the likely outcomes are more ambiguous.

In the immediate term, such fees will significantly increase operating costs for firms, particularly in high skilled industries such as technology, healthcare, and engineering. Companies will respond by reconfiguring their hiring practices, accelerating automation, or shifting investment abroad. Over the medium term, some businesses may adjust and rebalance their labour strategies, but it remains uncertain whether the policy will meaningfully reduce unemployment among US graduates. Structural challenges such as skill mismatches, global competition for talent, and the rise of automation complicate the assumption that jobs freed from foreign workers will seamlessly flow to American citizens.

Ironically, by making the US less attractive to global talent, protectionist measures risk pushing innovative firms to relocate overseas, hastening the very decline they were designed to prevent. In the pursuit of an “America for Americans,” the administration may inadvertently create an America less competitive on the world stage.

The Need for a Paradigm Shift

If the aim is truly to revitalize opportunities for American workers, the solution cannot rest on piecemeal fixes or punitive immigration policies. Instead, it demands a broader reorientation of the socioeconomic system. At its core, the problem lies in how labour is valued within US capitalism. So long as labour is treated as an expendable input to be minimized, any attempt to patch the system will only deepen systemic instability.

A paradigm shift would involve rebalancing the relationship between capital, labour, and consumers. Employers must be willing to pay wages that reflect not only market demand but also the cost of sustaining dignified living standards in the United States. Consumers, particularly those who have benefited most from globalization, must accept the discipline of paying more for goods and services produced under fair conditions. And policymakers must move beyond symbolic gestures to design structural reforms that address wage stagnation, invest in education, and reduce the skill mismatches that make US workers less competitive.

Without this deeper reorientation, policies will continue to treat symptoms rather than causes. Visa restrictions may temporarily slow the inflow of foreign workers, but companies will still seek cost arbitrage, either through outsourcing or automation. Workers will continue to feel displaced, and national security concerns about reliance on foreign expertise will persist.

Navigating a Post Pandemic Economy

The urgency of structural reform has become even clearer in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global disruptions revealed that economic shocks are no longer exceptional, they are a constant feature of the modern economy. Businesses worldwide have had to strengthen risk management, diversify supply chains, and build resilience into operations, all of which have raised the baseline cost of doing business.

Within this context, measures such as the $100,000 visa fee risk compounding existing pressures on firms. While intended to prioritize American workers, such policies may instead accelerate the search for cheaper alternatives abroad or through automation. Over time, they may even undermine the resilience of the U.S. economy by restricting access to the global talent pool essential for innovation and growth.

Conclusion-Beyond Tinkering at the Edges

The American debate over foreign workers has been framed in terms of unfair competition and national security threats. But to frame the problem as “cheap migrant labour” is to confuse the symptom with the disease. The deeper crisis lies in the refusal of American capital to internalize the true costs of production and in the reluctance of consumers to support a sustainable domestic economy through higher prices.

Policies that focus narrowly on restricting visas or penalizing companies may offer short-term relief, but they risk long term damage, such as, demoralizing future generations of STEM workers, pushing firms abroad, and weakening U.S. competitiveness. A sustainable solution requires more than tinkering at the edges. It requires a systemic reorientation of values, where labour is no longer treated as expendable but recognized as central to national prosperity and security. Only through such a paradigm shift can the United States address the root of the problem and chart a path toward an equitable and resilient economic future.

Cheers.

ravivarmman@160022092025 3.0567° N, 101.5851° E

To Live or To Leave

 

Bunga Raya

(Pic from Garden)

I was reading an article written by Amarjeet Singh@AJ which was being circulated in the social media, entitled, “Malaysia: Country That Exports Its Best Minds…For Free”.  Amarjeet Singh’s words cut sharply at the truth of Malaysia’s predicament, yet I find myself pausing at his conclusion of “who stays behind.” The reality, I believe, is more textured. Beyond the categories of those too poor to leave and those too indoctrinated to question, there exists another generation, “my generation”,  who remain not out of helplessness nor blindness, but out of rootedness.

We are tied to this land not merely by circumstance, but by the invisible threads of memory, relationships, and belonging. I have walked these roads, raised a family here, shared laughter with friends under these skies. Why should I trade that for an alien soil, where even in my old age I might mow my own lawn in solitude, or stand at a checkout counter under the gaze of strangers wondering why I am in “their” country? Here, even if tormented at times, I stand with dignity, because this is the place where my footsteps mean something, and where the soil remembers who I am.

For us, pride is not only in national achievements but in the quiet knowledge that we have contributed, as carpenters, doctors, lawyers, labourers, or teachers, to the fabric of this society. That lived journey cannot be erased, nor can its worth be denied.

To the younger ones, I say, “go forth if you must”. The world is now borderless, and your stage is global. Relationships are no longer bound by proximity, they live on through digital threads and evolving norms of connection. Build your lives where you find meaning and carry your roots lightly yet proudly.

But let us also question whether the term “brain drain” still holds its old weight. In today’s multipolar, hyperconnected world, human talent is no longer confined to national ownership. Skills and intellect flow like rivers, crossing borders, reshaping economies, creating value wherever they are welcomed. What nations lose in exclusivity, they may still gain in networks, remittances, and global reach.

Thus, I see Malaysia’s tragedy not as one of “loss,” but of missed opportunity, of failing to create a home vast enough in spirit to hold its brightest minds while also embracing their outward journeys. For love of country, like love itself, cannot be commanded, it must be reciprocated.

Perhaps then, the true challenge is not to lament those who leave, nor to judge those who stay, but to ask, “how do we become a place where staying is not resignation, and leaving is not escape, but both are simply different expressions of the same love for home?”

Cheers.

ravivarmmankkanniappan@1029140920253.0567° N, 101.5851° E