Chandran Nair (businessman)

Chandran Nair is a Malaysian businessman and scholar of Indian descent. He is the founder of The Global Institute for Tomorrow, an independent think-tank based in Hong Kong.[1] He is also Project Director for The Other Hundred, an international photography competition and photo-book project.[2][3]

Chandran Nair at the World Economic Forum at Davos 2012

Background

Nair was born in Malaysia, the seventh of eight children. His parents were immigrants to Malaysia from India, and not well off, with all the children sharing a room. He studied chemical engineering in the UK, where he then worked for a few years. At 28, he joined the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, building sanitation and water systems by day on a stipend and playing the saxophone in his free time in a band.[4] He later earned a master's degree in environmental engineering from Bangkok.

Career

Nair is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Sustainability[5] and has argued at numerous forums including the WEF, APEC[6] and OECD[7] about the need for radical reform of the current economic model and strict limits on consumption.[8] Nair was previously Chairman of Environmental Resources Management (ERM), building the company to be the leading environmental consultancy in Asia Pacific. He left in March 2004.[9]

Nair is a frequent contributor to various media outlets including The Financial Times,[10] The Guardian,[11] The Huffington Post,[12] The New York Times.[13] and South China Morning Post.[14] He is the author of Consumptionomics: Asia's role in reshaping capitalism and saving the planet, named one of the top ten books of 2011 by The Globalist.[15] In 2018 he published The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy, and Society.[16]

Controversy

On August 26, 2021, Nair wrote an op-ed in Time magazine accusing Nicole Kidman of using her "White Privilege" to avoid being quarantined when arriving in Hong Kong to film the Amazon Prime Video series Expats. Hong Kong's Commerce and Economic Development Bureau (CEDB) responded in a press statement that Kidman received a quarantine exemption for the purpose of performing designated professional work and necessary operation of Hong Kong's economy,[17] and a CEDB permanent secretary wrote a letter to the editor of Time stating that Nair's claim was "not only just misplaced but absurd".[18][19]

References
  1. Romann, Alfred. "A GIFTed man". China Daily. China Daily. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  2. "'The Other Hundred' - World's untold photo stories". CNN. October 14, 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  3. Nair, Chandran (28 February 2014). "The Other Hundred: The Non-Rich, Non-Celebrity List". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  4. Up close & personal with Founder of Gift and author Chandran Nair, The Star (Malaysia), 21 May 2011
  5. "Global Agenda Council for Sustainability 2012-2014". World Economic Forum. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  6. "National Center for APEC". APEC. Archived from the original on 26 April 2014. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  7. "Speakers - OECD". OECD. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  8. "Global Economic Symposium". Interview with Chandran Nair. Global Economic Symposium. Archived from the original on 2014-04-26. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  9. "Chandran Nair" (PDF). Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  10. Nair, Chandran. "We should stop talking of an Asian century". The Financial Times. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  11. Nair, Chandran (6 March 2014). "Why is the west seen as the greatest threat? From Asia, the answer's clear". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  12. Nair, Chandran (19 February 2014). "If Asia wants to prosper, don't listen to the IMF". The Huffington Post. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  13. Nair, Chandran (15 July 2012). "Focusing Science on the Damage". The New York Times. Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  14. "Chandran Nair". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2021-11-30.
  15. "The Globalist's Top Books of 2011 - The Globalist". 22 December 2011.
  16. "The Sustainable State". 9 October 2018.
  17. Kwan, Rhoda (August 19, 2021). "Hong Kong exempts actor Nicole Kidman from Covid quarantine as Amazon's 'tone-deaf' expat TV shows see backlash". Hong Kong Free Press.
  18. "Letters to Editors/Op-ed - Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, San Francisco". www.hketony.gov.hk. Archived from the original on 2021-12-03. Retrieved 2021-12-03. Chandran Nair's article "Quarantine, What Quarantine? Nicole Kidman, Expats and White Privilege" (posted on August 26) regarding a recent decision to provide a quarantine exemption to personnel involved in the production of a TV series contains assertions that are groundless and speculative.
  19. "Letter to TIME" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-12-03. Retrieved 2021-12-03.
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