Meaning s and Meaninglessness

Meanings and meaninglessness mingle,
And make our world.
We make meanings,
And meaninglessness makes us.
In existence, nonetheless,
We have this holy privilege
That we define everything and being
To meaning and purpose,
Or we consign everything and being
To the bottomless pit of meaninglessness.

Niraj Kumar Jha

तुम कहो

तुम कहो
इसलिए नहीं कि
कोई सुनेगा.
तुम कहो इसलिए
कि कहना जरूरी है.
मुझे लगता है कि
कही कभी गुम नहीं होती.
वह तैरती रहती है हवाओं में और
घुलती रहती है सांसों में.

नीरज कुमार झा

Needed Great Universities for India

India is a unique nation. Save Asia, India is populated by more people than any of the continents. In terms of area too, with 3,287,469 square kilometres of land, India occupies 2.4 percent of the total land area of the world. Both these figures make India an enormous country. What magnifies the uniqueness is that the country with the 2.4 percent of the land on the planet supports 16.7 percent of the world population.

This uniqueness poses a gigantic challenge by itself and the challenge in turn makes India more unique. The challenge is further magnified by the acute diversity. India has great number of people who live the most advanced life style at par with any stratum of the global community and at the same time, India is inhabited by a great number of primitive peoples, who live in absolutely natural state. We have also sizeable numbers of people, who are among the richest in the world, and we have the biggest numbers in terms of the absolutely poor too. Even in the very capital city of the gigantic country, starvation deaths have been reported. I am not talking here about ethnic diversities – of looks, habits, culture, religious affiliations, languages etcetera which leave any foreign visitor bewildered in India.

Yet the challenge is not that we are too many or too diverse. Our civilization has made us to survive and thrive on this very land for millennia. And this is the same civilization which makes us a great functioning democracy, a rare feat even otherwise. It must be underscored that the nation-state as it emerged in the West was a mono-ethnic entity and nobody could have even imagined earlier that India would survive as a democracy amidst such deprivations and diversities. Thanks to our civilization heritages, we are a very proud democracy of the world.

Again a point deserves to be underscored. Each of we Indians is equally worthy and valuable as any other person in the world.

What is our challenge then? Our challenge is opening space for a billion aspirations to play. And this is not something unachievable. Since 1991, with little bits of periodic unshackling the Indians have made global strides. The point to ponder over is how to ensure that all aspiring souls get decent outcomes of their endeavours? 

This is basically a managerial problem. Any good company knows this and therefore hire suitable minds at the steepest cost to run their business efficiently. Any country, and if the country is India with its population and complexity, would certainly require incomparably greater expertise to make the coexistence of so many people smooth and their collective self to rise to its deserved place. But for governance, we don’t hire super experts and the greater fact is that they don’t exist. People elect and the elected ones command a bureaucracy to run the affairs and expertise is the least of their concerns. What can then be done?

We need great infusion of knowledge in the society – both general and specialized. And we cannot import some critically required knowledges from outside as they are not manufactured anywhere, as nowhere else such numbers in such complexity are managed.

These days there are talks of propelling some of the Indian universities to global top ranks. This is certainly a great move. But what we really need is that we must have great universities in general in order to meet our knowledge needs. They must have to rise above from their functional role of imparting some rudimentary skills or more practically from their ritualistic role of conferring degrees.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Resolving a Dilemma

Peoples and civilizations share among themselves much more than one can ordinarily realize. And civilizations have benefitted from each other in their civilization advance. Many ideas and institution which evolved elsewhere become the mainstay of any country. Being purist or exclusive serves no purpose. It only weakens peoples and civilizations.

On the other hand, a country is stymied on account of its dependence on foreign ideas and institutions. They do not help in resolving the prevailing problems which have been resolved elsewhere. And it also distorts some established and well serving traditions.

What is the way out? In fact, the problem is not primarily about the place of origin of any idea and institution. Rather it is the problem of the intellectual prowess of a community or a national community. We can resolve the dilemma by answering a simple question. The question is –

Is it we who command the idea or institution for the good of each and all or the idea or institution controls all of us for the good of some other?

When we apply this filter, the distinction between the indigenous and the alien for too many cases does not stand.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A Grave Crisis Looms Large

In a very near future only a few jobs for a few people would be left. Dwindling job opportunities and its psychological, social, and political repercussions can be seen anywhere in the world even now.

Three reasons are responsible for that.

1. Growing automation, robotisation, and application of AI.
2. Streamlining of business processes with growing. sophistication of computer and internet technology.
3. Competition from efficient countries.

What can be the way out?

1. Universal Basic Income.
2. Reducing working hours in government organisations.
3. Lowering retirement age for government jobs.
4. Maximum privatisation for economy and efficiency but with
effective regulation.
5. Promotion of sporting and cultural activities involving more and more people as active participants.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Freedom is not a Natural Order

We’re free to say we aren’t free.
Reality, the heart-rending reality is -
Those who aren't free have never said
They aren’t free.
We can speak anything what we feel like.
It’s true.
By and large, there is no problem with that.
The problem lies elsewhere, my friend.
We speak and speak, and the problem is -
That doesn’t count.
And that is why we feel like not being free.
My friend, we’re free to swim,
There is clean and clear water too.
But can we swim without knowing how to swim?
Freedom is not a natural state, dear.
It is learnt and explored.
It doesn’t come to us naturally.

Niraj Kumar Jha