Online Education

I am not aware of the ongoing debates on the online education but I can say that it is the future of education. The brick and mortar educatonal institutions would remain there as the lived centres of education parallel to the virtual mode of learning. The longer we remain in denial,more we are going to lose. And more readily we adopt and adapt, more we are likely to remain in the race for everything globally today.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Social Dynamics

Social dynamics is a very long term affair; the causative factors may span over millennia. The focus on the current conditions and actors helps little in understanding and in managing social affairs. And more profoundly, it is the intellectualist state (operative epistemology) over time which determines the unfolding social phenomena. We often overvalue great calamities or upheavals. The plague epidemic in the 14th century triggered a chain of movements bringing modernity to Europe but hardly affected Asia, from where it originated. The Arab Spring, mostly an ICT generated movement, sank the Arab nations more in obscurantism and authoritarianism. We may also talk about a completed project of recent history, the Soviet one. The promised egalitarianism never materialised and it reduced into a very dehumanising totalitarianism. And yet, the desirable changes within a foreseeable future are possible, provided we realise that wishes are not horses. They need a scientific understanding of the social organism and commensurate policy measures to materialise. A proper probing of the current must move beyond the contemporary.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy Mechanism

You know the law of gravity and you also know that the rocket science is a different ballgame. You know democracy as a principle but the democracy of order, constitutionalism in operation, is a different ballgame. Most of the probems we perceive, face, or suffer as such require repairs or upgrades of the democracy mechanism but the problem is that the same elements, deficient in skills, who script malwares cry hoarse at the machine's malfunctioning. And the problem ironically afflicts even the developed democracies. We need proper knowledge and skills first.

Niraj Kumar Jha