Early Retirement

The idea of early retirement, in vogue in the West for a long time, has caught up very fast in India too off late. It means two things: first is the good one that a good number of people can afford to save, and second is not so that the working ecology is troublesome. For, the first we must thank the liberalization process, which values good work and has gained some ground amidst overwhelming collectivist tendencies. And for the second issue, the policy and public intellectuals must think over how to make work fulfilling and enjoyable.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Conflict and Declining Agency of Democracy

Conflicts we see today are the conflicts among the variants of the same sentiment. The sentiment by its property is conflict causing. It is leftism: the ancient proclivity of some men to believe in being the Master or the Messanger. The successful ones let the imagined control the real.

 

Another associated problem is the declining agency of democracy, humanism operationalised. We need to extricate democracy from leftism and restore humanism.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Normalising the Normative

The gap between the normal and the normative is the most treacherous field. It is in this space the progress and the regress battle each day. The normative invariably seeks to meta-normalise or abnormalise the normal, and the normal is perennially distressed by being ever wanting in its efforts to adopt the commands of the pioneers and priests of the norms. What we need is to normalise the normative so that everyone is at peace with themselves.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha