$-Trillionisation of State Economies

Uttar Pradesh is drawing a roadmap to quadruple its SGDP in the next five years to $1 trillion. The goal is ambitious and the jury is out on its viability, but this is the most sensible thing to do in the present circumstances. The working of the roadmap, despite all the difficulties it would bring in or the lacunas it would have, would lead to clearing out much of the messy cobwebs all around, which make doing businesses and even simple living very challenging. Other bigger states must follow the suit if they wish to work in the national interest and make life worth livable for ordinary folks.

Why do I write on such topics?

I repeatedly post on such themes. Why do I do so, or post such things at all? I reason and find that it does not count at all; it is absolutely inconsequential.

But, as I reason, I believe too. And, I believe that any expression does have some cascading effect. However, this is not to say that what I say is worthwhile; rather it may not be of any worth at all. But, the thing is that I take the citizen, who is me, seriously. If I do not respect this citizen, how do I expect the republic to be a reality than remain a notion? I know self-respect is a debilitating burden, but the burden is worth bearing.

How does a true republic manifest itself amidst us? It manifests through the respect and trust we have for ourselves and in our relations with fellow citizens. Ironically, we lack in this abysmally. I see it invariably that it hurts people if one treats them with the respect of equality. Equality is rather the lone form of respect but people are genetically disinclined to see this as respectful. Whenever we meet any person, our immediate reaction is to place the person as a superior or an inferior. We do this placing even among our close relations and friends. I know that subjecthood is too deep-rooted but we can at least think about getting rid of this. 

We need to be serious, we cannot afford things doing otherwise. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Reflection and Expression

A distinction can be made between reflecting and expressing and should be made. If such a distinction is kept in mind, it would be helpful in improving public discourse. Mostly, people while writing or speaking in a solemn mode, try to impress others. In such endeavours, they rely mindlessly on the words of people who they perceive as greats or high-sounding phraseologies. This may be called reflection: one simply reflects without understanding or adding to the idea. They seek to bask in the reflected glory and expect others to praise the light they seemingly emanate. These do contribute to the public good, but very little, and on the flip side, these mislead. For instance, one can be reminded of this: 'The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.'

The expression occurs when you speak your own heart and mind, you speak of your experiences: of your pain, agony, happiness, and excitement; of the treatments you get at the hands of others: good, bad, or ugly;  of the realisations of what you do to others. These are vitals of life but tragically we refrain from speaking about them. An expression may be called writings and speeches which expresses you, a living being, a feeling being, a sensible being. 

Yet, expressions again can be differentiated from egoistic hyperboles; those coming from persons who have the airs of personifying wisdom, and when they open their mouths, only gospel truths come out. The expression must be identified with the words of human beings, not with those of superhumans. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being Doctrinaire

The humble general knowledge books, which we often buy lovingly for kids, are the most powerful instruments of indoctrination.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Socialism and Welfarism

Socialism and welfarism are essentially the same. It took the former form in the orthodox East and the latter in the liberal West.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Is there a tabula rasa?

The human mind being a tabula rasa, I think, is a myth. The human mind has been in making since the very origin of the species. Human beings are past bearing animals. The nature of their being gets itself into being through various means including genetic coding, speech, and memory which is passable. The master had said, men are social animals. Society does the second wombing to human beings and nurses them to human essence, as the first gives them the human form. Society is the continuity of the past. There is no tabula rasa.

$42-bn investment from Japan

Japan has proposed to infuse its capital to the tune of $42-bn in India. This is indeed a very welcome thing to happen for two reasons. First is the very basic thing, and that is,  Japan is a friendly and democratic country.  Secondly, basically, foreign capital is meant for setting up large industrial units and business operations. That is its direct benefit as it adds to the national GDP and provides employment to the scores of people. These big units also cause the mushrooming of numerous ancillary units largely set up by domestic entrepreneurs. Thus, it catalyses domestic industries and businesses to grow. Along with this direct benefit the breadth of good it does to any country is difficult to map. I mention a few of them: it means an infusion of high-end technology and knowhow, managerial and business skills, more efficient work culture on the one hand and on the other, it also means better provisions for the countrymen in terms of commodities and services, and more moolah out of exports. More generally, the intensified economic activities of scale and surpluses so created lead to the betterment of public life. A country in which foreign capital is invested on large scale is cared for by the international community too as they have a stake in the stability of the country.  Capital irrespective of its origin, domestic or foreign, does other things more profoundly but unseen, and that is: it promotes rationalism and humanism in any society. Internationally,  it cements differences and engages countries in cooperative relations.  It is better we become more capital friendly overcoming the EIC syndrome and the Bolshevik trained psyche. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On Most Needed Thing Being Done

All people must applaud and support, in whatever way one can, the goal set up by UP, i.e. to make the state a $1 trillion economy in five years. The Chinese economy is five times larger than ours and we need to cover the gap as soon as possible. If the larger states compete among themselves to reach this $1 trillion target first, India would achieve its $5 trillion target within no time and move ahead for becoming the $10 trillion economy. Doing so is a strategic necessity.

We Indians have been a suffering people for a prolonged time. During colonial rule, we fell to subhuman conditions. We are still among the poorest of the poor in the world. We still do not have clean water to drink and go to bed hungry. There is no curse worse than poverty. And, without being overall rich we cannot hope to be individually rich. We must wholeheartedly support such a mission.

Many may think UP is setting a misplaced target, rather it should focus on the social sector services like health and education. This is a mistaken idea. On the contrary, if the government targets to expand its economy four times within 5 years, as the case is, it cannot do it without fixing everything, health, education, roads, ecology, social harmony or anything one can imagine in a great hurry.

Let me also add that Indians have been relentless in supporting pro-growth agenda and have been ruthless in rejecting antimarket forces for the last two decades.

I was thinking about writing such a post, i.e. UP targeting a $ 1 trillion economy, but meanwhile, I see this piece of news. Kudos to the UP government.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Religion

Religion is an inevitable part of our being as it speaks for our nowhereness. Religionism is appropriation of religionness. In India, till the onset of medieval times, the sages subjected religions to dharma and kept religionism under check. Mind ruled and it was not otherwise; religion was  subjected of mindfulness, it was not otherwise.

Religionism remains the original and continual fount of totalitarianism. It often manifests itself in secular language too as in Plato, Hegel, or Marx. Also, though exceptionally, it is firm believers who defy religionism. Gandhi is such a person, who remained a man of the soil despite he always looked at sky. 

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Wishful Thinking versus Analysis

An analysis is a serious business. An analyst must be objective, skilled, experienced, and have sufficient reliable data. That is a tall order itself, and apart from this, there are other problems in the way of good generalisations, some current and others recurrent.

One way of knowing the broad reality is to know the long-running trends. But off-late basics have changed around the world drastically, and more so in India.

Another phenomenon that analysts cannot think about in their search for definitive answers and that leave them wanting in their readings is that reality is not coherent and neatly logical, it is rather incoherent, paradoxical, and ever-evolving.

Despite being aware of these challenges I do offer some reckoning of sustainable politics based on the readings of the masters of political science. It is about conservation first and adopting reforms as icing on the cake. If people, in general, feel secure: who are not provoked to get more or not threatened to lose what they have, they become the bedrock of sustainable politics, and those who generate non-radical faith win the hearts and minds of the people in general.

The call for violent revolutions, the classic case being 1917, notwithstanding its lofty slogans relies on exciting greed among the people to the extreme, and the greed is that they would be led to grab the riches they see others enjoying. Such mass provocation does work for some time and it does magical things during the initial gush of the excitement but soon the rapid slide takes place inevitably. The general disenchantment is sought to be controlled by the acts of mass drama and draconian measures. Nonetheless, such massive absurdity does consume generations but it goes away at the end, and as it happened in this particular case, despite everything being deployed, the myth collapsed within eight decades.

Niraj Kumar Jha

War this time

There is something awful about this war, not because of the deaths and destruction it is causing, as one could find a war anytime earlier. This time what makes it different is that it does not inspire any awe. The world is only pitying at the invaded, the invaders, and itself. This speaks of the times.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Silver Screen and Mobile Screen

This depicts the transition so accurately, i.e. from the modern to the postmodern. The age of big ideas and heavy machinery, industrial, military, and administrative,  produced silver screens. The huge shining screen fixed inside a dominating architectural edifice reinforced ranks and captivated minds for some hours and through this recurrent intervention kneaded them to the modern form. It was a gigantic mechanism of control, of fixing minds. The mobile screen which is a postmodern enabling or enabled technology piece reduces everything to the size and pixels of the device which a person views at one's convenience and from a location where they are ordinarily located. The varied written words, audios, and visuals substituting not only silver screens but also earlier print and electronic media formats offer different and different aspects of social phenomena to a viewer. A person is now greatly in control than being under control and largely remains what they should be.  This is the postmodern age. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Social Media Decolossusisation

Social media is made out to be an object of distrust. They say it spreads canards. The fact is that earlier the problem was severer but we did not have the means of knowing that. This is not to say that social media platforms are neutral automated mechanisms. There are algorithms are at work to eliminate and viralise inputs for political or commercial purposes. Despite that one has enough raw data to make up their minds more objectively than one could do earlier. The property of the space is such that even data producers, distributors and carriers all themselves end up as data on the platform. The screen size and pixels cut every colossus to size. 

#decolossusisation

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being a Decent Netizen

 We, most of us, are victims of a faulty pedagogy or to say a mistaken social ideal that demands each of us to be a great person, to leave our footprints on the sands of time. This was a cruel idea of subjugating people on a mass scale. The idea of greatness is such that for most persons it would remain an ever-elusive goal. And having failed in the project they nurse a secret ego that they deserved but failed because of being wronged or live a delusive and painful life of assuming themselves high-profile persons without having positions of commensurate power or influence, and, worst of all, they become servile subjects suffering from inferiority complex. This ideal is a ploy and must be discarded with the contempt it deserves. 

Writing the above is not the immediate purpose of this post, but something very current is the objective of it. When social media came, the suppressed feelings of realising that missed greatness overtook most of us. Social media offers everyone, who can afford the device, a public platform. And most people lapped up it. 

In this context, I just paste my comment on a certain post on Facebook in order to share my idea about being a decent person on social media.  

... On second thought, I would like to add a few more things. First, while we post on social media our objective should be clear. It is natural to expect on the part of an ordinary person to enter a conversation with fellow netizens and pals but being desirous of some fan following among fellow folks is something I find distasteful. I think such persons should enter a performing profession like dancing, acting, rhetoric, exhibitionism etc, or in other words, one should get into the entertainment business. I think for us gentle citizens or community members, the purpose should be a civilized conversation. That is what we call decency. Secondly, we should realise that most people are circumstanced and we must see things with respectful compassion and concern. And lastly, the crux of being conversant are certain things: the enjoyment of fellowship, awareness of conditions which conduce our life, and expression of our right to a comfortable and dignified life.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Kaon Jaat Hauw [Which caste you are]?

I saw a so-called journalist asking every person, lady or gentleman,  on election day only one question - kaon jaat hauw [which caste you are]? Others may be doing the same. So many analysts know no other method of reckoning than caste arithmetic. This I find not only a wrong way of inquiry or analysis as this yields no correct outcome but also an abhorrent practice in the name of journalism or scholarship. I see such persons have no self-respect as they go on insulting sprees not sparing any lady or gentleman on the street. Isn't it showing gross disrespect to a citizen to ask their caste on the day they are performing their most crucial democratic role? In that particular coverage, many individuals did not take their caste names and yet the journalist insisted that his respondents speak their caste identity. This is to treat the members of this great republic as dumb herds. In India democracy survives, nay thrives, despite these so-called intellectuals but because of the common folks of the country. I see them or each of us as the greats as they are the people who sustain the largest democracy on the planet despite all the things contrary to conditions needed for a democracy to survive. 

This is not to deny that caste is a factor when a person selects a button on EVM to press, but it is not the sole factor and not a factor every time. The other related fact which is grossly ignored is that caste coincides with so many other factors like kinship network, locality, economic conditions, gender relations, so on and so forth, and all these conditions do act on the decision of an elector but analysts simply do not pay heed to the fact. 

Let me add this here that the commoners of the county remain secular and political savvy on the whole despite they have been subjected to all undemocratic ideas and institutions as the imperial-colonial structure-function continued and the Bolsheviks decided its goals.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Limits of Empiricism

Social scientists often fail to provide credible knowledge and, for that reason, working technologies for social engineering. The reason is being that mostly they rely on spoken words, opinions and wishes, but what mainly decide any social phenomena are unspoken or unspeakable, and what makes people feel good or does them good may not be what are their expressed desires.

Niraj Kumar Jha

जन गण मन

पहले यह आसान था। समझने के लिए उसी पटकथा का मंचन होता था जिन्हें वे स्वयं लिखते थे। समय बदल गया; लोग सोचने लगे। वे समझने लगे हैं कि सर्वहित और स्वहित में भिन्नता भ्रामक है। भारत के जन आम जन नहीं रहे, उन्होंने गण के रूप में अपनी बीती और भागीदारी से सीखा है। वे जानते हैं कि कैसे संगठित हितों से स्वयं की रक्षा करें और कैसे सामूहिक अभिकरण पर अंकुश रखें। निस्संदेह कमियाँ विकराल हैं और यह स्वाभाविक है क्योंकि खास के पास आम के लिए सिर्फ ख्याली पुलाव है। इंडिया, सरपरस्ती की वैचारिकी, के लिए अब भारत समझ से परे है लेकिन भारत अब इंडिया को समझ चुका है।

 

नीरज कुमार झा

भारत का प्रण

सभ्य जीवन का किया था सूत्रपात उसने 

जिसने किया था सूर्य की किरणों से  प्रथम विनय  

कि करें बुद्धि प्रकाशमय 

सभ्यता को स्वरूप दे गया था वह व्यक्ति 

पंथप्रवर्तकों के आने से सदियों  पहले 

कहा था जिसने दीपक बने अपना व्यष्टि 

कल्पित का वास्तव  के दमन के क्रूरतम चरम पर 

एक संत कर गया था परम का मानवीयकरण 

गाया था गीत उसने मानव और जगत की गरिमा का 

उस दौर में भी जब तथाकथित सभ्यताओं ने  

जातीय लोलुपता और दंभ के विज्ञान से 

प्रलयों में झोंक दिया था जन-जन को 

कृशकाय एक लगा एकअभियान महान में  

जिसमें सम्मिलित सभी नर-नारी ने  

आग्रह था किया प्राणपण 

कि नहीं है सत्य और अहिंसा भिन्न 

सत्य की सभ्यता के संघर्ष की इस परंपरा का निर्वाह 

है यही भारत का प्रण 

नीरज कुमार झा 

Authoritarianism's Achilles Heel

Authoritarianism exercises unlimited powers over the souls it supervises and can mobilise all beings and things within the area under its authority for and to anything. But it is not made up for the efficient use of resources. It does enact blitzkriegs in its initial phase by depending on the sentimentalities but the surge peters out in prolonged campaigns. Russia forgot rather sooner the history which made its previous incarnation USSR a history, i.e. its history of the Afghan misadventure.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Warring

Life is no longer as much 'brutish, nasty, and short' as a natural and manmade phenomenon as it used to be earlier. Life conditions earlier made people absolute or near-absolute believers in either theology or ideology or both and more warlike. Now families are nuclear and mostly have single children, and deaths are more a matter of certainty. The template for producing justifications for war is not available.

But, DNAed* traits live if conscious efforts are not made otherwise. The genetics of men and social organisms would continue to peril humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha

* #DNAed may be a neologism.

War Now

For instance, a century ago it was natural for men to be at war. Now, it's against the nature of the times. Warring is a great anomaly in times when men see and connect, thanks to capital and technology, free of geography and mediators. It's happening but against the logic. It is no coincidence that it follows a devastating pandemic, a time when humanity found itself in a state of quite helplessness.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Say NO to this madness

This is an act of multilateral aggression against humanity; the powers seeking domination have unleashed manslaughter and devastation on the folks. Humanity must say NO together and it must dismantle the template which scripts such deadly tragedies.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Outbreaks

There is nothing local about any breakout anywhere in this globalised order or disorder. Each one gets affected, and, therefore, each one needs to comprehend, speak, and act. Every expression or action does have some cascading effect.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Education

Education and training are meant to serve different purposes and are altogether different things. The former makes one sceptic and the latter a practitioner.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Endless Fall

This is very general, the folly of wishful thinking, that things would hit the bottom one day and bounce back to goodness. Therefore, let things deteriorate and hope for the good after sometimes.

 
The reality is there is no such base. Things get deteriorating endlessly. It is only conscious and continuous efforts that save the day. The foolish thought only hampers the people who are working and sacrificing for good every day.

 
It's your doing little bits for the good, which facilitates the good and mitigates the evil.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

पुरी

पुरी या नागर होना योग्यता है, जो अर्जित की जाती है। इस प्रयास में अध्ययन अहम व्यायाम है। यदि आपकी प्रवृत्ति अध्येता की नहीं है और बर्बरता आपका साध्य नहीं है तो एक पुस्तक का अवलोकन मस्तिष्क के नेत्रों से करने से, मौखिक उच्चारण के सिवा अथवा साथ,  आपका मनोरथ सिद्ध हो सकता है। वह पुस्तक रामचरितमानस है। इसका अनुशीलन आपको मानव बनाता है और स्वाभाविक रूप से पुरवासी भी। पुरी होना उत्पन्न होने और निवास की भौगोलिक स्थिति नहीं है। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

बहुत अच्छा और बहुत बुरा

यदि कोई बहुत बुरा है तो उसकी भर्त्सना करने के साथ, अथवा कोई बहुत अच्छा है तो उसके गुणगान के करने के साथ हमें यह भी सोचना है कि लोगों को बहुत बुरा करने की छूट, और बहुत अच्छा करने का मौका कैसे मिल रहा है। हमें व्ययस्था पर विचार करना चाहिए।

नीरज कुमार झा

हिस्ट्रीमुक्त भूत

भूत में लिखित आख्यान (इतिहास) को सीधे पढ़ने से आप हिस्ट्री के दुष्चक्र से अपने बोध की रक्षा कर सकते हैं। बिना हिस्ट्री के पुराने साहित्य को पढ़ने के लिए समाज का गहरा अनुभव और समाजशास्त्र का गहन अध्ययन आवश्यक है। उदाहरण के लिए, गोस्वामी तुलसीदास की रामायण में सत्य की जीत दिखाई गई है लेकिन वास्तव में यह सत्य के लिए युद्ध का आह्वान है। महागाथा की पंक्तियाँ तुलसीदास की वेदना के सागर पर चमकती सूर्य की किरणें हैं। गोस्वामी की पीड़ा काल की विद्रूपता के  बोध से जनित है।

नीरज कुमार झा

What is happening?

Let me first dwell on the epistemological crisis. The crisis is that there is epistemological chaos as no ideology is powerful enough to command people to some common purpose in any political unit or in any geography of size. This may be that people are moving from ideologism to objectivism, but without a compatible epistemology in place on the wider plane. 

Despite the melee caused and made to happen by social media with other phenomena, all voices get to our ears and all concerns brush our consciousness, and with that humanity is at its highest in its ascendance so far. We indeed see strong waves and sometimes eruptions but quite opposite to what they are made out to be, these mark the surges of republican and secular sensibilities. Objectivism gets people to take parochial posings and garbs to resist parochialism as such. Now humanity speaks to its constituents without mediation and has every one of them to play the deserved role. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

This is different this time.

The world today is different: humanity is united like never before. There are two overlapping worlds, real and virtual, and the latter is not constrained by geography. The political boundaries and the cultural diversities are there to stay but a planetary melting of cultural identities is happening rather at an unprecedented pace too. Injustices, wrongdoings, and lapses anywhere have global ramifications and the echoes in the cyber world have enough powers to get heard and heeded.

One of the phenomenal normals of the cyber world is that no actor is as machine-like as one was before, and no person is as programmed as one was before. Cyberspace makes a person more a thinking and understanding person, more sympathetic and empathetic person. Whatever we see otherwise are only the flickerings of dying sentimentalities.

We are getting into a better world with every step, with every moment, notwithstanding the mishappenings. 

Niraj Kumar Jha