UBI

In the US, I read the reports, that for many, it is more rewarding to remain unemployed than to do a job as they get compensated for unemployment by the government. As a result, many small enterprises do not find workers and have to close down. In fact, unemployment allowance, thus, creates more unemployment.

A universal and unconditional allowance removes this anomaly. If people are not insecure and guaranteed minimum support, they tend to work harder to make their living conditions better.

UBI may not be that cost-prohibitive. The government would do well by abolishing wasteful and inefficient welfare schemes and departments and introducing UBI instead.

Enhanced economic activities as a result of the average people having more money and thus buying more and working harder to make their living conditions better would never leave government coffers deficient.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Tourism: the great empolyer

 Tourism is gaining critical importance as an industry. As other sectors of the economy get more mechanised, digitalised, robotised, and automated, they need lesser enterprises and enterprises need fewer workers. In this context, the tourism industry has an answer for the resultant rising unemployment. We need a concerted effort to facilitate tourism. But, this is a comprehensive project. We need a tourism-friendly culture to get into existence. The questions of safety and ease for the travellers are paramount in this regard. Secondly, the administrative field units and local governments must work hard to make every nook and cranny of the country worthy of being photographed as picture postcards. The manpower and resources are already available, they only need to be properly purposed. For promoting tourism, the focus should be on domestic tourism so that we have solid tour and travel facilities and amenities spread across the country, which in turn would attract more and more foreign travellers. Meanwhile, education institutions may include courses on tourism entrepreneurship and management, municipal and country administration, aesthetics, and etiquette among others.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On the need for democratic interpretation

Democratic processes and events need democratic representations. In general, academic or popular analyses do not take people's lived experiences and their mental frames into account. They impose democracy-defying analytical concepts and categories over reality and thus do not allow democracy to work to its potential. They do not know that democracy does not happen on its own; it requires the application of mind and sustained efforts.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Professorism or Professoriatism

I think the making, makeup, and mind of the professoriat needs to be studied as a separate discipline. The professoriat disseminates, processes, preserves, and creates knowledge. They make knowledge available in accessible and usable form to the greater number of the citizenry. They thus shape minds, direct human agency and shape society. A branch of knowledge must scrutinise the nature and role of the designated creators and bearers of knowledge. They themselves and the rest must have authentic knowledge of their functional position for the greater good.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Professoriat

The professoriat in a society where formal education is an established tradition engage with mostly their own doings or undoings.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Sanatana Dharma

Sanatana dharma is neither a religion nor a form of paganism. Now there is a growing realisation that Sanatana Dharma is not a religion but still, a great number of people talk of it as if it is a religion. Religion is about certain enunciated fundamentals using supernatural narratives to fix human conduct and drive their agency, whereas Sanatan Dharma is an open-ended quest for knowing the nature and purpose of existence and the for considering proper human conduct accordingly. It is not paganism either, wherein overawed by natural phenomena human beings worship some natural objects or their imagined representations. Sanatana Dharma is an ongoing collective philosophical enterprise for the collective good and guiding every person to act according to the wisdom so accrued. However, this is not to say that some people have not erred in this quest or the enterprise is free of religious or paganist proclivities. But those imbued with the true spirit always seek their passage to light from the darkness, i.e., to greater truth, justice, and good.

Niraj Kumar Jha