The Visionaries

Market forces alone ensure balanced development, Other forces create ghost towns, deserted ports and haunted roads, which nobody uses. Market players produce what society needs and adventurers among them perish in their rush. Others do not have such fears. For example, a country founds some well-provided institutions of learning by straining its limited resources, but those very institutions only siphon the best out of society's scarce talent pool and pour them into channels flowing to foreign lands irrigating their soils. Despite the clear visibility of the outcomes, the founders are celebrated as visionaries. What an irony!

Niraj Kumar Jha

New-age Entrepreneurs

Of late, I see some entrepreneurs speaking their minds on social media. Indeed, they are new-age entrepreneurs, mostly professionally educated first-generation in the business. They are not the survivors of the socialist regime and possess considerable moral worth. It is the entrepreneurial class which hosts the society, while most of the others are only clients or outright parasites. It is in the general interest that we amplify those rare voices.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Make-believe Modules

 Make-believe modules capture the market of cognition, discernment, and appreciation. The abundant supplies make for art, aesthetics and knowledge, the pursuits which make a being a human being. We need not recall, analyse, and imagine. We have readied stuff or we can always do two-minute noodling. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Phoney Vanguardism

When classism dismissed itself from the world, the leftist elements living off public money here shifted to another notional quick fix, ethnicism, and posed themselves as vanguards. Thus mutated the phoney vanguardism.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Human Guinea Pigs

 Human beings have served as guinea pigs for political ideologies. More tragically, the experimenters value the experimentation processes more than their outcomes. Now, ideologues may and should devise simulators with the support of AI  as there are enough data available to devise such a device.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Understanding Democracy

If tyranny is just the opposite of democracy, so is collectivism. Again as a minority rule opposes the democratic spirit, so does a majority rule. Democracy, as a political arrangement, sets everyone free and at the same time does not allow one to harm others. When everyone has mastery of their beings and doings, the community has democracy in real. This basic necessitates laissez-faire in society and minimalism in governance. Bare capitalism without pluses and an efficiency-enabling model of government can only lead to substantive democracy, which in turn would ensure dignity in human life and peace in the world.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Substantialization and Trivialization

What is substantialization and what is trivialization? There is no definitive answer, and so least for universal application. Existence is a bewildering experience. The meaning and purpose, perhaps nature makes only human beings to pursue; it does not offer such things itself. Human folks discover and they have discretion. I think I have what I have. An equilibrium of everything one has may be the best thing to have. This is again not true for most at least notionally. Yet, I would like to point out that we mostly miss the fundamental: the absence of meaning and purpose being existential. We must balance this with our pursuits otherwise.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Reel Heroes

 A lead figure in a typical cinema produced anywhere in the world humiliates a man and demeans a woman. Indeed, the fictional figure balms your hurt ego but you end up glorifying everything you do not have in you and you cannot have in you. A cinema disregards the rule of law and civilized ways of conduct. What entertains us betrays our incompetence to devise a better system. Our collective failure is the source of our collective entertainment. What an irony!

Niraj Kumar Jha

Leftism: the Bane of Our Epistemology

Leftism more than an ideology is a psychology and a genetic coding. It is the genetic nostalgia of primitivism. Psychologically it is the herd mentality.

We fell to leftism in our encounter with colonialism. European imperialism over the world for around two centuries overawed us, Moreover, we were already under subjugation, and initially, many of our ancestors saw the colonisers as liberators.

While opposing the colonisers, we also admired and envied them. In opposition to them, we opposed their winning ideas but opted for their defeatist tendencies, which they allowed to exist but on the margins of their epistemological space. Liberalism, which evolved out of humanism and rationalism, was that winning idea. Humanism and rationalism were products of historical circumstances in Europe. These approaches were not alien to India but lethargic ways had overtaken the Indian mindset and we lost in the race. When colonialism enveloped our consciousness, we opposed the very idea which had made them the masters of the world and lapped up for the refurbished feudalism in the form of leftism.

Now leftism is fairly discredited but it keeps changing its forms. Welfarims is its sober variant, which flourishes across nations. We must have public services for people in need and in times of need but it cannot be a policy of making more and more people needy forever and providing them.

Our ancients sought riches and happiness and they lived so. We need to rekindle that spirit and discard the leftism for once and all.

Niraj Kumar Jha

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Epistemological Conundrum

 Most of the social troubles germinate from the dysfunctional epistemology a society harbours. Mainstreaming epistemology is often seen as a given despite all the discordant notes of dissenters and viewings and activities of all sorts of ideologues. It gets general compliance, mostly habitual but also wilful and grudging. On the part of knowledge workers, the most desired doable is to manage epistemology to functionality, i.e., make it serve the common good and harmonious progress. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Action v Knowledge

Doings override knowings to cause progress. Doings get secular, knowings remain ecclesiastical. It is happening. Knowings supported doings could have worked wonders.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Follies of Knowers

Those who proactively pursue knowledge often invent pieces of knowledge which are totally unconnected from reality. Subsequently, if such persons or institutions have the right credentials and resources, they impose their products on reality and such misplaced perceptions distort social realities. The concern is the mostly ignored fact that knowing is not about discovering patterns but manipulating and disrupting patterns. The knowledge-based solutions in such cases may be a different problem but the concern here is that knowing is not about knowing exactly the nature of a phenomenon but determining the nature of a phenomenon. Knowers should deploy their tools with much caution and never ignore their common sense and instinct.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Sharing Good Ideas

If one feels that s/he has a good idea, the person must share it with others. A good thing may be waiting to be spoken about for happening. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Learned Machines

 Learned, creative, and artistic machines end the age of elitism. They produce wisdom and beauty by sourcing from the best available thoughts and creations with the best possible perfection. Soon, we will have scientist machines, which would be inventing new technologies and even advanced machines. It would enable anyone to be a genius by keying in prompts. Machines would engender true Republican citizens. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Discourses: Republican v. Subject

Republican discourses are agenda-setting. People understand and articulate the conditions they live under and create an ecology which directs the government to comply with the needful. They have masterly voices and patronise their governments.

Subject discourses mostly consist of sounds of applause or grumbling. They only react to rulers' positions and dispositions. Subject people do not talk about their own feelings, problems, and expectations. They take their predicament as destined or given. They feel they depend on their rulers and pray for their benevolence.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Inevitability of UBI

The universal basic income (UBI) is an age-old idea which found its way into the economic survey of 2017 and in other policy documents in India. Its toned-down versions are being implemented through myriad schemes in India, but invariably as doles. They lack one or the other feature of UBI like universality, unconditionally, regularity, payment in cash, and payability to individual citizens.
As different governments transfer cash to this or that section of society on different pretexts, this only confirms the inevitability of UBI. Even otherwise the growing scarcity of jobs and livelihood due to automation and international competition makes UBI unavoidable.

While it is highly imperative to implement a full-fledged UBI in the country, certain conditions must be fulfilled for ensuring its viability. It requires a substantial downsizing of the government, the closure of most of the other welfare schemes and the cessation of subsidies. It would also require the rationalisation of government functions and optimisation of efficiency and cost-effectiveness in whatever it does.

Secondly, as a corollary of the first, it needs optimisation of liberalisation. The country must be highly productive and internationally competitive so that it has a sufficient surplus after paying all its import bills to fund the basic income of a billion-plus citizens of the country.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Being a Scholar

In this post, I am expanding on an earlier post on being a scholar. I think that the job of a scholar is essentially different from a preacher and even a preceptor. A scholar studies or observes a phenomenon, shares their findings or views, and invites their appraisal. It is unbecoming of a scholar to be preachy. A scholar knows that most people are more circumstanced than free agents. A scholar struggles with others to know and negotiate circumstances in a better way.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Freedom of Expression

It is the freedom of expression, nothing else, that fuels progress, but it does not mean toleration of bad expressions. Good expressions must combat bad expressions, and better expressions must replace good expressions. It is the duty of each one to better their expressions by efforting to know more and testing and contesting expressions of others and also of self. It is about welcoming criticism and contesting the expressions of others in a friendly and respectful manner. One must never be sure that their ideas are correct. Correctness is about being constantly conscious of the possibility of being incorrect.

Niraj Kumar Jha