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।

 

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