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