The War in Ukraine

One view is that Ukraine provoked Russia. Another buttressing this is that Zellenskyy did not do well by not cowing down. These views state realism, and what these reveal to me is that realism inheres cowardice and opportunism. Realism is good only when it is not divorced from idealism. Realism must remain a tool, and must not become an end ever.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Education

Education, among others, is also about enabling the graduate to be in control. It should empower the initiate to know the essential ideas of living well and equip one with necessary life skills. Everyone should know the fundamentals of the economy, civic life, and health. For instance, when I say health I mean to say that a person should have a fair knowledge of diseases, their causes and cures. The first thing is that they should not fall ill, if fall ill, they must know the basics of cure, and further if the problems aggravate, the person should know enough not to be duped by the practitioners. The ancient university of Nalanda had a compulsory course on medicine for all the resident scholars. They knew it so well that only a healthy body possesses a good mind.

The fact is that our present pedagogy, a colonial graft, seeks to overawe pupils. It basically imparts the knowledge of big and extraordinary things, ideas over lived realities, the universals, the meta realities, but it strictly keeps away the students from learning how to negotiate with all those gigantic phenomena. They create wedges and counterpose norms against mores, ideals against practices, and learning against the living. Today's pedagogy forges the graduates only to fit in the different frameworks. A good number of people do learn the tricks of the trade, but the hard way through trial and error, or outside the ambit of formal education. In other words, they are trained primarily for clientelism. And, the greater part of the pedagogy is simply wasteful: the pieces of ideological stuff. In a nutshell, colonial education creates dependent personas: everyone is prepared to be cheated or exploited by others.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The Latent Reality

What the times manifest leaves the old school of intelligentsia aghast. They cannot read the latent reality: it is that the times are waging the most desperate battles for republicism, civicism, and constitutionalism. In the absence of a commensurate epistemological framework, they do what they can do the best. They mirror the anomalous.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Let others question you

Let others question you. Answer with all sincerity and honesty. They help you fight devils occupying your mindscape.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Resisting the Tyranny of Philosophy

Philosophy liberates; such is the general assumption. In reality, it is double-edged; it does the opposite too. How does philosophy do the opposite to us? The reason is that we associate philosophy with the thoughts of mystics, geniuses, achievers or leaders. We ignore the fact that philosophising is something we all do. And, when we distrust ourselves and our fellows and rely blindly on lofty ideas, we make philosophy tyrannical. One may look kiddish while philosophising, as I do right now. But we must not be shy about being kiddish. It was a kid who told the truth about the king's regal attire. Let us all philosophise with confidence; let us dialogue about how we make sense of the world. It does not mean that great philosophies and philosophers are irrelevant; they are rather valuable. The point is that we must engage with them and must not submit to them.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Atomisation of Society

Atomisation is an inevitable dimension of an advancing society. People choose to be either aloof or prefer only measured relations. They value privacy and non-interference. The pandemic speeded up the process greatly.

This leaves everyone vulnerable as it means less support even from family as one grows old, suffers a prolonged illness, or fell into some crisis. Even otherwise as an individual one feels helpless when they encounter different types of rogue entities which abound all around. The crisis for one is going to worsen as the support from the clan, caste, and peers is disappearing fast.

The answer is not to exhort people for strengthening families or to cement and augment social ties. These are hardly going to materialise. The answer is to revamp and build public spaces, agencies, and institutions to serve the individuals. We need a freer market as it serves the individual interest best, and a body of functional laws, which protects one from being cheated or robbed or harmed in any way. The practice of patron-client ordering would result in endless isolated tragedies, sparing perhaps none.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Neoliberalism or Neoabsolutisms

Literati's incessant cannonade reduced neoliberalism to rubble. And thus, they decided the fate of the twenty-first century. For the first time in human history, literati had got the opportunity solely to set the course of humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha