Vikasdharma: A Dharmic Theory of Development

The only sustainable path to national development is to allow people the greatest possible opportunities to participate in economic activities, subject only to such collective mediation as is necessary and justifiable. When individuals are able to engage in enterprise in a hassle-free environment, they create wealth, generate employment, and foster innovation, all of which contribute to national development.

Indeed, what is commonly described as negative liberalism I regard as positive liberalism. I view it from another, and arguably more realistic, perspective. By leaving initiative in the hands of individuals, particularly the entrepreneurial class, it expanded the scope of voluntary cooperation, enterprise, and civil society. While it is often criticised for producing economic inequality and exploitation, such criticism captures only one part of the historical experience. It is commonly argued that democracy evolved in opposition to exploitation and inequalities. which capitalism engendered. Yet the more substantive historical fact is that capitalism created the economic and social conditions that enabled people to organise themselves, demand a more humane life, and press for political rights. Prosperity generated resources, education, and an increasingly independent middle class, all of which strengthened the capacity for collective action.

The French Revolution of 1789 illustrates this dynamic. Although its causes were multiple, it occurred in one of Europe's most economically dynamic societies, where a commercially prosperous bourgeoisie had acquired sufficient economic strength to challenge the privileges of the ancien régime. More broadly, many institutions of civil society, voluntary associations, professional organisations, trade unions, and democratic movements flourished in societies where individuals enjoyed substantial economic freedom. Thus, rather than viewing liberal capitalism merely as the object of democratic opposition, it may also be understood as one of the principal conditions that made democratic mobilisation and civic advancement possible.

One must also keep in mind what capitalism replaced. It displaced a ruthless feudal order in which ordinary people were often treated little better than the property of their masters. Equally important is the fact that modern imperialism extended the capitalist model to the colonies in exploitative ways, and many of those societies eventually evolved into democratic political orders. This does not absolve imperialism of its sins, but it does suggest that some of the institutional and economic transformations associated with capitalism, most notably the emergence of a capitalist class and a market-based middle class, later provided conditions conducive to democratic development. These social groups acquired sufficient economic independence and organisational capacity to demand political representation, civil liberties, and constitutional government.

This is not to deny that regulations are necessary to prevent crimes, fraud, manipulation, breaches of trust, and other vile tendencies found among people. Nevertheless, the expansion of individual economic liberty has historically been one of the principal forces behind civic mobilisation, institutional development, and national progress. The challenge, therefore, is not to abandon laissez-faire but to optimise it by preserving economic freedom while ensuring that the state performs its essential functions of maintaining the rule of law, protecting competition, enforcing contracts, and preventing coercion, monopoly, and privilege.

The development school, in fact, confused the outcomes of capitalism with the conditions necessary for economic take-off in backward economies. Its emphasis on institutions, governance, property rights, infrastructure, education, and other structural prerequisites mistook the products of a successful developmental process for its primary causes. These institutions are undoubtedly important, but they are themselves the historical outcomes of a society in which informed human agency, entrepreneurship, voluntary cooperation, and economic freedom have been allowed to flourish. Development does not begin with institutions alone; rather, enduring institutions emerge from the cumulative exercise of responsible and productive human agency. It is this agency, more than the institutions it eventually creates, that constitutes the true foundation of development.

The concept of Dharma, in fact, predates the doctrine of laissez-faire by millennia. At its core lies a fundamental principle: the recognition of the proper sphere of individual action and the limits of external interference. Laissez-faire is but one modern economic articulation of this much older civilisational insight. I have invoked it only to explain the dynamics of development in the contemporary world. If we embrace the free-market principle, we are not merely borrowing a lesson from elsewhere; we are, in an important sense, rediscovering an insight long embedded in our own civilisational wisdom.

At its core, dharma enjoins each person to pursue one's legitimate pursuits without encroaching upon the legitimate sphere of others. Correspondingly, rajdharma requires the state not to direct or usurp the legitimate pursuits of individuals, but to ensure that no one interferes with others, violates justice, or undermines the common good. Its role is not to substitute individual initiative with bureaucratic control, but to preserve the conditions in which freedom, justice, and social harmony can coexist. Economic freedom, therefore, is not antithetical to the Indian conception of governance; rather, it is entirely consistent with a dharmic order in which individual initiative flourishes within a framework of justice, public responsibility, and the rule of law.

Viewed in this light, laissez-faire is neither a foreign prescription nor an imported ideology. It is a modern economic expression of a principle that Indian civilisation recognised long ago: individuals should be free to pursue their legitimate ends, while the state ensures that such freedom is exercised without injustice, coercion, or harm to others.

Niraj Kumar Jha

गणधर्म (Gaṇadharma)

The origins of republicanism can be traced to antiquity, yet it remains surprisingly underdeveloped as a conceptual category. Even today, there has been little sustained effort to distinguish it meaningfully from democracy. Republicanism is conventionally defined in opposition to monarchy, emphasising the absence of hereditary rule. Yet this negative definition leaves much unexplored. It says little about imperialism, even though the American republic emerged as much in opposition to imperial domination as to monarchical authority.

This conceptual limitation is reflected in the constitutional imagination of modern republics. One may consider the language of the earliest formal constitutions of the modern age. It is fundamentally a language of checks and restraints. Institutions are first created, powers are assigned to them, and then elaborate mechanisms are devised to regulate and balance those very powers. The assumption underlying this design is that power is inherently prone to abuse and must therefore be constrained through constitutional architecture. Constitutionalism, in this sense, is less a philosophy of public life than a technology of political management.

A striking contrast may be found in the concept of dharma. Rather than beginning with institutions, dharma begins with the individual as a duty-bound moral being. It conceives society as an organic moral order in which each person is connected to others through the conscientious performance of appropriate duties. The emphasis is not upon external restraints but upon the ethical formation of citizens and the cultivation of character. The primary safeguard of public life is therefore internal rather than institutional. Institutions certainly remain necessary, but they become secondary supports for a moral order rather than substitutes for one.

Modern republics have largely retained inherited institutional structures, adding little more than a democratic icing. Such cosmetic democratisation has not necessarily fostered a genuinely public ethos. Even the United States, arguably the most influential modern republic, exhibits significant tensions between republican ideals and the increasingly opaque and complex dynamics of contemporary politics. Constitutional checks, however sophisticated, cannot by themselves generate civic virtue, public responsibility, or a shared moral purpose.

The problem, therefore, is not merely institutional but conceptual. Republicanism has too often been reduced to a constitutional form of government rather than developed as a comprehensive philosophy of public life. If it is to remain relevant in the twenty-first century, it requires a fresh infusion of imagination and agency. It must move beyond defining itself by what it rejects, whether monarchy or imperial rule, and articulate a positive vision of civic virtue, public responsibility, dispersed power, and collective self-government. Such a reconstruction may also require republicanism to recover what constitutional design alone cannot provide: an ethical foundation that treats citizenship not merely as a bundle of rights and institutional relationships, but as a disciplined way of life grounded in duty, responsibility, and the pursuit of the common good.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Constitutional Devolution

What explains America's constitutional devolution? I do not know. One possible explanation is that, in a long period of material stability and prosperity, the need to remain entertained gradually becomes society's primary preoccupation. Entertainment begins to displace education, spectacle replaces civic formation, and, as a result, the constitutional culture slowly weakens. A constitution ultimately depends not only on legal institutions but also on citizens who possess the knowledge, habits, and discipline necessary to sustain it. When education yields to entertainment as the dominant cultural force, constitutional decline may follow.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Home and Neighbourhood

Two institutions require thorough reconstruction, both in their functionality and their dignity: the home and the neighbourhood community. The demands of economic mobility have hollowed out even the communal life of villages. Families have fragmented; even conjugal relationships are under severe strain, while community life has become shallow and largely superficial. In their isolation and insecurity, people are losing their sense of worth, and with it not only the quality of social life but, more importantly, their sense of purpose in life. The restoration of these foundations calls for thoughtful and patient work of social reconstruction.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Whither Liberalism?

Strangely, when totalitarian regimes were writing their own obituaries in the late twentieth century, liberalism, instead of spreading and deepening, began to shrink and lose its substance. The picture is now all too clear. How and why did this happen?

I have shared my thoughts on this and received only a single response. I do not expect anyone else to answer. That very absence of expectation is, in itself, an explanation.

Niraj Kumar Jha

ज्ञान समाज

ज्ञान मानव की स्वाभाविक स्थिति है। ज्ञान कोई सिद्धि नहीं, बल्कि सत्य के प्रति अनवरत निष्ठा और आत्मपरीक्षण का यत्न है। जो व्यक्ति इस प्रवृत्ति से हीन है अथवा उससे बाधित है, वह अपनी स्वाभाविक स्थिति में नहीं है। ऐसी वैयक्तिक अस्वाभाविकता का समाज पर व्यापक प्रभाव पड़ता है और उसकी भारीता भारी संकट का कारण बन जाती है।

प्रश्न उठता है: ज्ञानी कौन है? ज्ञानी वह नहीं जो स्वयं को ज्ञान का स्वामी मानता है, बल्कि वह है जो संवेदनशील है; जो दूसरों की भावनाओं, पीड़ाओं और अनुभवों को अपने भीतर अनुभव कर सकता है।

सूत्र रूप में:

ज्ञान का लक्षण संवेदना है; अज्ञान का लक्षण अहंकार।

ज्ञानसार के कतिपय कथ्य :-

अयं निजः परो वेति गणना लघुचेतसाम्।

उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्॥

- महा उपनिषद

अष्टादश पुराणेषु व्यासस्य वचनद्वयम्।

परोपकारः पुण्याय पापाय परपीडनम्॥

सर्वभूतेषु चात्मानं सर्वभूतानि चात्मनि।

यदा पश्यति भूतात्मा ब्रह्म संपद्यते तदा॥

- महाभारत

(जब मनुष्य सभी प्राणियों में अपने को और अपने में सभी प्राणियों को देखता है, तब वह ब्रह्मभाव को प्राप्त होता है।)

पोथी पढ़ि पढ़ि जग मुआ, पंडित भया न कोय।

ढाई आखर प्रेम का, पढ़े सो पंडित होय॥

- कबीर

परहित सरिस धरम नहि भाई।

परपीड़ा सम नहि अधमाई॥

- तुलसीदास

आज के समय में उपर्युक्त बातें अत्यंत कृत्रिम या अव्यावहारिक लग सकती हैं, किन्तु इतिहासकारों और बाह्य पर्यवेक्षकों के विवरण बताते हैं कि प्राचीन भारत में यह सामान्य जीवन का यथार्थ था। तथापि, यह स्थिति स्वतः निर्मित नहीं हुई थी; इसकी स्थापना और रक्षा के लिए ज्ञानियों तथा योद्धाओं ने अनीति और अन्याय के विरुद्ध सतत संघर्ष किया था।

नीरज कुमार झा

On Social Media Again

Social media has emerged as a colossal phenomenon. The way it is taking society along is a phenomenon in itself. It gives a voice to those who never had one before. Most surprisingly, it is now challenging the handiwork of intellectuals and ideologues who divided commoners into their fiefdoms of thought to secure their positions as high priests.
Commoners are not only speaking for themselves but are also seeing through these designs. Strangely, the intellectuals did not do so intentionally but instinctively. They themselves now need to re-educate themselves and learn to speak for the commoners in a true democratic spirit.

Niraj Kumar Jha