'Here' and 'Now' Pedagogy

The teaching and learning process needs fundamental change. With pieces of information and knowledgeable ever-accessible even on move, one does not need to store them in their mind as it is being required so far. Generally, learners need less to memorise and more to develop the power to process information and knowledge. Memorisation and understanding go together but often the former cripple the latter by its sheer weight. Now, with technology,  people can unburden themselves greatly.   

Here, my concern is human beings knowing about humanity and their ways of living. And, the task of pedagogy gets light and simple in this context presently. I feel two major enablers of civility, humanism and rationalism, remain grossly unrealised despite being in play for centuries and hold great promise of further civilizing the human race. The storage of knowledge in mind has been a highly desirable value, and so the tendency to store pieces of knowledge without filtering them for their uses and effects affects the knowledge processing abilities of the knowledge bearer.  They act as coolies carrying a load of knowledge on them rather than being masters of knowledge. Moreover, knowledge overwhelms the instinct and drive of knowing: it subdues the persons carrying it. This can be reversed to bring things to their normal state: an evolutional anomaly can be undone now. 

'Here' and 'now' must be the starting point of the pedagogy and 'being' and  'phenomenal' must be the focus. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Another Onslaught on Globalisation

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has occasioned another round of onslaught on Globalisation. They say the war has proved the notion wrong that economic interdependence prevents wars. They inadvertently cancel yet another merit of globalisation. China's annexation posturings towards  Taiwan are seen in the same vein. 

They overlook the fact that people across the world suffer more as a result of the war and feel concerned as the world is globalised. And, there are efforts to check and counter the aggression. Globalisation reduces the chances of wars but does not eliminate them. For that other political agencies are needed. One must see with great concern that the democratisation of nations has a long way to go: the greater number of people in the world are denied of the dignity of self-governance. 

Once, the developed Western countries favoured globalisation as they owned multinational corporations and advanced technologies, but soon with the rise of the rest the advantages did not hold. At the same time, some roguish nations started to misappropriate globalization by using their sovereign powers. This made the West apprehensive of globalisation. 

The fact remains that liberal globalization helps the world and different peoples. It helps reduce conflicts and facilitate prosperity. The world must unite for itself. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Citizenship and Subjecthood

Citizens own their nation therefore they are citizens. If it is the other way around, they are subjects. Authoritarian and collective States possess their people. It is not that they collectively control each one of them on equal terms, rather it is a highly graded system in which people are herded and controlled in layers by designated persons and the supreme leader lords all. Some possess many things as they are in command and the majority do not hold even their own persons. This is what ideologists or leftists strive for. For them, people's lives are quite expendable as the surging corona epidemic proves.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Ideology and Ethnicity

 Ideology and Ethnicity

Ideology may be categorised as I do here into one which people have as an evolved integrated worldview, as the traditions and social ecosystem morph into one, and the other one, the one created and imposed. The working ideology at a particular location generally exists in a fused state. 

Manufactured ideologies apparently work as the level of ideas and intellect and seemingly transcend ethnic divides. The point here is that doctrines have the compatibility trait. A manufactured doctrine may or may not be compatible with the socio-ecological ideology of a particular geography. For instance, Leftism germinated in the West but flourished in the East (including the European East). 

Further, even at a particular location, communities have different working ideologies and similarly, they find one or the other manufactured ideologies more suited to their collective psyche. 

Even individuals within an ethnic group may get swayed by the ideology of the other ethnic group, as every community has rebel elements. But the conformists define the rules, not the rebels. 

Ethnicity and ideology thus have symbiotic relations. 

Humanism and cosmopolitanism stand in opposition to not only ethnicity but also ideology, the manufactured ones.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Education and Liberty

Liberty is awareness, and therefore, one needs education to get liberated. Here, however, more pertinent is how one means education and liberty. Liberty is very powerfully perceived as liberation from worldliness and with the goal of being united with the Ultimate. This is indeed a noble goal and one must see its virtuosity in life. However, liberty concerns life also besides the afterlife; life, though ephemeral and uncertain, is of paramount importance here and now, and life has a continuity collectively and impacts our being mentally as well physically. Liberation has this secular aspect too, related to time and space. It makes life livable; one has the security of life and possessions, and the freedom to do what one likes but without hurting others. This post addresses the latter liberty. Education is primarily about enabling people for freedom. Human beings from being a predator as well as prey in the food chain in their primitive stage facing other predators, other creatures of killing contact, their own ilk, and natural forces, and that too often and mortally, have travelled a great distance. Every human step has been facilitated and consolidated by education. However, all the peoples have not covered the same distance. The variations in peoples' advances testify to the quality of their education. Education must therefore require liberated scrutiny; people must examine the content and method of education for keeping it geared to its function continuously. People often perceive education as sacred, not to be accessed with 'profane' mundane concerns. And, such doings are often, very ironically, dictated by secular ideologies, which seek unquestionable following from the people.

Education and liberty go together.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Liberalisation

 Liberalisation is the unfolding of evolving consciousness in a society or polity. It eases people's living and creates a good ambience within society and beyond. It also happens that people fall for illiberal ideologies and undergo collective decline and great distress. 

The charlatans who drive people to illiberalism make people hate the capital, the medium which enables people to venture into serving others. They seek to control and dictate all and sundry and make a virtue of levying. They hate people living an independent dignified life. 

Slavishnes of the folks is the substance of humankind's history. The historical trap is difficult to get rid of. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Fact of Value

It is strangest to see that people remain oblivious to hard-hitting facts, as hard as a limb-shattering blow to self, or very sensitive about very trivial things or occurrences. People see things as they are trained to see them. Ideologies and values are what make people what they are.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Knowledge

 Knowledge is a tricky phenomenon. Generally, we assume that knowledge is good. We endeavour to learn and pay to be taught in search of the good. 

But, often many things we get as pieces of knowledge are destructive and unimaginably harmful for self and others. And, there are absolutist systems of knowledge, which invade our minds and make us puppets. 

Knowledge is unavoidable. Human beings are hyper-knowledge-seeking and possessing species. 

We hold good and bad pieces of knowledge and the balance shapes our being, well or ill, overall. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Justice and Justicism

Justice, I think, needs to be distinguished from a related phenomenon, which can be termed Justicism. Justice I think is an idea and what goes on in its name generally is an ideology. To put it simply, Justice is an idea and Justicism is an ideology. Ideologies are used to control people; holier their garb, holistic is the control.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Emphatetic Reading

 It is amusing to learn that most people read, listen or see only imagined stuff and their reading, listening and seeing run parallel to and neatly disconnected from what they read, listen and see respectively. Empathetic reading, I think, is a rare intellectual calibre. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

CSR

    To an investor, CSR amounts to just another levy. CSR is the same on the part of any business organisation as it is running a grocery store on the part of a government or as being a vigilante on the part of a citizen. Corporations are at their best when they sense the needs of people and serve them by provisioning quality goods and services. Anything else is a deviation on their part.

    Charity must be an independent social function and should be done by individuals in their personal capacity, and through non-corporate and non-government organisations. Civil organisations should generate the funds by running captive business ventures, self-help groups, cooperative enterprises, and/or seeking donations from individual private persons. However, it is a legitimate function of the government to have the capacity or mechanism to help people in calamitous, accidental, and extraordinary distress.

    A neat division of functions among government, business corporations, and civil organisations would serve society better. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Friend-shoring and Near-shoring

The West is working on friend-shoring and near-shoring in place of offshoring and outsourcing for the sake of reliable supply chains. It is a strategic move for them for their own security and in order to check the rise of the challenger. Nonetheless, it is another blow to globalisation, the moving of the world towards universal good. It meant fewer conflicts, lower carbon emissions, and greater prosperity for humankind. 

What we can do as global citizens is to avoid the merchandise of rogue nations and raise our voices against them on public fora. Even otherwise, as responsible citizens, we must consume less of the products which we import. The added advantage would be our carbon footprint being smaller. It costs but it would be costlier for a nation to be roguish. We must find and favour democratic and friendly nations for doing business. 

At the same time, we must work hard for quality and cost-effectiveness in whatever we do. We must be unavoidable as the great nations go into closed groups. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Justice

Justice is justice without any adjectivisation; with an adjective, it is a marker of a power struggle.

NKJ

Failed ideas

What is a failed idea? It would be longish to elaborate on but in a sentence, I see its final impact; that is it makes people glorify their sufferance. I see with great bewilderment that many failed ideas get celebrated and emulated.

I find the reason that people are not allowed to learn to be happy and do better happily. They are taught to sacrifice and suffer in order to be better. And, duplicitous people make merry in such a state and the rest have no way other than to suffer.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Asian Century

Asia is a dangerous geography. In fact, India is more threatened by Asian entities than by any other country. The sloganeering of the Asian Century reminds me of the experiment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Nations of the world are ruthless in imposing their interests and culture on others. The rise of Asia is okay for India only when it is able to have a balancing strength by virtue of its own economic, military, and cultural capabilities. Otherwise, Asia would be a perilous zone for India. The only thing Indians should endeavour for is India's present and future, not for something like the misleading idea of the Asian Century.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Logical Thinking

 Logical thinking is not simply an exercise of the mind on part of a person so willing; rather it is an ability gained through effort, knowledge, experience, and a favourable social milieu. It is not so that you ask a person to think logically and he would switch from illogical ideation to logical thinking. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Reasoning for Beliefs

One must distinguish between persons who reason for their beliefs and those who believe in reasoning. The great believers of modern times reduced history and current phenomena as pieces of evidence in support of their beliefs, and their beliefs are not very different from those age-old beliefs for which even manslaughter was a mere ritual. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Resisting Progress

 We are very soft towards persons of beliefs but very harsh towards persons of reason. We are pleased with persons who say nothing by putting forth umpteen words but get hurt with persons who speak few words but of relevance. We highlight some bad aspects of good and some good aspects of bad. We thus resist progress. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Making or Unmaking of Politics

Values make politics. What people in general value solidify as political institutions. We must consider the implications, effects, and aftereffects of what we value.

 
If you value your bare person irrespective of what you are, and most of your compatriots do the same, you have a robust democracy. Most people instead cherish the positions they hold or others hold, not the persons of either themselves or of others.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Current Concern

Observers note there is a worldwide decline in support for internationalism, democracy, and the integration of economies. Anyway, it is too obvious. At the same time, one can notice a perceptible decline in respect for science and rationalism. And, there is a simultaneous surge of unfiltered customs, crass ethnicity, and related chauvinism. This is ironic as it is also the time when new technologies conduce life as never before and change living and work fundamentally. The crux of the matter is that the people are worried as they lack support in cases of life and existential crises.

Globally, things are worse. Putin launches a war at the very time when the world was somehow recovering from a devastating pandemic. Xi has more sinister plans. When the world faces unprecedented environmental crises as sinking shores, burning forests, melting glaciers, heat waves, floods, and pollution-generated illnesses havoc the world, the nations are gearing up for the ominous mix of hot and cold wars. It's armament that is the focus; not ecology, public health, and social harmony.

I think this is a result of the collective lag in conceptualizing the mechanisms for common good in this age of fundamental transformations. Earlier, the intellectuals as a whole acted against the very self-emerging template of human advance, what is known as neoliberalism, leading the world towards greater freedom and integration. They undid the organic growth of humankind and pulled the world to the present predicament. It is past now and it is high time that social scientists in general and political scientists, in particular, think about remodelling the world to realise renewed humanism.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Ethical Lapses

    Generally, a gap exists between what a person professes and what he practices. How moral is speaking of ethics without being ethical personally? I think a person can and should speak for moral values even if he does not practise them. A person being duplicitous is a better person than one being a blatant violator. It means the person has not lost faith in the norms and knows in his heart that he has deviated.

    Nonetheless, the mismatch between speech and conduct is a serious social and civilizational issue. I think that the normative part is our civilizational and social legacy, but the practice part is political, a tragic effect of prolonged physical occupation and of ideological occupation of the country after that.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On faking

Fake news pieces circulating in the media make a problem that I find least bothering. The reality is that it is not a problem by itself, but the real problem behind that is the abysmal social divides. It is that every party seeks to manipulate information in its favour. But, such gimmicks hardly succeed as all parties know their positional interests well. Indeed, the social divide is a serious problem, but I am here to address another problem.

The problem I find perturbing from my particular position is that everybody seems to be faking. All suffer but undergo the sufferance silently. Often, they try to forget even the traumatic suffering as soon as possible. The fact is that most of these sufferances are avoidable, but people do not talk about them. Instead, they talk about such things as sports, films, or similar things or events as if their life depends on them, which in reality do not affect their life in any way. We mostly fake our life experiences.

The grand issues and even entertainment events are important but we pay disproportionate attention to them. Problems which affect our lives, which often result in severe mental agony, physical pain, and death, we tend to avoid or ignore. True civilization or commonwealth is about making life less painful, tragic, and insecure. Many societies have indeed done better in these respects and even in our case, great things are doable simply by will. At least, we can talk about these things.

The trivialization of the substance of life by faking we all do with all seriousness and sincerity.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Socialism

 Different variants of socialism were revivalist projects of religionism following the enlightenment era. They were exactly like any religion but without the invocation to the otherworld as the idea of the otherworld had lost favour during the enlightenment age. The idea of the otherworld was replaced by a utopia to be realised by the adherents. In the like manner, it sought to utopiate the masses in place of opiating them. 

   India has been a land of many religions in a sense as different sects or cults were akin to religions with their fixed deities, doctrines, and rituals. But, all these flourished under the greater umbrella of Dharma, which on the whole invoked mindfulness in prescribing do's and don'ts and upholding the greater order to functionality, fairness, and humaneness. And, the Indian genius found a fine balance between otherworldly beliefs and this-worldly practicality. What the West devised as secularism was an old practice in India in a very refined form.  

  When India got independence, the fascination for leftism was raging, particularly in the post-colonial world. India fell for it and lost many decades in processing recovery. This was a colossal tragedy in that the Dharmik people went for a disruptive, conflictual, and destructive ideology while putting aside their own far superior wisdom. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

समय की सीख

इस समय की सबसे बड़ी सीख यह है कि
सच कोई चीज नहीं है,
जो हमें मुहैया करायी जाती है।
पहले भी ऐसा नहीं था,
लेकिन अधिकतर को यह पता नहीं था।

समय इस समझ  की  है कि 
सच प्रयास है, परिपक्वता है,
और सबसे ऊपर यह संवेदना है।

नीरज कुमार झा 

Parliamentary Democracy

Democracy works as the people at the helm design it. The idea of citizenship in place of subjecthood, i.e. a person being master of their own than being a slave of others, requires a carefully created mechanism to realise. The Britons grew to their present form, the parliamentary one, and never had the opportunity for a comprehensive review. The islanders are still growing, but we lapped up their amateurish way as a matured product. Travesty of our choice.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Chickens have come home to roost

 The great war leaders, the statesmen of the times, defeated the axis of evil, and emerged victorious after four years of devasting second global warfare. Humankind had never suffered so much self-inflicted loss and pain, and yet, the leaders of the day could do was not build a just international order,  but create only a mechanism to drain global wealth to themselves and secure their political hegemony. The system was never effective if the violations involved any of the big five, directly or indirectly. Now, again, the same system becomes totally ineffective to stop acts of aggression and annexations as the very leaders holding the levers of global order indulge in grave violations of international propriety. Humankind must think unitedly to overcome the evil designs of the powers that be and stop the brutalities perpetrated on them. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

​दूसरा वैसा हुआ नहीं

जो भी कह लो,
दूसरा वैसा हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

वह जो कर गया,
वैसा कुछ हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

कमियाँ उसमें थीं,
होंगी और भी,
वैसा मानव हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

था वह मानव ही,
उतना मानव मानव,
हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

जितनी बातें उसने की,
जितनों से की,
उतनी किसी ने नहीं की,
कहीं भी और कभी भी।

जितने उसके हुए,
जितनों का वह हुआ,
वैसा हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

जो लड़ता हो नित बड़ी-छोटी लड़ाइयाँ,
उसके लिए कोई शत्रु नहीं,
ऐसा हुआ नहीं कभी भी,
कहीं भी।

वह आस्थावान था,
था जन-जन का प्रेमी भी।
ऐसा कोई हुआ नहीं,
कभी भी।

पंथ अनेक,
पथ अनेक,
लेकिन वैसा पथिक
हुआ नहीं कहीं,
कभी भी।

वह सनातन का था,
वह ध्रुव था और है अभी भी,
बाकी है तुम्हारी मर्जी।

नीरज कुमार झा

Client Capitalism

Capitalism works even in a captive state. Patron forces every element to conduce the captive operatives and enterprises grow exponentially.

At first, such economies grow very vast and overwhelm the others, but after some time, the model starts crumbling.

It may be an absolute case under authoritarian regimes and partial or selective under the lesser authoritarian ones.

Client capitalism has inherent limits: the patron's imagination and position. That cannot be crossed. More critically, patrons often resort to their 'wisdom,' say whims and fancies, to drive the economy and that costs the economy badly.

The fact is overlooked that capitalism is essentially about rationalism. A regime harms the economy badly if it works to defy the principles of the market. This explains the crises which engulf many economies of the world. However, one must know that one fits all expertise does not work. Knowing, how and what of it, is critical knowledge by itself.

The mantra is simple, a regime must remain focused on its task, i.e. to ensure freedom and fair play. All other activities of a regime are deviations, and those violate the rules of civility and impoverish the national culture both materially and morally.

Niraj Kumar Jha

We, the people of Gods and Goddesses

Navratri comes and rejuvenates life. Devotees rediscover themselves by immersing themselves in penance, prayers, and celebrations. The divinity and authority of the feminine are worshipped and invoked respectively. During the very prolonged rule of Semitic religionists in India, some members of the elite among intelligentsia became apologetic for worshipping gods in human forms or in forms of other living beings or in any form. They emphasised the unity and formlessness of Godhood in the Sanatana tradition. The fact is that in the Indic traditions, the belief in one formless Supreme Being has coexisted with devotion to Gods and Goddesses always in harmony.

Believing is believing and there cannot be any rationalised justification for what to believe or how to translate your beliefs into rituals and moral behaviour in particular. Nonetheless, modern constitutionalism legitimately puts certain conditions on such practices that you would not harm or inconvenience others while practising your beliefs.

The Indic traditions relate more to life, nature, and particularised ideals in comparison. It celebrates all phenomena nourishing life, nature, and supposedly the cosmos. The Indic people respect their philosophers and holy persons and listen to their abstractions with respect and care and at the same time celebrate their divinities with gaiety.

Indians celebrate life, its forms, colours, and its pulsation as their religion. They are happy believers and do not question any form of worship and may happily accept and even participate in any religious observations.

Let us celebrate life and all beings, animate or inanimate. Salutations to all. Wish all a blissful Navaratri.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Political Theory Today

Political theoreticians inhabit their own world and they remain alien to the world they theorise about. The alienness only increases if the language they write in is also foreign to the people they articulate about. Political theory indeed shapes the world. Constitutions govern their respective country and the principles and mechanisms they provide are takeaways from past theoretical works on politics.

 
At this point in time, it is strange that despite the quantum of changes that have already happened in a short span of time and happening around the world is exceptionally phenomenal and no grand theory has appeared so far to address and guide the changes. In fact, the very idea of democracy and its institutionalisation needs a massive overhaul and upgrade. But there is nothing one can hear in the open. As a commoner, I cannot speak for what may be happening below the high ceilings of great universities or inside deep think tanks. A pandemic havoced the world and the responses lacked coherence and direction abysmally. Institutions had no memory of the basics that had been set for handling past pandemics. Such a massive crisis also did not elicit any meaningful response from the theoreticians. This is tragic.

 
The alienness of the theory workers and the datedness of their wares make them highly wanting in the present challenging scenario.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Socialibity and Privacy

I find that some people have incoherent feelings about sociability and privacy. A great reward of being prosperous is that one can afford privacy. But, the same people who can afford and enjoy privacy also lament the loss of sociability. This may be for two reasons: one,  they have only chanced to get their riches, have not created or inherited that, and/or they are not prosperous enough to pay for sociability. 

Earlier, not unlike the present, those who could lord the society had both private indulgences and fun with cronies. But, sociability was essentially about having and not having. Those have-nots had social life only and needed it badly for security and relief and the haves could buy both, but it had ever been problematic for the people in the middle. They too lacked privacy but could afford sociability. Nonetheless, the sociability strained the households as such and was burdensome for the women folks. Now, the nuclear families living in independent houses or flats, have come to value privacy and cleanliness, and at the same time as mutual help gets rarer and hiring help costlier, middle-class families find it very difficult to be sociable. The living rooms are deserted in most households. 

The moral of the story is that you cannot have cake and eat it too. If you can raise your income, you can have regular supplies of cakes. If not, enjoy your privacy and be friendly to whomever you interact with.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Jobs

The general political discourse on the need for jobs for the burgeoning youth population treats the shortfall of jobs as an isolated matter as if the government can generate jobs by its sheer willpower. The fact is that it is the economy or the market that creates the job. And the key to unlocking the expansion of the economy and its capacity lies in the hands of the ordinary citizens; they need to be capital friendly in their approach and articulations. Only they can drive the dispensations across the land to ease doing businesses further and make the national economy internationally competitive. There is no other way. The non-market approach of collective good failed miserably everywhere. The history of the twentieth century imparts this critical lesson with all the details of the brutalises the experiments unleashed.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Dharma Defined

What is Dharma?

Dharma, to begin with, is the mindful viewing of being.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Religionism as Intellectualism

Religionism overweighed postcolonial intellectualism and drove them to the absurd extreme to deploy secularism to cater to the religions. And, as such, academia and professional intellectuals in the main remained hostile to the spirit, forms, and practices of dharma, i.e, the mindful viewing of being. In place of knowing and practising dharma, they paid obeisance to creeds and dogmas. They mistook doctrines as principles, indoctrination as education, diktats as laws, and as such diminished life in a way that such vital contradistinctions as between sanity and insanity turned indistinguishable. Their constructions, mental and material, collapsed within decades under their own weight of incongruities, and now we sit on the heaps of debris everywhere. They are still well-ensconced and mock the people in distress. They continue to play their loud orchestra in order to drown the voices of logic and rationality.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The fact of life

The fact of life, as it appears to me, is that most people's goals are to be slaves and fools, strangely enough, for the sake of peace of mind and happiness. Freedom of being and thinking entails bearing responsibilities and, thus, is painful. Higher values necessitate greater efforts and can not be achieved without the substantialization of citizens' personas.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Expressions

Any expression, no matter how it appears, simplistic, insane, or even sickening, is not dismissable at once. First, that may be just opposite to how it appears, complex, sane, and redemptive; or maybe a cry of sufferance resulting from social failures. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Facts and Values

Facts are about forms, and values are about reforms. For good and workable values we need to know facts well to be followed by proper articulations and systematic action plans. Our public discourse gets emotive and we tend to ignore facts and thus keep maintaining and generating a great mass of confounding values. 

For clarification's sake: we also live and practise values but that is one of the dimensions of values, the facts of life which guide our lives. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

The MCQs

Of late, the MCQs as a mode for testing learning or knowledge have been getting smarter but for the jobs which require critical and comprehensive applications of mind, it remains totally irrelevant.

 
It seems it got in vogue for the ease of conducting the testing process but its wider application even for jobs which need deep thinking and comprehensive perspective, the selection process has a severe degenerating effect on the society and polity. Thanks to God, the issue has come to public attention.

 
The selection process is a crucial task for getting suitable and good functionaries and personnel for organisations. We must get science into the process and adjoint R & D. At present, the fact is widely realised that we have in place only rejection processes and even that without rationalised criteria.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

असमस्या

समाधान को समस्या, समस्या को समाधान, असमस्या को समस्या और समस्या को असमस्या के रूप में समझाना और समझना; बड़े पैमाने पर कालिक और अकालिक लोकविमर्शों में यही होता है। असमस्या के असमाधान की खेती दुनिया में सर्वाधिक लाभ का व्यवसाय है।

नीरज कुमार झा

सोशल मीडिया

सामान्य धारणा है कि सोशल मीडिया का दुरुपयोग कर आम लोगों को बरगलाया जा सकता है। यह सच के उलट है। इसके विपरीत सोशल मीडिया के आने से पहले ऐसा किया जाना सहज संभव था जो अब लगभग असंभव हो चुका है। अपने देश में ही सोवियत संघ ने लोगों में  सस्ती पुस्तकों,  पत्रिकाओं  और प्रायोजित लेखों के माध्यम से एक दुष्प्रयोग को उद्धार का एकमात्र मार्ग के रूप में सफलता पूर्वक प्रचारित किया था। उनका काम इतना पक्का था कि उनके वैश्विक साम्राज्य के ढह जाने के बाद भी उस इंद्रजाल में विश्वास करने वाले लोग बड़ी संख्या में बचे हुए हैं । आज सोशल मीडिया पर हर घटना और परिघटना के तमाम पक्ष सहज दृश्य होते हैं, और किसी विचार का एकाधिकार संभव नहीं है। 

कुछ लोग ऐसा अत्यंत निराशा के साथ बताते हैं कि लोगों की सोच का बड़े पैमाने पर हरण हो गया है। ऐसा लगने का कारण है, और  कारण यह है कि उन्हें किसी विचार विशेष की प्रबलता दिखती है। सतह के नीचे सच यह है कि लोग बड़े कायदे से अपने फायदे की बात कर रहे हैं। पहले भी किसी विचार विशेष की ही प्रबलता होती थी लेकिन लोग उसे सामान्य के रूप में लेते थे। जैसा कि उक्त मत के विद्यमान होने से ही स्पष्ट है कि अब प्रधान विचार को भी चुनौती मिल रही है; और यह सोशल मीडिया का ही योगदान है।आज का सच यह है कि सामान्य जन ने अधिष्ठान के पदाधिकारियों को अलग कर स्वतंत्र रूप से विचारों का  चयन और कथन कर रहे हैं। सामान्य जन लोकविमर्श में स्वतंत्र चेतना के संग सक्रिय भागीदार बन गए हैं। लोक विमर्श पर पुस्तकालयों, प्रयोगशालाओं, अभिलेखागारों, स्टूडियो, मंचों  का नियंत्रण  नहीं रह गया है। यह समय वास्तव में संस्थानों के सीखने का है और उन्हें गवेषणा में गंभीरता और निष्ठा का समावेश करते हुए सामान्य जीवन और हित को संबोधित करना होगा। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

चालाकी

चालाकी ज्यादा दिन नहीं चलती 

यदि चलती है तो वजह 

चालाकी नहीं 

कुछ और है

नीरज कुमार झा 

Foolishness for Fools

Foolishness works for the fools provided they do not have any doubt about their 'wisdom'. The fools attempt to befool others without compunction and they mostly succeed in their endeavours.  

Niraj Kumar Jha 

राष्ट्रहित

कुछ विषय-वस्तु  ऐसे होते हैं जिन पर निरंतर चर्चा आवश्यक होती है। राष्ट्र का निरंतर शक्ति-संवर्द्धन, संपत्ति-विस्तार, और सांस्कृतिक-उन्नयन ऐसे विषयों में सर्वाधिक महत्वपूर्ण है। राष्ट्रहित और प्रत्येक नागरिक का हित अभिन्न है। प्रत्येक नागरिक की सुरक्षा, संपन्नता, और सुख का आधार देश की शक्ति और सामर्थ्य है। इसलिए प्रत्येक को यह तथ्य आत्मसात करना होगा कि राष्ट्रहित उसका स्वयं का हित है। कोई भी प्रवृत्ति, घटना, या परिघटना यदि देश हित में नहीं है तो वह किसी भी नागरिक के हित में नहीं है। 

भारत के लिए यह रणनीतिक अपरिहार्यता है कि यह विश्व की परमशक्ति बने। यद्यपि भारत का स्वभाव वसुधैव कुटुंबकम का है, लेकिन दुनिया के कई देश, पंथ, और विचारधाराएँ भारत, भारतीयता, और भारत दर्शन से शत्रुता का भाव रखते हैं, और इस सभ्यता का पराभव या इस पर वर्चस्व स्थापित करना चाहते हैं। ये ताकतें अत्यंत ही क्रूर, आक्रामक, और वर्चस्ववादी हैं। इनमें से चीन एक महाशक्ति और यह वैश्विक प्रभुता की योजना पर कार्यरत है। दूसरा पाकिस्तान है, जो पूरी तरह से  विफल एक राजनीतिक उपक्रम है और मानवताविरोधी तत्वों और गतिविधियों का अड्डा है। 

भारत तीव्रता से अग्रसर है। इसमें भारत में समाज मीडिया द्वारा प्रशस्त मुक्त विमर्श भी योगदान दे रहा है। भारत की शक्ति स्वयंभू है, लेकिन यह प्रत्येक व्यक्ति का कर्तव्य है कि वह देश की शक्ति में योगदान दे। वास्तव में यह ऐसा कर्तव्य है जो किसी व्यक्ति के व्यक्तिगत हित के प्रयास से भिन्न नहीं है। प्रत्येक व्यक्ति अपना कार्य परहित और समाजहित को ध्यान में रखते हुए निष्ठा और मनोयोग से करे, यह देश हित में महत्वपूर्ण है। हालांकि अनेक जन कई बार परिस्थितियों के कारण उचित मार्ग का चयन नहीं कर पाते हैं, लेकिन वे अपनी प्रवृत्ति सकारात्मक बनाए रखे और सन्मार्ग से मुह नहीं मोड़ लें, यह उनके और देश हित लिए आवश्यक है। यह अत्यंत ही सहज है; यह प्रयास मात्र दृष्टिकोण को लेकर  है। 

राष्ट्र के मान की रक्षा हर राष्ट्रवादी का परमधर्म है और सामान्यतः प्रत्येक भारतीय इसके लिए प्रतिबद्ध है। यहाँ यह विषय रेखांकित किया गया है कि एक सामान्य व्यक्ति सामान्य जीवन में कैसे देशहिट में योगदान दे सकता है।विशिष्ट अभियानों और महान कृत्यों के साथ इस तथ्य का अपना महत्व है। 

सामूहिक रूप से हमारा उद्यम यह होना चाहिए कि प्रत्येक नागरिक कौशल,  क्षमता, और चरित्र में श्रेष्ठता प्राप्त करे। इसके लिए माध्यम शिक्षा व्यवस्था की श्रेष्ठता ही है। हमारी कोशिश होनी चाहिए कि समाज के सर्वाधिक प्रतिभावान और प्रतिबद्ध जन शिक्षक का कार्य करें। हमारा लक्ष्य इससे न्यून नहीं हो कि प्रत्येक भारतीय व्यक्तित्व और भूमिका में वैश्विक स्तर पर अगुआ हो और  दुनिया के  लोग भारत और किसी भी भारतीय की ओर मार्गदर्शन के लिए देखें और उनका अनुसरण कर गौरवान्वित हों। यह सहज संभव है। मात्र उपलब्ध संस्कार को संस्थागत आधार देना है। 

नीरज कुमार झा 

परिपक्वता

परिपक्वता की आधार अर्हताएँ मैंने प्राप्त कर ली है;

बाल सफेद हो चुके हैं,

धूप में कम ही निकला हूँ,

तथाकथित परिपक्वतावर्द्धक अभ्यास भी किए हैं, और

अपने दिल में रह रहे बचपने को दैनिक रूप से डांटा है।

लेकिन, फिर भी, मेरे साथ उलटा हो रहा है;

समझदारी को लेकर मेरा आत्मविश्वास घटता जा रहा है।

किसी आदमी को पहचानने का,

या परिस्थितियों के कारण और परिणाम जानने का,

दावा तो मैं पहले भी नहीं करता था,

लेकिन थोड़ा-बहुत भ्रम तो पाल ही लेता था।

अब मैं ऐसा कोई दावा नहीं कर पाता हूँ;

मुझे अपने झक सफेद बालों में कुछ काला दिख रहा है।

नीरज कुमार झा

 

Freedom

Freedom as an order takes the form of democracy. The idea of freedom is often invoked along with equality and fraternity. The parallelism is misplaced. The fact is that it is freedom that begets equality and fraternity, and that is to the possible best. Only utopianism or fantasising in place of philosophizing can sustain the ideas of eliminating inequality and forcing people to fraternal relations. When the idea of freedom remains essential to the democratic formations so regarded in the world, the citizens have and cherish a fair degree of respect and reward for each human being. There may be things abysmally wanting, but that is the best we can have in our present world. For betterment, we need to conceptualise and actualise more freedoms. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Seeing

Seeing is a very challenging job. Everything depends on how skilled people are in seeing. Seeing is not a natural act; one has to make great efforts for it. They go to their prenatal stage to fix lenses on their eyes to usurp visions, and there are agencies always active to place or replace lenses. Being yourself and seeing things as they are is being human.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Power of Social Media

The story of the times is the power of social media, i.e., the power of the commoners. Some say that social media is a mechanism for manipulating public opinion. But, the same persons, who are insulting the intellect of commoners, are also speaking on the same media and are heard and believed. They do have their role as they help the commoners to be more discerning and thus only add to their power.

But, the wisdom is that power is responsibility. Exercise of power bereft of the intent of good and the lack of innate humility in the exerciser is an act of coercion for sadistic pleasures. This is as true for an individual as for any collective. This does not mean that we should not contest evil. One must, but we keep reminding ourselves that while fighting evil, we must save ourselves from the evil cast.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Folks Against Freedom

Why do people disallow freedoms that they need badly or would relish heartily? 

The fact is not generally realised that such a tendency affects common progress adversely and ghettoises folks mentally and physically. The pain of deprivation is lingering.

The answer is that people are afraid of the abuses of freedoms by others. Indeed, the unsavoury elements are too numerous for the comfort of the gentle folks.

The answer is to promote humanism.

What is humanism?

Humanism is one of the two wheels of modernity, the other being rationalism.

Let us explore their meanings and what they do for us.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy Today

 Democracy is the final stage of human evolution for the world as it exists today. The foreseeable future is about its expansion in the world and its refinement. The fall of Bolshevism was its last great victory, and the final decades of the 20th century were the times of high hopes. Liberalism was in the air, and globalism was seen as a fait accompli. And then, things took a rapid turn. The entrenched forces thriving on emotionalism, utopianism, and otherworldliness realised the threats to their privileges and joined forces. With the aid of the naive in the literati, the naive being the overwhelming majority in the category, they succeeded in blocking the greatest ever upsurge of the common persons. They pushed back the great liberating momentum in the very name of the people who were about to avail freedoms unimagined by the earlier generations and also by them. Now, the same literati is lamenting the democracy slide globally, the rise of extremism everywhere, and the decline of human agency as the mismanagement in the handling of the pandemic worldwide demonstrated, without realising its own folly in granting a new lease of life to the outdated forces. At this time, we must know that democracy is about the mental, intellectual, and moral upgrade which happens in the ecology of liberation. The upgrade and the ecology happen intertwined. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

75 वर्ष

हम साक्षी हैं और सहभागी भी। इन पचहत्तर वर्षों में हमने दुनियाँ की महानतम क्रांति को जीया है। एक महान सभ्यता सदियों के दोहन और अवमानना के गर्त से गणतंत्र के रूप में पुनर्नवा हो उठती है और अपने ध्वज से सारे आकाश को आच्छादित कर देती है। यह सम्पूर्ण मानवता के इतिहास का सबसे अद्भूत अध्याय है। मानवजाति का छठा हिस्सा जो बारम्बार आक्रमणों, नरसंहारों, आंतरिक कलहों, अकालों, महामारियों, दोहन और दमन से दुनियाँ के सबसे दीन-हीन प्राणियों में गिना जाता था, न मात्र असाधारण रूप से जनतांत्रिक प्रणाली को अपनाता है बल्कि उसका निरंतर पोषण भी असाधारण रूप से करता है। सर्व-साधारण की गरिमा की इतनी शीघ्र व्याप्ति अन्यथा अकल्पनीय है।

भारत के ध्वज के मध्य में स्थित धर्मचक्र विश्व में पुनः गतिशील हो चुका है, जिसकी शक्ति है कोटि-कोटि जन का गरिमामय जीवन हेतु संघर्ष और इसकी दिशा है इस महान सभ्यता की सहस्राब्दियों की परंपरा से निःसृत ज्ञान। भांति-भांति के भ्रमों और बाधाओं को पार करता यह धर्मचक्र मानवता का त्राण करेगा, यह तय है। यह प्रत्येक भारतवासी से और हर मानव से स्वहित में अपेक्षित है कि वह इस चक्र का बल बने, अवरोध नहीं। धर्मविजय प्रत्येक प्राणी का जय है। हम इस महान अभियान में बराबरी से भागीदार होकर मानवता के भविष्य के इतिहास के सर्वाधिक उज्ज्वल अध्याय का लेखन करेंगे, यह भी तय है ।

नीरज कुमार झा

The Srilankan Crisis

I read a few articles explaining the crisis. They were ex post facto analyses, and the authors saw the crisis in terms of their ideological predilections except for the one factor which is factual and common to all, i.e., Srilanka falling into the Chinese debt trap by falling for their misplaced investments.

All other measures, which the analysts accounted for the Srilankan slip, were rather thoroughly rational and well-thought over.

In fact, one must not forget that nations too fail like business corporations. It depends on the quality of leadership and the times. Incompetent leadership can mess up even the best ideas. It is a matter of competence.

In a democracy, the quality of the leadership only reflects the quality of the general citizenry. Ultimately, the national good depends on the knowledge base of the society. It is a critical factor that people know and are eager to learn more about.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

UBI

In the US, I read the reports, that for many, it is more rewarding to remain unemployed than to do a job as they get compensated for unemployment by the government. As a result, many small enterprises do not find workers and have to close down. In fact, unemployment allowance, thus, creates more unemployment.

A universal and unconditional allowance removes this anomaly. If people are not insecure and guaranteed minimum support, they tend to work harder to make their living conditions better.

UBI may not be that cost-prohibitive. The government would do well by abolishing wasteful and inefficient welfare schemes and departments and introducing UBI instead.

Enhanced economic activities as a result of the average people having more money and thus buying more and working harder to make their living conditions better would never leave government coffers deficient.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Tourism: the great empolyer

 Tourism is gaining critical importance as an industry. As other sectors of the economy get more mechanised, digitalised, robotised, and automated, they need lesser enterprises and enterprises need fewer workers. In this context, the tourism industry has an answer for the resultant rising unemployment. We need a concerted effort to facilitate tourism. But, this is a comprehensive project. We need a tourism-friendly culture to get into existence. The questions of safety and ease for the travellers are paramount in this regard. Secondly, the administrative field units and local governments must work hard to make every nook and cranny of the country worthy of being photographed as picture postcards. The manpower and resources are already available, they only need to be properly purposed. For promoting tourism, the focus should be on domestic tourism so that we have solid tour and travel facilities and amenities spread across the country, which in turn would attract more and more foreign travellers. Meanwhile, education institutions may include courses on tourism entrepreneurship and management, municipal and country administration, aesthetics, and etiquette among others.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

On the need for democratic interpretation

Democratic processes and events need democratic representations. In general, academic or popular analyses do not take people's lived experiences and their mental frames into account. They impose democracy-defying analytical concepts and categories over reality and thus do not allow democracy to work to its potential. They do not know that democracy does not happen on its own; it requires the application of mind and sustained efforts.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Professorism or Professoriatism

I think the making, makeup, and mind of the professoriat needs to be studied as a separate discipline. The professoriat disseminates, processes, preserves, and creates knowledge. They make knowledge available in accessible and usable form to the greater number of the citizenry. They thus shape minds, direct human agency and shape society. A branch of knowledge must scrutinise the nature and role of the designated creators and bearers of knowledge. They themselves and the rest must have authentic knowledge of their functional position for the greater good.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Professoriat

The professoriat in a society where formal education is an established tradition engage with mostly their own doings or undoings.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Sanatana Dharma

Sanatana dharma is neither a religion nor a form of paganism. Now there is a growing realisation that Sanatana Dharma is not a religion but still, a great number of people talk of it as if it is a religion. Religion is about certain enunciated fundamentals using supernatural narratives to fix human conduct and drive their agency, whereas Sanatan Dharma is an open-ended quest for knowing the nature and purpose of existence and the for considering proper human conduct accordingly. It is not paganism either, wherein overawed by natural phenomena human beings worship some natural objects or their imagined representations. Sanatana Dharma is an ongoing collective philosophical enterprise for the collective good and guiding every person to act according to the wisdom so accrued. However, this is not to say that some people have not erred in this quest or the enterprise is free of religious or paganist proclivities. But those imbued with the true spirit always seek their passage to light from the darkness, i.e., to greater truth, justice, and good.

Niraj Kumar Jha

शाश्वत सत्य

शाश्वत सत्य वह है, जो हर प्रकट में स्थित होते हुए भी स्थल और काल की सीमाओं से परे है। यह हर प्रकट तत्व में है क्योंकि जो भी है वह कभी निर्मित नहीं हुआ है और साथ ही अविनाशी है। इनके परे अप्रकट भी इसमें समाहित है। सीमित की असीमितता और असीम विस्तार की प्रतीति कल्पनागत होती है लेकिन इसका स्वरूप कल्पनातीत है। इस सर्वपूर्ण अथवा सम्पूर्ण (ऐब्सलूट) की प्रतीति सहजबोध है लेकिन इसका कोई प्रकट रूप नहीं  है। 

नीरज कुमार झा

Democracy

Democracy is the antithesis of absolutism. And, therefore democracy itself cannot be about perfection. Democracy though refines the conduct of practitioners, but it primarily reflects the people who practise it. For a better democracy, the people need to be more discerning in approach and dignified in conduct. The fact is that democracy is not a state of nature; it is an achieved state of civility. The people conscious of their individualities only graduate to the order of democracy. The collectivised ways of living, owning or minding only dilute and deny people's democratic potential.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A Living Book

A living book listens to and speaks to its readers. Most books are stillborn or gone still.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

फ्यूडलिज़म अथवा ढोरवाद

फ्यूडलिज़म शब्द की व्युत्पति के अनुसार इस शब्द का भारती में समानार्थक शब्द ढोरवाद बनता है। फ्यूडलिज़म के समांतर सामंतवाद शब्द का प्रयोग दोषपूर्ण है, क्योंकि दोनों ही व्यवस्थाएँ सर्वथा भिन्न थीं। पाश्चात्य जगत में ढोरवाद के काल को उनके इतिहास का मध्यकाल कहा गया है। ये अलग तथ्य है कि उन्होंने अपने इतिहास के कालविभाजन को विश्व की तमाम सभ्यताओं पर आरोपित कर दिया। अब पाश्चात्य जगत में आधुनिक युग की त्रासदी की बात करते हैं। पाश्चात्य जगत में भले ही आधुनिक युग ढोरवादी काल के बाद आया लेकिन ढोरवाद समूहवादी वैचारिकी के छद्मावरण में इस काल में भी बना रहा और शेष दुनियाँ में प्रसारित होता रहा। आधुनिकता मानवतावाद का युग है। इस व्यवस्था के केंद्र में व्यक्ति होता है लेकिन इस कालखंड में भी व्यक्तिवाद को नकारती समूहवादी विचारधाराएँ पाश्चात्य जगत में उत्पन्न होती रही, जो यूरोप और दुनियाँ के अन्य भागों में मानव जीवन की मानव सृजित त्रासदियों का प्रधान कारक रही हैं।

नीरज कुमार झा

देशहित

    समझने और समझाने की बात है कि हमारा व्यक्तिगत हित और सामूहिक हित अन्योन्याश्रित है। प्रत्येक का सापेक्षिक हित देश और समाज की स्थिति पर निर्भर करता है। इसलिए प्रत्येक यह समझे कि उसका देश और समाज के हित में सोचना और कार्य करना उसके स्वयं के लिए आवश्यक है। कोई भी स्वयं कंटक बन कंटकों की संख्या बढ़ाता है, अन्य कंटकों को मजबूत करता है; और काँटों की बहुतायत सभी के जीवन को संकटपूर्ण बना देती है। जरूरत है कंटकों को दूर करने की; जो लोगों की सही समझ, सकारात्मक सोच, और रचनात्मक योगदान से ही संभव है। जनतांत्रिक व्यवस्था के अंतर्गत रहने वाले जन निरीह नहीं हो सकते हैं। प्रत्येक नागरिक अपने आचरण और चयन में दिमाग का इस्तेमाल करे और उसके परिणामों के विषय में सोचे। लोगों की छोटी-छोटी बातों का व्यापक असर होता है। यह कभी नहीं भूलना चाहिए कि हम प्रत्येक के व्यक्तित्व के योग से ही समाज का स्वरूप और चरित्र निर्मित होता है। प्रत्येक का निरंतर प्रयास होना चाहिए कि उसका व्यक्तित्व गंभीर और आचरण गरिमामय हो। यहाँ यह महत्वपूर्ण नहीं है कि कोई कैसा है; महत्वपूर्ण यह है कि वह अपनी प्रवृत्ति को लेकर सजग है। आदमी बहुत हद तक परिस्थितियों का दास होता है और उसके हाथ में ज्यादा कुछ नहीं होता है। लेकिन किसी भी परिस्थिति में किसी का निराश और उदासीन होना उसके द्वारा संकट को बढ़ाना है, क्योंकि ऐसी मनोदशा के व्यापक होने से परिस्थितियाँ और खराब हो जाती हैं। यथासाध्य सकारात्मक प्रयास करते रहना ही उचित है। प्रत्येक यथासंभव अपने दायित्वों का पालन करे, अधिकारों का समुचित उपयोग करे, और जनतांत्रिक साधनों का प्रयोग करे; यह उसके स्वयं, स्वजनों, और समाज के हित में है।

नीरज कुमार झा

Neoliberalism

Liberalism, let me reiterate, is not an ideology. It is an ecology created by the secular play of human faculty and agency. The great theorists who dwelt on the liberal ideas and institutions were mostly articulating what was already happening. This is to say that liberalism is a phenomenon unfolding without the help of any doctrine. It is the manifestation of the common human drive for property and autonomy. In other words, men and women in their pursuit of dignity and happiness create the ecology of liberalism. Neoliberalism was its phase when it corrected itself from its welfarist drift. But, the lordships and their devotees prevailed and the world is again under their glorious spell.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Questioning

Questioning is a purer act than answering. 

NKJ

The Era of Ghastly Truths

These are the times when hitherto held notions of truths have come under serious questioning. Truthfulness is scrutinising ideas ruthlessly. This is an era of ghastly truths. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

दृष्टिदोष

नेत्रों के दोषपूर्ण होने से वस्तुएँ मूल की तुलना में अस्पष्ट और लघु दिखती हैं, या नहीं दिखती हैं। मन की आँखों के दोषपूर्ण होने पर वस्तुएँ मूल की तुलना में अधिक स्पष्ट और विशाल दिखती हैं, और वे वस्तुएँ भी दिखती हैं, जो वहाँ नहीं हैं। इस दृष्टिदोष की व्यापकता ही प्राकृतिक समस्याओं के यथासंभव निदान में सबसे बड़ी बाधा और कृत्रिम समस्याओं का प्रधान कारक है। वस्तुओं को वैसे ही देख पाना जैसे वे हैं, के लिए नेत्रों का निर्दोष होना आवश्यक है। शरीर की आँखों की तरह मन की आँखों का नियमित परीक्षण भी आवश्यक है, जिसे व्यक्ति स्वयं ही कर सकता है।

नीरज कुमार झा

The Ancient Wisdom

 The ancients had this advantage. They were closer to existence with fewer artificial meshes. What they spoke, the essentials of that remain essential.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Graduation

 Nature properties men to belong to many herds. Graduating does not mean getting into one more. One must graduate to being assured of the humanity of self and each of all fellows. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being Conscious of Consciousness

Education is about acquiring the capability of being conscious of consciousness, or to be more focused, about viewing and reviewing happenings with self-consciousness. People are mostly unaware of their being programmed, i.e. their subconscious being a designed ware. The suave among people has been scripting such programmes from the beginning of civilization. How to be yourself is to be the end of education, but ironically it still remains a far cry. The other education inputs are skills for a bare living.

Niraj Kumar Jha

शक्ति और दायित्व

वर्तमान समय का प्रत्येक दिवस लोक माध्यम (सोशल मीडिया) की शक्ति का लेख करता है, जो सामान्य जन की ही शक्ति है। इस संदर्भ में  प्रत्येक व्यक्ति के लिए यह सतत स्मरण रखना आवश्यक है कि यह शक्ति समानुपातिक रूप से उसे स्वयं या अन्य के उस उद्देश्य हेतु संघर्ष से नहीं बल्कि प्रौद्योगिकी और पूँजीवाद से भेंट स्वरूप मिली है। जो वस्तु व्यक्तियों को  स्वयं के कठिन प्रयास से प्राप्त होती है, वह सामान्यतया उसका दुरुपयोग नहीं करता है। यह वर्तमान शक्ति सामान्य लोगों को अकस्मात अत्यंत बढ़ी हुई मात्रा  में  मिली है और इसलिए यह स्वाभाविक है कि उनमें से अधिकांश इसकी गंभीरता को नहीं समझे। इस शक्ति के दुरुपयोग का पहला दुष्परिणाम इस शक्ति का क्षरण होगा जिसकी घोर आवश्यकता सामान्य जन को है। एक सामान्य व्यक्ति को इस पुरानी समझ को आत्मसात करना होगा कि महान शक्ति के साथ महान दायित्व का भी आगमन होता है। प्रत्येक व्यक्ति गंभीर हो, जिज्ञासु हो, और स्वयं और अन्य के प्रति उत्तरदायी हो; यह ज्ञान आज किसी भी कालखंड की तुलना  में अतुलनीय रूप से अधिक प्रासंगिक है। जैसा कि एक सामान्य जन किसी भी समय की तुलना में आज अधिक प्रभावशाली है, इसलिए उसे उसी अनुपात में दायित्व बोध को भी विकसित करना होगा। अन्यथा उनका यह बल उन्हीं के  लिए घातक सिद्ध होगा। संक्षेप  में मात्र इतना कि लोक माध्यम पर वयस्क बालपन से  बचें।  

नीरज कुमार झा 

George Orwell

The twentieth was a vicious century and also bizarre. That was the age of unprecedented advances in sciences and technologies, but humanity only abused that knowledge to brutalise itself and deprive itself of its human spirit. A man was more transcending than being himself. At that time, a person who could see things with great clarity remains even today a valuable resource for sane living. A citizen to qualify as one must be familiar with George Orwell's writings.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Time: a simple tool

Nothing befuddles men, though totally a human construction, like time. Men created time out of nothing, and it exists nowhere except in their minds. Its utility is only to map collective memory and to put perspective in order. The time factor is the management of life and a means of making existence engaging. It is riddlesome only when we see time as a representation of our existence. Otherwise, it is a simple mechanism as I put it above.

Niraj Kumar Jha

A bird called democracy

 A bird called democracy was in the egg in the 18th century. It underwent a  century-long hatchling phase, the 19th century. During the first half of the 20th century it was nestling and the later half was its fledgling phase. Now, it's a juvenile. It no longer needs any support but it still cannot reproduce.  It is its troublesome adolescent age. Soon, the bird would move to adulthood and we all be a happier lot under the wings of this mature bird. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Illusion of knowledge

Humanity has yet to get over a devastating pandemic, and still, under trauma, they get a war unleashed on them. No big act of commission is possible without the active association of a big number of people and a consenting multitude. This pathetic brutalisation of humanity makes it clear that humanity's knowledge of self is not knowledge. It is still living with illusions.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Human Problems

 Human or social problems are not, for example, like weather problems. These problems exist through persons only. A social problem becomes a problem as such only when a good number of people personify that problem. The challenge is that these persons also partake in discoursing the problem. It so happened that a scholar came to research an institution of which I was a part. When I shared my thoughts, she objected and pointed to me that I was saying something just opposite to what my colleagues had said. 

 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Digitalization: the Great Redemptive Passage

 Digitalization to the optimum of all feasible means and methods would have a redemptive effect on human beings. Countries and cooperations with a digitalization edge would have an overall advantage over their rivals and competitors. So it is for the individual persons. It would translate into greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness and lesser scope for scams, embezzlements, and corruption. And it would ensure greater dignity and liberty for one and all:  employers, employees, clients, and whosoever connected with the process.  

One may wonder how wise it is for us to rely on technology to resolve intractable and perennial problems like corruption. Is there no human, legal or moral, way of overcoming the human predicament? The Gandhian basics insist on that. However, I say any technology is as natural as a twig used for brushing teeth. And, any technology, no matter even if it is for destruction, ultimately serves the human cause. Have not nuclear weapons prevented the third world war from breaking out? 

Digitalization would be the mother of many reforms or revolutions; one may choose the term as per their ideological persuasion.   

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Unversity to celebrate humanity

The gurukuls sent their pupils to beg for themselves and their preceptors. The venerable sages could have gotten any sum of wealth from the kings only by hinting, but, instead, they sent out even the princes under their charge with begging bowls in their hands. Gurukuls taught them humility and made them realise that they depended on the householders and would serve them. Today, the high-end public universities privilege themselves at the cost of society and churn out graduates only to lord over whom they can. A university worth its name must privilege commoners, not itself, and prepare its graduates for the purpose. They must see that their graduates personify humility and not snobbery as the case is. A university must be a running celebration of humanity.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Being a fool

Most people have this feeling about any person that the person is a fool. Indeed, everyone is so, at least, in one respect or the other, but the softer ones know that others have a similar opinion about them, and revealing to a person their reality is against courtesy.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Philosophising

Imagination is phenomenally unlimited. One can let one's imagination fly as one fancies without care for rhyme or reason. It happens that people with their power of language or credentials get their wild imaginations accepted as philosophy. They connect factors, they have also the liberty of creating factors from their imagination, in whatever way and to whatever effect they want. They know well that social happenings are not testable in labs, and therefore they have nothing to fear about getting wrong. And, they find it to their great relish that the more fanciful an idea, the greater its appeal. But, they must know, the philosophers and also the litterateurs, that for the good of society, for the sake of the people they love and who love them, they must be very cautious about their imagining faculty. They must mediate it with experience and social and historical knowledge, and with the sensibility that ideas affect real people subject to the same pains and pleasure as anybody. Greatly fanciful ideas tend to be tyrannical and are capable of savaging lives across ages and geographies. The takeaway: philosophising is not fantasising; it is about exercising faculty with responsibility and care.

 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Historiography of Cherry-Picking

They say it is a bad history that you use the past as a storehouse and pick the facts which suit you. And, the good history, they insinuate, speaks for itself. This is a euphemism for a long ideological reading of the past. The ideologists martial the entire past for their conception of a wholesome future. They do not do cherry-picking but denude all the flora. They in the course of making the past a gigantic nothing (in its independent form, without its assigned justificatory role), undo the entire historical project: that is, you are denied of learning from your past for negotiating with your present.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Methodology

Methodology textbooks are a violent form of scholarship. They convert the simple and instinctively doable to a complicated and riddlesome non-starter. A wannabe researcher after undergoing the course of lessons and classes is left more confused than they were earlier. But, then to their respite, they find that it is about performing a set of rituals, propitiation, and finally, they would have the voluminous production in hardcover bearing a degree. The ritualised and dogmatised process is indeed very arduous, almost like a guided scaling of the Everest, but in the end, there is something very obvious, the peak beneath your feet and the same sky over your head.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Citizens of Sustance

Something which humanity confronts today is unprecedented and that is the global environmental crisis, ironically, caused by humanity itself. I read a transcript of some discussion; the discussants betrayed the airs of global elitism in terms of both ideas and language, and the pertinence of the reference here is that they blamed the bordered and trans-bordered politics. 

What they failed to figure out is the role of commoners. In fact, their very attitude, the condescension, is belittling of the common folks. People constitute politics, whether local or global. Unless we are able to see our makeover to persons of substance, each of us, we are not going to correct anything. The whole discourse must be changed, and its casting of the people always as a tool must end. An intellectual must talk of and talk to folks as a commoner. An honest intellectual must know if their intellect is appropriated, and if not they are commoners.

The project is never meant to be completed: spacing for folks to come up as citizens, individual persons in control of themselves. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Why write?

If one can write, one must write. If you want to keep it to yourself, you have your diary, and if you want to share your writeups, you have social media readily available.  

Why should one write? There may be several reasons for that, but I am here with something specific. You invariably use a mirror daily, and you do this to check your appearance: whether you look proper or not? Your writing does the same to your thoughts. When you read yourself after some time, you are able to know the property of your thoughts. Your writings mirror your thoughts. And, when you read yourself, you are a better judge of yourself. 

Why should one review one's own thoughts? More than anything else it is your thoughts that you are. It affects your relations, the social milieu you are a part of, and finally yourself. It is better if you study your thoughts with care as nothing affects you more than the thoughts you hold. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

An Invisible War

It would be the most closely watched war ever waged, but very strangely, it is a war hardly visible to us. The brutalisation of the Ukrainian people and the Russian lads, it seems, has been bargained for something else.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Life Package

People purchase travel packages because they get designed happiness. They undergo a drill and get a bottled gel of happiness. They can rub it on their faces whenever they like. While they are happying, their minds hibernate.

There are absolutist agencies. They offer life packages, which nobody is supposed/allowed to refuse. People do their biddings and get fulfilment as a reward.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Ecology of a Problem

A clearly identifiable social problem as a standalone phenomenon having its exclusive causes and consequences does not exist as such. Such a sifting and separating is an intellectual exercise only which is not the reality. The social conditions are highly diffused of things that go into their making. The point I want to make is that a social problem does not drop from the sky like a meteor but it occurs as a result of the prolonged crystallisation of effects of some dysfunctionality of social ecology. If we really care for society, we need to work on the ecology which feeds a problem. It's a long-drawn and thoughtful process.

Niraj Kumar Jha

On Entertaiment

I stopped watching films long ago. They are disgusting as they recast general envy and sufferance as entertainment. They humiliate the rich and avenge the rogues. The fantastic storylines season people to believe that enterprise is evil and laws are useless. Moreover, these recurrent doses sedate people to tolerate their miserable lives. The pedagogues, products of doctrinaire disciplining themselves, only added to this oppressive mental state. They trained the scholars to believe in a forthcoming revolution and churned out possessed persons as graduates. Entertainment and education join forces to devalue enterprise and law and legitimate to disturbing extent patrons and persons to lord over their lives. 

Niraj Kumar Jha  

समस्या-मुग्धता

समस्याओं में सबसे बड़ी समस्या बहुतायत में लोगों का समस्या-मुग्ध होना है। अधिकतर समस्याओं का निदान, समाधान, या शमन संभव है। मेरा यह अवलोकन है कि जिनके विचार और व्यवहार के कारण समस्या उत्पन्न हुई है, वे ही अपनी कृत के उत्पाद से अनभिज्ञ समस्या को लेकर सबसे अधिक आंदोलित होते हैं। और, यह भी मैंने अकसर देखा है कि जो समाधान है उसका भी लोग विरोध करते हैं, विशेषकर वही लोग। यह अजीब सी नियति है, लोग समस्या का भी विरोध करते हैं और उसके समाधान का भी। शायद यह दासता की दीर्घावधि का परिणाम है कि समस्याओं की न्यूनता की स्थिति हमें असहज कर देती है। इससे भी बड़ी त्रासदी यह है कि समाधान के नाम पर समस्या-वर्धक युक्तियों को ही वरीयता दी जाती है। उदाहरण के लिए एक विदेशी मूल के अर्थशास्त्री ने पाठशालाओं को भोजशालाओं में बदलने की वकालत की और उसे मान भी लिया गया। परिणाम: न माया मिली न राम। अब उसी धारा के अनुयायी शिक्षा के स्तर को लेकर रूदन कर रहे हैं।

नीरज कुमार झा

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

Utopium

He offered utopium, the ultimate pain-numbing dope, the dream of heavens on the earth, to the sufferer. And, at the same time weaponised sufferance. However, I do not intend to flog a dead horse here. There is a long and ongoing tradition of weaponising sufferance, and one must exercise caution. Theocracies and ideocracies do the same and then we have famines in the fields and camps in the wilderness.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Schooling

Not thesising, I am only sharing my impressions. Schooling, the modern non-theological one, is one of the pedagogical means, though it is the prime one in the totalitarian political age. Its primacy is so encompassing that one hears hardly about other pedagogical means and what one can hear, but only those with trained ears, are the faint cries for deschooling and unschooling, It is no strange as schooling is a working part of a larger arrangement. 

What does schooling do? Learning 3Rs can be done in any setting, and even other knowledge elements can be learnt by reading books and taking help from elders, and now with multiple media. Certainly, this is not the USP of schooling. What is the exclusivity of schooling? Basically, it is a public institution, and it drafts the required number of kids to serve the public ends when they grow up; and to the purpose, it regiments the kids to grow as agents of some grand objective, which entails uniformising to make them comrades for a mission and training the mind to accept which the minds usually resist accepting. 

The thing is that minds resist rationalism and agency. And, the schooling thus does the right thing in that it applies some coercion to train the mind for science and enterprise. However, there is another aspect: that the schooling seeks to appropriate these two for denying humanism by creating secular colossuses. The Kremlin and the Commissariat make the most formidable of such phenomena. 

Niraj Kumar Jha