The Vocation of Political Theory

Is it about digging out the thoughts of the past? Is it an exercise in esotericism? Is it about speaking of cities of castles suspended in mid-air? Is it talking about exotic-sounding terms and concepts? Is it about shaping and polishing folk-tales? Partly yes, but only as side hustles.

One must bear in mind that political theory is primarily about humanity: municipal affairs figure in it, but they are not its substance. One must not forget the world's interconnectedness and how humanity as a whole affects the denizens of any location, or even those flying high above the ground at any moment, through its epistemological predilections and acts of omission and commission. Theory must address the big questions of the times and must offer something doable for humanity.

Its other side is much more micro: an individual's cognitive toolset and how they do and should conduct themselves. These are the two nodes that must be the primary concern of practitioners of the theory.

In between come the people practitioners encounter in their day-to-day lives. Their thrills and travails must be accounted for, and their implications must be understood. Determining the deeper realities behind them and finding ways to minimise their difficulties in tangible ways must be among the purposes of theory. Fashioning it as ethnic, mysterious, modular, barren, historical-accounting, demolitionist, or agentic-neutral is to undo theory.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Next Generation of Reforms

Businesses got some semblance of what they needed to function as the lifeblood of society in 1991, when not doing so had brought everything to a halt. It was then that the consequences of mistaken, ideologically driven policies had brought the economy to the bottom of an abyss, leaving it with no choice but to climb back to sanity, with the World Bank imposing the conditions for doing so.

Reforms continued haltingly, with forward and backward movement, and only to the extent that doing so did not lead to a major crisis. And yet, the reforms transformed living standards, accelerated the growth of the national economy, and contributed to the rise in national power and prestige. People old enough, and with a sound memory, can compare the times and know this. The fact remains, however, and it is a worrisome predicament, that there was no public support when reforms first forced themselves upon us, nor was there much public support for them later.

Now, the challenge from not doing enough is truly critical. Today, the greatest challenge is to withstand technological, trade and productivity competition internationally, while building leverage in terms of military and diplomatic prowess to protect national interests. Those who have an edge are relentlessly seeking to extend it further, by fair and foul means. The European nations, once masters of much of the globe, are, for instance, themselves reeling under pressure as they struggle to match the accumulated strength of the old superpower and the kinetic energy of the challenger. How to make the economy competitive is the moot question, and we can avoid it only at our peril.

Citizens must create an ambience supportive of the next generation of reforms so they can drive political parties and governments to talk about and pursue them. All must focus on aiding and supporting reforms, that is, on making it easier to do business sustainably.
Frivolity in our talk and actions may land us in dire straits.

Niraj Kumar Jha

To a Hot Peace

G2 - Cold War to Hot Peace! As the world may move from the Cold War to a hot peace, it must prepare for frostbites from heatwaves.

NKJ

Profit for Social Good

Profiteering is obviously not, but profit is a perfectly legitimate motive. Those who deny its legitimacy often aid, though inadvertently, the devils in their devilry. It is but natural; for instance, poets who sing of the transcendental also have a belly, and they cannot but help themselves by bargaining for a fee, though without recognising the incongruity between the two acts.

Shri Dhirendra Shastri told an interviewer very candidly, and quite rightly, on the issue of babas (holy men) commercialising their holiness: “I deliver moral discourses and receive offerings and spend the same for the needy.” This is perfectly fine.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Life or Scripted Drama?

Capitalism has never been an ideology. It has been, to use a phrase which its very opponent used to define freedom, the recognition of necessity. People recognised what was evolving and useful and articulated it; that, in turn, evolved as humanism, with liberalism as its cognitive script, constituted by democracy in the political sphere and capitalism in the economic domain.

Capitalism does not seek to extract particular human traits from human beings, nor does it question their innate humanity. It rests on the belief, or rather the truism, that human beings are free-willed, autonomous entities and are not meant to act according to a scripted drama. On this basis, they seek harmony of interests.

The irony, and indeed the ontological crisis, afflicting humanity despite its having discovered itself, that is to say, despite its coming to humanism, is that it fancies collectivism as a solution to the crises it often faces. For any problem, it seeks a reversal to the form from which it has evolved. The DNA often works against accumulated knowledge. The educated need to recognise that.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Ends and Their Means

Ends and their means are not simple affairs in public life. In public affairs, everyone is inescapably a participant, notwithstanding the distinction between activity and passivity, and everyone receives, in one form or another, whatever public affairs produce, whether pleasing or painful. Yet people hardly take note of the pains of common affairs, as those pains affect people in common, and they tend to take pleasures for granted, as though they were happening on their own.

The intellectual construction of collective ends is, in fact, a critical human need. Wicked people take benefit from weak, faulty, ill-organised, deficient, or manipulated conduct of public affairs that follows from misconceived or mistaken public ends. Their success can then convert their perversion into what they present as personal life goals for others, often within an idealistic framework. The earlier imperial and colonial authoritarian order provides an instructive instance. Its administration of public affairs essentially worked at the subjects' expense and for the benefit of the ruling people and their agencies. Yet the very positions and roles that were instruments of subjecting and imperilling the subjects became enviable possessions for aspiring people from among the subjects themselves, who came to regard attaining such positions as proud accomplishments of life. These roles could include even menial, hazardous, and degrading forms of service to the ruling power. This is only one instance. By the way, Mahatma Gandhi, in contrast, presented a thought for the reclamation of human worth.

Political Science is a far more serious intellectual engagement than what many of its practitioners make of it by merely regurgitating concepts and theories gathered from global history and presenting them fancifully as chapters of knowledge or, worse, though not relevant here, by inventing inconsequential but fanciful ideas merely for self-celebration. Let me elaborate on the first part of what I have just said.

A history chapter on the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, for instance, may conceal far more than it reveals. It can resemble a cinema that glorifies violence and makes violence thrilling while skipping the depiction of the prolonged, excruciating pain and the profound dislocations it causes to the sufferers and their kin among both the losers and the winners. The events are thus presented primarily through their dramatic political outcomes. In contrast, the human costs of those events, the stratagems of the people involved, and the devastating aftereffects recede into the background. The French Revolution was followed by a reign of extreme terror and unrestrained manslaughter, which later obliterated the distinction between the persecutor and the persecuted. Similarly, the Russian Revolution created a totalitarian regime that collapsed under the weight of its follies merely a few decades later.

In other words, the ugliest things can be masked as attractive. Violence can be made heroic, oppression can be made glorious, and often avoidable suffering can be presented as lofty idealism. One can comprehend the recurrent reality by looking at Orwellian depictions. The intellectual task of Political Science should therefore be not merely to recount political events, institutions, concepts, and theories, but to examine the ends being pursued, the means employed to pursue them, and, most importantly, the immediate and enduring human consequences of both.

Let me end this with an invocation of the Kalyan Mantra:

सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः।
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु।
मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत्।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः॥

May all be happy. May all be free from illness and suffering. May all see what is auspicious and good. May no one suffer or be afflicted by sorrow. Om, peace, peace, peace.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Educationology

Perhaps the most critical component of civilised life figures least proportionately in our philosophical speculation and scientific studies: education, particularly its content and purpose.

The great masters of the past reflected deeply on education and wisely embedded it within larger moral, social, and political questions. Today, we face a widening lag and gap in our thinking about education itself.

In post-independence India, higher education was, to a considerable extent, turned into an instrument of ideological indoctrination, particularly into leftist thought. The resulting economic backwardness ironically weakened the system’s very capacity to absorb even the graduates produced by the technical education it offered.

We need to think about education, philosophise about it, and study it scientifically. Education is too vital to be left merely to educational practices, the fashioning of pedagogical nitty-gritty, or ideological preferences. We also need to weed out from the frameworks of education what may be called pseudo-education or anti-education.
We need Educationology: a systematic body of philosophical and scientific inquiry into education, its contents, purposes, methods, institutions, and consequences. A distinct discipline and dedicated schools of Educationology are critically needed to understand and strengthen this most vital component of civilised life.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Illusion of Redress

    The template of corrective politics, or perhaps the very ontology of protest, appears to exhibit a recurring problem across societies. The alternative they seek is often a more intense form of what they seek to oppose. The lack of individual security, dignity, opportunities, and purpose often brings people into the open, but they seek redress from an abstract collective entity rather than a safe, conducive ecosystem in which they can exercise their own agency and do things for themselves. Though history has repeatedly shown the limitations of such an approach, they still tend to see themselves primarily as members of an ethnic identity or economic class rather than as citizens, and hence the solutions to their challenges continue to elude them. The deeper problem may lie in this very tendency to look for solutions through collective intervention rather than in the creation of conditions that enable individuals to secure their own well-being, dignity, and purpose. People still have a tendency to imagine some form of transcendent intervention, as though the correction of their condition must come from an agency larger than themselves.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The Public, the Private, and the Personal

The distinction between the public, the private, and the personal is vital to human good, dignity, and excellence, both in their recognition and in their proper roles. The public agency is meant to serve private entities so that they operate free of friction or coercion, and to protect the personal from external interference, so long as that does not harm others.

A civilisation distinguishes itself from barbarity by maintaining the sanctity of the private in terms of ownership, autonomy, safety, and ease. A civilisation that forgets this human principle invites either decadence and chaos or a lifeless solidity. The past and the present, history and politics, speak to no other conclusion.

Niraj Kumar Jha

जनतांत्रिक ज्ञानमीमांसा

जनतंत्र अपनी स्वयं की ज्ञानमीमांसा में निहित होता है; ऐसा अन्यथा हो ही नहीं सकता। इसकी आधारशिला व्यक्ति, उसके व्यक्तित्व और संपत्ति की सुरक्षा, उसके अभिकरण की स्वायत्तता तथा उसके अस्तित्व की गरिमा में निहित है। लोकतंत्र का जो आधार देखने में सरल प्रतीत होता है, उसे सार्थकता देने और बनाए रखने के लिए एक जटिल संस्थागत तथा सामाजिक व्यवस्था की आवश्यकता होती है। ऐसी व्यवस्था एक विकसित होती भौतिक और बौद्धिक सामाजिक अवस्था की अपेक्षा करती है, जो उसे निर्मित करने, बनाए रखने और निरंतर विकसित करने में सक्षम हो। यही कारण है कि जिन समाजों में इसके लिए आवश्यक सामाजिक और संस्थागत परिस्थितियाँ विकसित नहीं हुईं, वहाँ लोकतंत्र के लिए सार्थक जड़ें जमाना ऐतिहासिक रूप से कठिन रहा है। भारत में, हालांकि, लोकतंत्र जड़ें जमा सका, क्योंकि यहाँ इसकी गहरी सभ्यतागत विरासतें विद्यमान थीं।

विश्वभर में लोकतंत्र को टिकाए रखने के लिए आवश्यक ज्ञानमीमांसीय आधार अपनी गहराई और प्रतिबद्धता, दोनों में क्षीण हुए हैं। इस क्षरण की पहली बड़ी अभिव्यक्तियों में से एक नवउदारवादी व्यवस्था की पराजय थी, जिसे लोकप्रिय रूप से एलपीजी अर्थात उदारीकरण, निजीकरण और वैश्वीकरण के नाम से जाना गया। दूसरे, विभिन्न महाद्वीपों और सभ्यताओं में अनेक जनांदोलन, ऑक्युपाई वॉल स्ट्रीट से लेकर अरब स्प्रिंग तक, या तो निष्फल हो गए या ऐसे परिणामों में परिणत हुए जिनसे समाजों की स्थिति बेहतर नहीं हुई और कुछ मामलों में पहले से भी बदतर हो गई।

अब सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी (IT) और कृत्रिम बुद्धिमत्ता (AI) का उदय लोकतांत्रिक जीवन-पद्धति के सामने इससे भी अधिक गहरी चुनौती प्रस्तुत कर रहा है, जिसका मूल मानवतावाद और मानवीय गरिमा में निहित है। केंद्रीय प्रश्न केवल व्यवस्था-विचलन का नहीं है, बल्कि मानवता के एक बड़े हिस्से के लिए मानवीय अभिकरण और मेधा के क्रमशः अप्रासंगिक या अनावश्यक होते जाने का है। जब लोग स्वायत्त अभिकर्ता के रूप में कार्य करने की अपनी क्षमता, अवसर या प्रासंगिकता को क्रमशः खोने लगते हैं, तब लोकतंत्र की स्वयं की ज्ञानमीमांसीय आधारशिला कमजोर होने लगती है।

इसके लिए हमें अधिक गहन ‘प्रणाली-चिंतन’ की आवश्यकता है। हमें लोकतंत्र को केवल शासन-व्यवस्था या संस्थाओं के एक समूह के रूप में नहीं, बल्कि मानव अस्तित्व को जानने, उसका मूल्य निर्धारित करने और उसे व्यवस्थित करने की एक पद्धति के रूप में समझना होगा। अंततः लोकतंत्र का अस्तित्व इस बात पर निर्भर करेगा कि हम मनुष्य के पुरुषार्थ को संरक्षित कर पाते हैं या नहीं, और उसे केवल अधिष्ठानावलंबी प्रजा, उपभोक्ता अथवा लगातार अधिक स्वायत्त होती जा रही प्रणालियों के किसी स्वायत्त-प्रणालीगत प्रतिस्थाप्य घटक में बदलने से रोक पाते हैं।

नीरज कुमार झा

Democratic Epistemology

Democracy nests in its own epistemology; it cannot be otherwise. Its foundation lies in the individual, the security of the person and their possessions, the autonomy of their agency, and the dignity of their being. What appears to be the simple basis of democracy requires a complex institutional and social mechanism to give it substance and sustain it. Such a mechanism, in turn, requires an evolved social order capable of creating, maintaining, and renewing it. This is why democracy has historically found it difficult to gain substantive roots in societies where the requisite social and institutional conditions have not evolved. In India, however, it could take root because of its deep civilizational legacies.

Worldwide, the epistemological foundations necessary to sustain democracy have eroded in both depth and commitment. One of the first major manifestations of this erosion was the defeat of the neoliberal order popularly associated with LPG, or liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation. Secondly, across continents and civilisations, many popular movements, from Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring, either came to nought or produced outcomes that left societies no better, and in some cases considerably worse, than before.
Now, the rise of ICE and AI poses an even more profound challenge to the desired democratic way of life, whose crux remains humanism and human dignity. The central issue is not merely technological disruption but the growing redundancy of human agency and faculties for a large section of humanity. When people increasingly lose the capacity, opportunity, or relevance to act as autonomous agents, the very epistemological foundations of democracy begin to weaken.

This calls for a deeper systemthink. We need to understand democracy not merely as a form of government or a set of institutions, but as a way of knowing, valuing, and organising human existence. Its survival will ultimately depend on whether we can preserve the human being as an agent, not merely as a subject of governance, a consumer, or a replaceable component of increasingly autonomous systems.

Niraj Kumar Jha

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

The Unrecognised State of Molecular Dissonance

One way to describe the contemporary world is through the phrase "molecular dissonance". Wars continue to inflict colossal human tragedies. Internal instability has surfaced even in developed countries such as Great Britain. Institutions across societies appear increasingly strained, reactive, and uncertain in their purposes.

As I see it, a political system needs system-imaging minds capable of philosophising, reviewing, calibrating, and aligning its institutions and practices. Such minds must be able to anticipate, reckon with, and assume responsibility for the effects, aftereffects, and long-term consequences of actions. Otherwise, despite the best intentions of those at the helm, what emerges may be called molecular dissonance. What the world faces today is not merely a shortage of resources or technical expertise, but a dearth of such minds, coupled with an insufficient willingness to act upon their understanding. Let me reiterate by my coinage, system-imaging minds; I mean minds capable of mentally mapping the architecture of a system, visualising the interplay between its constituent parts and purposes, and distinguishing the functional from the dysfunctional before the latter matures into crisis. Such minds can anticipate how actions reverberate through interconnected structures and align interventions with the larger ends the system is meant to serve.

I define molecular dissonance as a condition in which the constituent elements of a complex system act without coherence with the larger purposes they are meant to serve. It manifests when decisions are taken in isolation, immediate incentives override systemic considerations, and institutions lose sight of the ends for which they exist. The result is an accumulation of small misalignments—between intention and outcome, rules and purposes, actions and consequences, individual interests and institutional responsibilities. Each act may appear rational or harmless in itself, yet together they generate dysfunction, erode trust, and weaken the integrity of the whole.

Molecular dissonance is therefore not the breakdown of a system through dramatic collapse, but its gradual corrosion through innumerable uncoordinated acts and inverted priorities among the very units that compose it. It is the pathology of systems that continue to function outwardly while progressively losing their internal coherence and fidelity to purpose.

Right now, this constitutes an acute crisis in the international system, in addition to the deliberate acts of domination and extraction pursued by some nations. The condition of the international order reflects the wider condition of the nation-states that compose it, most of which are themselves afflicted by this syndrome internally. They not only suffer its consequences but also feed and amplify the wider malady. The resulting international environment becomes increasingly fragile, less capable of pursuing common purposes, and more prone to reactive conduct, mistrust, and systemic drift.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Who Loves Democracy?

The 1990s marked the zenith of democracy's ascent in its relatively short modern history. Through liberalisation, privatisation, and globalisation (LPG), democracy appeared to be moving toward its substantive realisation. It promised greater space for individuals and their enterprises, while deepening mutual exchange and interdependence across the world. Democracy seemed to be growing into its fullest expression.

But who truly loves democracy?

Entrenched powers organised a massive global hue and cry against this expanding order. For a time, neoliberalism was invoked as the explanation for virtually every conceivable problem. The world that emerged from that reaction is the one we inhabit today. Few realised then that if the age of LPG was to be reversed, geopolitics would inevitably fill the vacuum. The retreat from openness and interdependence would not usher in a better order; it would restore the older logic of power, rivalry, spheres of influence, and strategic competition, creating conditions conducive to authoritarianism and democratic decline. The return of geopolitics was not an aberration but the consequence of abandoning the trajectory that LPG had set in motion.

Niraj Kumar Jha