Is discussing socio-political issues useless?

What's the use of discussing all these! Nothing is going to change. Often people at the end of discussing problems with politics and society thus exclaim in desperation. This is indeed a very sorry misconception. Social change is continuously happening and if some dimensions of it are not likable, it's only because that things have not been deliberated enough. As I'm concerned, I do see that a lot of ills afflicting us persist simply because of our sheer ignorance. A deliberating and discerning public is what we need for democracy to flourish. Every gesture, every word, the most private gossip do matter. Each of this is affected by social currents and each affects social currents. Each of us is an agent of change. And when we are on social media, our mark becomes indelible. Any word heard by another is in public domain. Only thing we need to make our deliberations more fructuous is to deliberate more. 

Sometimes we feel that we have been befooled as a citizen or a consumer or a devotee or in any of our myriad roles and the people who do this to us dare to do so only because of our gullibility. The only remedy is that we must know more and we must talk more.

- Niraj Kumar Jha

Freedom Challenge

Our pedagogy shackles our mind. It is the subjection of our agency to our own inferior self. At present, when even the postmodernist philosophising seems passé, we talk and walk the slavish ways we were coerced to naturalise during the millennial occupation. Whatever sparse vegetation could grow amidst the barrenness of our humanist imagination was devastated by the blizzard of Leftism - the ism of death - the death of reason, imagination and of sanity. It was like the outbreak of cholera amidst a famine. The biggest challenge India faces today is to resurrect its intellectual self. The challenge cannot be met by straight strivings as the very forces, which are supposedly meant to guard and advance freedom are arraigned, though largely inadvertently, against liberation. The catch cannot be trickier.

- Niraj Kumar Jha

Intolerance

The debate is healthy and yet farcical. Reduced to its essence, the debate among the compatriots is like this. "The country is turning intolerant." The accused replies,"No, it's not." The fact is that data do not support the accusation and the suspects are in vehement denial but even the denial is seen as an affront. This I find healthy because even tinges of intolerance create such a brouhaha in the country. This is amazingly good when we see intolerance is genocidal elsewhere and even within the country where Hindus are non-majority, the intolerance virtually leads to their mass eviction from their own land. If you cross the borders, west or east, you will find a high level of tolerance to the worst barbarism. You go to the north, Tiananmen reminds you that rolling over of tanks on live human bodies is pleasantly tolerable.

Yet the intensity of debate is not only farcical but also counterproductive. First because it's about a non-issue largely. And secondly and more importantly the debate throws the baby out of bathwater. The baby is the rule of law. People must point to the violations of laws, and nuisance or crime must be checked and punished. Crimes are committed ultimately by individuals and they must be prosecuted without fail and unsparingly. Tragically this is not the part of the discourse because it denies the partisans the thrill of belligerence. The rule of law and criminal justice system must be the focus of debate.

In almost all parts of the country there are mafia like organised people, who cannot be spoken against. Nobody talks about them. Besides, there are many things in India, which are intolerably bad or ugly. These issues are going out of focus because of the nastiness of our public discourse. And to me the biggest lacunae is the absence of education in liberal arts. The so-called educated sections mostly have exposure to indoctrination only and their all interventions are diversionary and disruptive by default.

- Niraj Kumar Jha

Capitalism

Substantive freedom manifests itself as capitalism. Capitalism translates into democracy in the realm of politics. In Marxian terminology, capitalism is the base and democracy is the superstructure of freedom edifice. 
                                                             
                                                                              - Niraj Kumar Jha