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

Democrats and Democracy

Democracy functions not merely through institutions but through a habit of mind. It requires citizens who examine their experiences, question what they are given, and take responsibility for their actions. The central human problem has always been epistemic and practical: how to know and how to act. Societies tend toward cognitive ease; inherited assumptions, social cues, and now algorithmically curated information often substitute for independent judgment. The availability of better information, including that generated by advanced technologies, does not by itself produce better citizens. When individuals outsource judgment rather than refine it, informational improvement can coexist with civic passivity.

If democratic life weakens, it is not only because institutions fail but because citizens cease to exercise reflective agency. Instinct, habit, and group loyalty are natural features of human psychology, but democracy demands that they be examined rather than blindly obeyed. The responsibility here is irreducibly personal: each individual must resist passive acceptance and subject even the most ordinary claims and experiences to thought.

Yet reflection in isolation is insufficient. Democratic agency matures in conversation. Through disciplined, respectful exchange, individuals test their judgments, revise errors, and recognise others as equal participants in a shared world. Such dialogue is not ornamentation to democracy; it is the practice through which citizens sustain both political responsibility and their own humanity. Democracy endures when reflective individuals engage one another seriously, and it erodes when thought and conversation are replaced by reflex and consumption.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Humanism and Its Manifestations

Humanism is the crux of modernism, or of the modern age. It is the centrality of the human person in human imagination. The grand ideas which the postmodernists contested may or may not be the essential aspect of modernism; they could have been facilitated by modern epistemology. It is another matter that postmodernists contested the very idea of essence itself.

The point I made earlier is what I am repeating here. Humanism manifests itself as liberalism in the domain of knowledge, as democracy in political affairs, and as capitalism in the economic sphere.

I anchor liberalism here in the idea of liberty, which I see as a mutual agreement on conditions that enable human beings to realise their humanity. In other words, it is a social contract wherein every order recognises the autonomy of individual human beings and constrains and disallows any person or group from violating it. In logical progression, democracy is the demand for the consent of such autonomous human beings in conducting collective affairs, which again are meant to ensure the autonomy of each of them. Capitalism, in that sequence, is not about capital being the centre of an order. Capital is only the lifeblood of such an order. The crux lies in the ownership of human beings over their persons and possessions, and their ability to conduct their businesses with utmost ease.

Humanism is the way humanity should follow.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Another Height Scaled

There could scarcely be better news for us Indians at the close of the year than India rising to become the world’s fourth-largest economy. It is a moment of collective pride and confidence, offering a strong and inspiring base from which to begin the new year with renewed enthusiasm, optimism, and faith in our national journey.

This achievement rests on foundations that must be further strengthened: a democracy that is continuously deepened; a rule of law that is made more effective; a market economy marked by greater ease of doing business and sharper competitiveness; and a nimble education system oriented toward human capablities and sensibilities, and, together with the sustaining forces of national unity, stability, and a shared sense of purpose.

Each of us has a role to play in the unfolding story of India. Let us participate, contribute, and carry this momentum into the new year.

Wishing all compatriots, near and dear, a very happy, hopeful, and proud New Year.

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Democracy Wins

The results of the Bihar election are still a few days away, but what is already clear is that democracy itself has won more people. The record voter turnout is a gratifying and welcome sign of citizens’ growing faith in democratic processes. What is now required is a deeper adoption and sincere practice of democratic values and norms, beginning with individual conduct and extending to national and even international affairs.

People must recognise the inherent dignity of every human being and treat one another with respect, irrespective of status or background. Fairness in all dealings forms the bedrock of democratic life. Each individual should understand that personal well-being can be meaningfully secured only when the larger public good is preserved and never compromised.

Niraj Kumar Jha

The UN System: An Apology of Democratic Order

The UN system was designed to function only in a perfunctory democratic manner. In reality, it was built on domination and patronage by a few over the vast majority. What was required, instead, was for it to evolve into a fountainhead of ever more refined versions of democracy for humanity. A mechanical and surface-level democratic form scarcely addresses human sensibilities, aspirations, and the uniqueness of individual beings.

Democracy, as a universal value, as principles guiding governance, and as norms grounding community life, could not have progressed without the democratisation of the global order. However, this never occurred; indeed, it was never intended to happen. From the charred landscapes of World War II, what should have germinated was a genuine global constitutionalism. It did not. Instead, we were left with a mechanism that, far from being a true order, amounted to little more than an apology for one.

Today, that mechanism has fallen entirely into disuse, as barbarous geopolitical conflicts and crass coercive unilateralism overwhelm humanity. Yet, there is still no compelling voice calling for a global social contract that might bring harmony and fairness to international affairs.

Niraj Kumar Jha

America’s Democratic Reckoning

I am not sure whether the current manifestation of the American political system reflects a systemic decline or merely a temporary ebb. The American system is undoubtedly robust; it has endured the test of time for more than two centuries. Its Constitution has served as a guiding treatise for a successful democracy, incorporating the famed formulas of thinkers such as John Locke and Montesquieu.

What has gone wrong with the United States should be a cause of serious concern for democracies across the world. One point that comes to mind is that although the United States was a great democracy, it did little to nurture democracy as a struggling global phenomenon. Indeed, it often acted in ways that weakened it. If, for instance, democracy thrives in India, it is despite the actions and inactions of the Western world. In the end, karma has a way of catching up.

Any democracy, if it is to evolve in the course of democratisation, requires a conducive democratic ecology. No country, not even America, can endure as a democracy within a global environment that is non-democratic or hostile to democracy.

A more immediate cause of the American reactionary approach is its diminishing confidence in being the economic giant far ahead of any other national economy. Its economy is becoming increasingly constrained in its ability to sustain its superpower infrastructure and global manoeuvres. The present mood is more of a knee-jerk reaction to reality than a willingness to accept the inevitable and contribute to a rational and fair world order. If people do not choose wisdom, the times are bound to teach a cruel lesson.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Human Dignity and Democracy

Respect for human dignity is the essence of democracy. If you care for your dignity and believe in human dignity, you do everything possible to sustain, strengthen and refine democracy.

People often confuse democracy with its form and remain oblivious to its essence. A true democracy finds its operating procedures. Even actors, often highly acclaimed for their contributions to upholding and promoting democracy, and electors have limited roles.

It is the two intertwined values, rationalism and humanism, that generate the essence, i.e., the general respect for human dignity.
It is a historical process by which these values get embedded in the human mind and the race evolves into a democratic commonwealth.

Now the question comes what led to and sustains democracy in India? Primarily it is the Sanatana Dharma. The Dharma has a fair mix of concerns for noumenal and phenomenal. It cares both for the earthly and the heavenly. At times it prioritises the collective but mostly brings individuals to centre stage. Most importantly, it very unambiguously asks for reliance on self-intelligence. Unlike all religion cum philosophical enterprises, the Sanatana had high compatibility with modernism. Europe which happened to have birthed modernism had rejected its religion to embrace modernism. Let me remind here that humanism and rationalism are also the core values of modernism. It is modernism which evolved into democracy.

Modernism realises itself through systematic administration and free enterprise, i.e., bureaucracy and capitalism. Bureaucracy should not be confused with feudalism-fused pubis order of patronage. It is about managing both public and entrepreneurial affairs. Capitalism brings the spirit and substance of democracy into a society and bureaucracy makes it operational. The unavoidable features of the whole enterprise are efficiency, economy, and accountability.

What we can do to strengthen democracy, which remains a fragile order globally?

For this, we must recognise the merit of individualism and have faith in their faculty and agency. But we would be able to do this only by doing something else.

Here comes the role of education, to speak more precisely, of pedagogy. The nation must spend more on STEM. And secondly, we must let educational institutions evolve autonomously. The collegium of academics alone should have the responsibility of running an institution, preferably with self-funding.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy's Propensity for Common Good

Democracy brings in some maturity in the citizens on its own. It works to its fullest in a libertarian order but even in discrepant settings, it works for the general interest if collectivism, whether primal or ideological*, remains below a threshold. With some magical effect of democracy, people in their mandate apart from seeing their immediate interests do endorse some general good. Democracy's propensity for the common good is unmissable.

 
* Primal collectivism exists in unevolved communities cut off geographically and economically from the global mainstream. Ideological collectivism grips backward societies, which lag due to historical reasons from their global peers.

 
Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy: Slide or Surge

Observers note that there is a democratic slide globally. This I find a misdirected approach. Such observers fallaciously identify democracy with the values and norms of a particular ideology, the parameters of political correctness of a historical period. On the contrary, what I see across continents is a populist swell. Demos become more demanding. The reality is that there is a democratic surge around the world. 

At the same time, one can not deny that problems are getting severe internationally and within nation-states. Climate change, for instance, poses an existential challenge for many people. Among states, irredentism is back in fashion. There are strifes and upheavals in many corners, and even metropoles see fires blazing frequently. 

The problem is not with democracy but with the global political-economic ecology. The autonomous and logical trajectory of democratic evolution, which led to the collapse of Communism and was channelling human agency through LPG to international harmony and prosperity, was stalled rather deliberately. Democracy was riding neoliberalism to become global, but as it threatened the entrenched forces and vested interests, the threatened ones broke the vehicle to which the naive academia lent moral support.  

Aspirations that neoliberalism led to rise now become pent-up feelings seeking outlets. 

Niraj Kumar Jha 

Democracy's Edge

No matter how large and resourceful land they command, authoritarian regimes face their nemesis after a dazzling performance. As it happened in China, they very capably put the economy in full throttle, and that for decades, and forcibly flattened all the obstructions on the way. But a time comes when intoxicating power numbs the good sense of unquestionable leadership, And, when the leadership deviates, nothing can stop them. This happened in China even earlier, as the leaders there had perpetrated man-made catastrophes on their people.

Democracy, meanwhile, keeps swinging between the workable and non-workable, and any crisis either leads to a course correction or a change of leadership. A federal structure is more geared toward getting back to equilibrium.

Indian democracy, thanks to its great civilization legacies, holds the course. While removing the vestiges of its prolonged occupations, it is driving economic growth sustainably.
Democracy is the substance of national strength for any country, and more so for India. India does face challenges; poverty and corruption remain sticky. It is imperative for every citizen to contribute towards the common good for their own welfare. They must conduce their own conduct to democracy and promote democratic institutions. One must keep in mind that it is the free market that gives the lift democracy needs to remain afloat. The country must ensure a fully free market within borders and promote it strategically internationally.

We must cherish and work for the glory of our civilization and democracy.

Niraj Kumar Jha

National democracy, to me, should be seen as a continuous discourse on what is in the best interest of the nation, an individual, communities, and humanity; and periodic referendums on the same. National interest remains paramount as it is necessary for the security and well-being of all citizens.  This is how democracy works.  

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 

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 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

Capitalism and Democracy

I reiterate, as I find it necessary to do, that democracy is a by-product of capitalism. It was when capital (money) became the lifeblood of social relations, the people rose to the state of autonomy and dignity, which define human worth during modern times. It evolved out of the discovery of man and his mind that led people to the order of capital, and the resultant autonomy of human beings furthered the rise of democracy over time.

This is the European story. In India, the spirit of human freedom is rather ancient. The invisible hands, which work behind the free market, appeared very early in India, and the ancient pioneers made it even better by curating it as per the standards of Dharma. India prospered, celebrated life, and included all in the festivities. North India, which faced decline earlier than South and consequent subjugation, saw its high time during the reign of the Guptas. The Guptas minted the largest number of gold coins in Indian history.

The present dismay of the democratic world on the democratic decline is ironic. The greater number of literati positioned themselves in opposition to neoliberalism. They held neoliberalism responsible for every conceivable ill, and never realised that neoliberalism manifested the invisible agency of humanity, which had caused the tearing down of walls, very literally, beginning from Berlin, which held humans and their soul captive to the whims of a few. The process was bringing the world together, promising peace and common prosperity but the entrenched forces closed their ranks and sabotaged it. Now, the literati, who parroted the concerns of powers that be, in their success lament the very outcome of their endeavour.

I pray.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy Mechanism

You know the law of gravity and you also know that the rocket science is a different ballgame. You know democracy as a principle but the democracy of order, constitutionalism in operation, is a different ballgame. Most of the probems we perceive, face, or suffer as such require repairs or upgrades of the democracy mechanism but the problem is that the same elements, deficient in skills, who script malwares cry hoarse at the machine's malfunctioning. And the problem ironically afflicts even the developed democracies. We need proper knowledge and skills first.

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy

Amidst us, the general understanding of the democracy is genetically determined. The primitive man who sits in the human genes identifies democracy with the primal ethos, which envisions each man replicating the other man. They want to reduce the civilized men to the specimen. 

Democracy is not that. It is about civilization; it is about private, personal, and advancement; it is about enterprise. The 'great' visionaries installed democracy by making people stand in long queues everywhere. Rationed living is not democracy. 

Niraj Kumar Jha

Democracy Today

Democracy has never been on a strong footing globally. It kept on emerging and vanishing from different countries. And the so called strong democracies in the world hardly cared about democracy in the global order. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc was certainly a victory for democracy but now again in the post-Cold War world, when there should have been an ascendance, it is falling, shrinking, or receding globally. 

This is very tragic. 

There are reasons for the trend. And one among these is that the victorious powers of the WWII with regimes based on popular will subverted the very democratisation process globally, which they apparently espoused. They vitiated capitalism and globalism by acting chauvinistically, racially, and predatorily. In fact, they abused the very democratising processes for consolidating their domination. This weakened and emasculated nascent democracies everywhere and in turn did not leave the perpetrators themselves unaffected. 

Niraj Kumar Jha