THE AGE OF REASON

"Uska Kya hua? Interview diya tha na wo?" or "What happened to his result? He had given interview this year, right?" My Grandfather inquired me. I am of course not the protagonist of this story. Who is? I intend to make it a protagonist-less story. That means, it has to be universal enough to not be a single hero centric.  My grandfather, Jitendra Nath Sharma, a retired Engineer in the Jharkhand Electricity Board, used to live in a small town called Patratu, nearly 35 Km from Ranchi.  I am his grandson, Vijit Kumar. I prefer not to be called Sharma since a healthy coincidence happened in school. It ended with only "Kumar" and which I later defended saying, I do not want any Caste Labels. But does this leave me of the Caste privileges already existing in the material reality? Of course not.  My Grandfather is inquiring about a guy named, Akash Madan, A fellow senior, a UPSC aspirant, who gave his second interview this year, and whose result we were all been...

Criticism has been a key part of democracy. But Can criticism critique the very foundation that allows criticism might be the biggest test of the system itself. The cat eating its own tail argument. Can we criticize democracy as a political system? And another question, Should we? Also, one more question, Will I automatically be a supporter of Dictatorship if I wish to critique Democracy?  We see some ancient critiques of Democracy in Plato and Aristotle. Since then, No one dares to critique the system of democracy even though, there still exists curtailing of freedoms and rights in democratic countries. Why is that? Why no intellectual dares stand against it? I have seen Western thinkers being more open in these regards than Indian thinkers. Indian thinkers are so hell bent in preserving democracy in this country. I am not saying that it should not be preserved. I am saying something similar to what Ram Jethmalani, the famous Advocate of supreme court said once, "I do not care if...