Nurturing Young Minds

Nurturing Young Minds
At HIS

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

New Ideas vs Old Ideologies.


The ideological schisms of the past represented by sharp divisions between socialism and capitalism are gradually being buried by all thinking people everywhere. We have seen Russia. The Unites States is now dubbed a ‘socialist’ country by many  because of the welfare orientation of the state. And China is being now called a capitalist country by some owing to the private ownership being granted on all the means of production, and due to the growing number of its High Networth Individuals. You would not be surprised to know that now everyone can own a private house in China for 70 years on lease and this lease can be inherited by the lessee’s children. In China of today you can own a car and everything that we can own in other places, with a fig leaf attached in some cases like housing. The role of private property, private initiative and freedom is increasingly being recognised in the communist block and the role of a welfare state is understood in the capitalist block countries.  From extremities of values, the ideologues and people are settling for a more acceptable balance of values. There is little doubt that finally there will be a near convergence in many senses. 

Humanity is maturing, and therefore political and conceptual fundamentalism is diminishing. Just as the evolution in the nature has been producing species that are often difficult to tag with a specific class and name, political  evolution is also generating unseen mix of ideas that can not be comprehended with the help of archaic and simplistic ideological concepts and adages, but which represent the evolving human reality better and are fitter to survive. What we need to prepare ourselves intellectually for is to comprehend and appreciate  the new ideological thought-species without wearing our old colored spectacles. 

In India too the age of ideologies may be on its way out, and what is going to set in is the age of ideas - a brave new world of ideas that conform to the contemporary reality better and that, at the same time, happen to cater better  to the ideals of human development. It is a matter of time that the adages like 'left', 'right' and 'center' would become irrelevant, and new terms of comprehension will have to be coined. It may however take some more time for those new tools of comprehension to be forged - maybe till Samagr Kranti takes roots in the Indian soil.