Trouble next door

Trouble next door

India seems to be an oasis as one or the other crisis envelops all our neighbours.

This is not to demean any of our neighbouring countries, which are all sovereign States with supposedly responsible Governments to take care of their domestic issues or strife. It is just meant to highlight the dichotomy between the state of affairs in our own country and that of the ones surrounding us on all sides, especially in the light of angry voices that claim that the quality of life and governance in India has been steadily declining with time. Now, there are problems that a ruling dispensation should/can foresee and strategise for, and then there are some which are unpredictable, swift and calamitous. The Coronavirus pandemic would be an appropriate example of the latter, which left the entire world reeling under its impact with scant regard to the advancement of health infrastructure, economy or geographical placement. On the other hand, the chaos that we are witnessing in the countries adjoining India is the result of their own respective policy misjudgements or poor usage of governance tools: Take the example of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Afghanistan or even bigger, stable superpowers such as China and Russia.

There’s an ongoing political and constitutional crisis in Imran Khan’s country; almost similar is the case with Sri Lanka which has had to resort to clamping the state of emergency and curfew. In Myanmar, the rule of the military, known locally as Tatmadaw Kyi, started in 1962, lasting up to 2011, and then resumed in 2021. Almost similar is the case of Afghanistan, which suffered under the Taliban rule from 1996 until October 2001 (soon after the Sunni Islamist nationalist movement’s birth in the early 1990s), and which has taken back power in 2021 from a democratically elected Government after regrouping in Pakistan. Speaking of ‘democratically elected’ Governments, there’s just one party’s rule in China and one man’s rule in Russia. The Russian head of State unilaterally decided on February 24, 2022, to launch a “special military operation” to invade Ukraine, where he now seems caught in a cleft stick. In striking contrast is the situation in India, where eligible citizens have been getting free ration for nearly two years now, and the rule of democracy is healthy and flourishing. Therefore, it would be best for the cynics and naysayers to stop criticising their own country and take pride in what we have here, and what we symbolise to the world.