2011- An Ode to Democracy !

The world has changed significantly form my first post in 2011. Well, its not very old story, but such has been the speed of change these days. Still a cloud of uncertainty prevails over a huge number of people and nations, something which was not even imagined especially by an outsider like me some 45 days ago.

Earlier this year when I was talking about Chaos I missed the one of the most important chaos of modern times - democracy !! No doubting of the fact that democracy is a modern concept, right ( considering a minimum 5000 years of proven civilized history of mankind) ! Now how is democracy contributing to this chaos, simple by allowing everybody, every single individual, no matter from what caste, creed, religion, race, sex he/she is, a voice, a say in the government, a control over whats happening and what can happen around him. Despite being dethrone in few countries, being neglected by a few others, Democracy has survived, in fact thrived in past 50-70 years.

I think its possible to prove that democracy as a process or a system in society can be best achieved only via a democratic process. Its best when people and nations are left for themselves to take care of themselves and their surrounding. A lot of independent agencies such as UN or even the USA/UK claims to play the role of a facilitator trying to establish a democratic government but invariably always some vested interests can be unearthed behind such generous acts of trying to establish law and order, democracy in foreign lands.

But perhaps we cant deny the role and significance of relative significance of these bodies in countries like Libya or Afghanistan. Social media has empowered the people and have shortened the duration of such revolutions/ uprisings from 10s of 100s of years to less than 100 days or so but there are battles which still fought in the real world. So, Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and now Libya, Mr. Mummar Gaddafi is still cynical, still does not want to give away his throne on which he was sitting for almost 42 years, but in all likeliness he will be thrown out and the democracy will prevail.

2011 will be remembered as the year of democratic reforms, reforms by the people, for the people, as it was meant to be. 2011 will also be remembered for the pace at which these reforms/ uprising/ revolutions have materialized. Let us leave the task of categorizing these events as people's reforms/ uprising/ revolution to historians, but what is more important is the fact that Arab nations which were never associated with ( in popular media, stereotypes) a place where free will, free speech prevails can embrace democracy. So whatever was considered impossible, is actually possible (cliche' :)) !

Recently I was asked to give my opinion about How the political turmoil in Egypt impacting day to day business. That article can be read here. So it might appear that I'm contradicting myself, but its not the case. All I am saying is that countries like Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia will remain 'reasonably' unaffected by these sequence of events. The reason is these are rich, oil, tourism based development friendly and expatriate driven economies. The level of dissent and unrest has not reached the threshold level yet and though the fabric remains same across the Arab world countries ( or at least will appear the same to an irrelevant outsider), the socio-economic and hence the political conditions ( or vice versa, i.e political and hence socio-economic ! an interesting cue for the next discussion:D) are strikingly different, as different as they are in almost any such region across the world ( Africas, Asia, Europe or South America). So the people will have to wait for some more time or perhaps forever (relatively speaking) to witness such incidents/events/uprisings happening in one of these countries. But what I can tell you is that the seed is sown, people have realized that it is possible to dethrone the most powerful ones as well and as Victor Hugo rightly said - Nothing is stronger than an idea who's time has come !

What's up in China !!