A Pessimist View of Tahrir Square

It may appear to some that the popular revolts which toppled the seemingly impregnable dictators in Tunisia and Egypt are novel and owe their success to facebook and twitter. But such protests are nothing new. Gandhi started them against the British Rule in India in 1929. In Egypt itself, Shah Farauk was overthrown by the people as were Shah Reza Pahlavi of Persia and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia two generations ago. Mass movements simmer for a while before they explode as they did in Tahrir Square over last three weeks. Such protests may yet topple the leaders of Algeria, Yemen and Syria soon and other despots sometimes in not too distant future. While we rejoice in the resurgence of democracy it would help us to prepare for the future events if we understand the root cause of the protests and what follows their successful outcome.

The tens of thousands of men and women in Cairo, in Tehran and in the marches of Gandhi were not the people who had jobs they enjoyed and young families they loved and worked hard to feed. With some exceptions the protesters were young people, some of them highly educated, who had no jobs, nothing they could call their own except perhaps the cell phones they owed money on and in many cases doting parents who would look after them if they were hurt or arrested. The regimes collapsed because a large proportion of citizens had no stake in the economy and their desperation boiled over.

Concentration of wealth of a nation in a few hands is a recipe for disaster. To stay in power, the governments in poor countries, even a democratic one like India, must ensure that the benefits of the growth filter down to the lowest rung of the social ladder. For this to happen, the financial gains made by the rulers and their cohorts, fairly or unfairly, should be invested in the country not deposited in overseas banks on invested in fancy palaces in Europe and America. In the same way the output from a growing national economy must be reinvested in the country itself. While acquiring the steel plants, car companies and professional clubs in the developed world may help the newly minted billionaires ‘spread the risk’ it would be disastrous in the long run because it does not help the increasing number of poor in their backyard. This is the lesson present and future leaders must learn from spreading revolts whether these succeed or fail.

The history tells us that it is the generals who usually take over the government, not the leaders of the revolt if it indeed had any. Soon after assuming control, they throw away the inconvenient uniforms in favour of elegant business suits or on rare occasions the national dress. Sometimes it is the religious fundamentalists who either take over the government as they did in Iran or control it from their mosques as they do in Pakistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world. The hopes are soon dashed however and the situation of most people doesn’t change much with a new cycle of suppression of legitimate opposition in the guise of fighting ‘terrorism’ or whatever is the fashion of the times, regular fake elections in the name of democracy and support for the West in return for massive economic and military aid comparable to the gross national product of the recipient. There is no check on graft at the top and corruption at all levels continues unhindered. With some exceptions, Libya and Viet Nam for examples, the wealth continues to concentrate in fewer hands and to migrate overseas, there are more of the poor and they are hungrier day by day, the soothing words of the dictator and his cronies become increasingly hollow till the situation becomes unbearable once again. It happened repeatedly in pre-industrial Europe as it has in recent times in Asia and Africa. The cycle will stop, as it did in Europe, only when the economy achieves a level where the minimal needs of most of the citizens can be met even if they have to do long hours of back breaking labour.


Comment

In 2008 Alberta Government instituted a system of deposit on milk cartons, 10c each for a litre or less and 25c on larger containers. At the bottle depot you get 7c or 18c back when you empty your bags on the counter. No doubt the bottle depot needs to make money and I leave it to the market place to decide whether 30% is reasonable or excessive. My complaint is that with the new recycling system in Calgary which costs us plenty on our utility bill, why do we need this deposit. We could just throw them in the huge recycling bin we all have and save the cost and the trouble of a separate bin and drive to the depot. All that the deposit does is it increases the cost at the grocery store or the drink machines and discourages the poor from a drink they need more than anything else. More so after the fluoride from our water is taken away, thanks to the misguided zealots.