Epistles

Bhutto is gone. Sad and scary, not because she was a great leader of the peoples but given our reduced expectations of democracy from poor (and/or Islamic) countries, her absence is destabilizing for Pakistan and the region.

Thats one of those famous pictures (best size I could find ) from India-Pak history shot when Z. A. Bhutto was in Simla to negotiate the Simla agreement. (If Rajiv was in politics at the time (1972), he would have been in this picture too).

Read this interesting account of Benazir: the girl who mesmerised Shimla.

Much similarity there – I. Gandhi and Z. Bhutto on one hand and R. Gandhi and B. Bhutto on another. Father-Daughter/Mother-Son – all political assassinations [Details ]. In the latter case, both were assassinated during campaign rallies just days before the elections . Everybody in the picture faced unnatural and violent deaths.

Just realized that Z. A. Bhutto without the somewhat prominent hair on the behind of his head bears some resemblance to Nehru !

And what a blessed neighborhood India once again finds itself in – Burma, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal – none of them even have a stable, functioning, democratic government. Sri Lanka is struggling big time. Is it just Maldives and Bhutan then ?

There is the popular CMU motto – work, sleep, social life – pick two.

Or as Dani talks of the impossibility theorem – “democracy/national sovereignty/global economic integration” – pick two.

Similarly, I think in much of the non-OECD world, you can’t have it all in one government- stable/democratic – pick one.

In South Asia, its more like “Unstable and malfunctioning – pick two”.

More Pakistani history pictures here.