WEAK DEMOCRACIES AND HOSTILE OPPOSITIONS

BY Anah Shah
posted by OSK_TODAY


It seems that where democracies are weak (e.g. through government corruption, favoritism, or incompetence, or just because a nation is newly emerging, or only recently moving out of dictatorship and towards democracy) there is a greater risk in the rise of hostile opposition.
Sundeep Waslekar is president of the Strategic Foresight Group, a respectable think tank from India. He captures these concerns describing how this can pave the way for extremism:

Bangladesh has terrorist groups belonging to Islamist as well as leftist ideologies. They gathered strength in the late 1990s in a political vacuum created by constant infighting between the principal leaders of the democratic politics. The situation in Bangladesh is similar to that in Nepal, which had autocratic rule in one form or another until 1991. With the induction of democracy in 1991, it was hoped that the voiceless would now have a space to press for their priorities. However, those in power, in partnership with their capitalist cronies, concentrated on the development of the capital region. They also engaged in such a bitter fight with one another that democracy was discredited as a reliable institution, creating a void that was quickly filled by extremists. In the case of Nepal, the Maoists stepped in. In the case of Bangladesh, it was the extremists of the left and the religious right. Having tested popular support, they have developed a vested interest in their own perpetuation. The result is that the Nepali political parties have had to accept an arrangement with the Maoists while the Bangladeshi political parties are courting Islamic extremists.

— Sundeep Waslekar, An Inclusive World in which the West, Islam and the Rest have a Stake, Strategic Foresight Group, February 2007, p.6

As Waslekar also argues, the forces of extremism can be more dangerous than the forces of terrorism:

Terrorism involves committing acts of [criminal] violence.... As they tend to be illegal, it is conceivable for the state machinery to deal with them. Extremism may not involve any illegal acts. In fact, extremism may surface using democratic means.

— Sundeep Waslekar, An Inclusive World in which the West, Islam and the Rest have a Stake, Strategic Foresight Group, February 2007, p.14

Waslekar notes that extremism often takes a religious face, and is not just in parts of the Middle East and other Islamic countries (Islamic extremism), but growing in countries and regions such as the United States (Christian extremism), Europe (racism and xenophobia of a small minority of White Europeans, and Islamic extremism by a small minority of Muslim immigrants), India (Hindu extremism), Israel (Jewish extremism), Sri Lanka (Buddhist extremism), Nepal (Maoists), Uganda (Christian extremism) and elsewhere.
Furthermore Waslekar finds that “a closer look at the patterns of terrorism and extremism around the world reveals that there are some common drivers—grievances and greed leading to supply and demand.” There is “clear evidence that young people are drawn to the terrorist or extremist mindset because they feel excluded by the society around them or by the policy framework of the state.”
And it is not necessarily absolute poverty that has the potential to breed new recruits for terrorist organizations, but more likely inequality and relative poverty. People suffering absolute poverty are generally struggling for their daily lives, and less likely to have the leisure to think about their grievances and injustices.
Another issue that Waslekar summarizes well is how terrorism is understood and reported:

Whether it is the mainstream media or the blogs, the analysis of the global security environment revolves around the mutual love-hate relationship between Western and Islamic countries. The fact that there are more serious patterns of terrorism elsewhere in the world is ignored by both sides. The fact that there are issues bigger than the growing mutual hatred between Western and Islamic countries is forgotten. In the eyes of the Western elite and its media, the death of 5000 odd people in terrorist attacks launched by Al Qaeda and its affiliates in the last five years is the ultimate threat to global security. In the eyes of Arab public opinion, the death of 50,000 to 500,000 innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestine is the real tragedy. Both sides forget that their woes are serious but that some 50 million children lost their lives in the last five years since 9/11 due to policy neglect by a world that is overly obsessed with one issue.

— Sundeep Waslekar, An Inclusive World in which the West, Islam and the Rest have a Stake, Strategic Foresight Group, February 2007, p.20

What do these issues have to do with democracy? A functioning, democratic society is ideally one that is able to take inputs from different segments of society and attempt to address them. Issues such as inequality and social/political differences may have a better chance of being resolved without resort to violence in a process that actually is (and is also seen to be) open, accountable and inclusive.

when we seek what we may not miss...

At times in life, there is an embed dement of desires, unnecessary wants fraudulently sandwiched in what we need for life to be complete. At such times, we are faced with a challenge of deciding and choosing once and for all what may change our lives forever, or not!


In one of his philosophies, Plato the Greek Scholar followed by his successor Aristotle: managed to decipher and think about  the composition of man, having body, spirit and mind. The three work to oppose each other in a man's daily life.


The body may desire a new shoe, but the mind says otherwise- "I have not paid the rent yet, my mum is sick, I need to save for college and many other things. Therefore there arises conflict of which one of the three above mentioned, one triumphs over the others. Its at this point were one's appetites either become insatiable. always demanding and unquenchable or not.


As sons of Adam  if not Homo Sapiens, we are left in a quagmire of having to put an opportunity cost on almost all things we face in life. But that's when and where the problem arises. There is a possibility of every human being to want what he/she doesn't need. This notwithstanding the very issue that curiosity is good for invention, but having so many points of views, choices of plans  we result into having more or less no plan at all.


We always want to grab, we always want what is good and good for the self. never satisfied to the extent that we are now invading the Antartica to claim the lands if we didn't already do it in the last two centuries. But whatever we do, we are just human, and being human comes with the characteristic of seeking what you may not miss.