Was there any other time when so many countries seemed to be skidding downhill simultaneously? Let’s start with some of India’s neighbours. Here is what columnist Zahid Hussain writes in Dawn about Pakistan:
“There is something ominous about the country’s current political scene. While the former prime minister is on the warpath seeking to wreck the system, the new incumbents are in a state of paralysis. It’s not just about political instability; most worrying is the economy which is in a state of free fall. A month on, the new government is yet to chart its course. The prospect of a systemic collapse is disconcerting. Where do we go from here?”
https://www.dawn.com/news/1689109/a-state-of-crisis
Another Dawn columnist, Maleeha Lodhi, who has been Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.N, the U.S., and the U.K., makes a comment that could apply to a dozen countries:
“[Our] polarisation has divided people, society and families as never before along intensely partisan lines.”
https://www.dawn.com/news/1688773/pakistans-new-fault-lines
About Sri Lanka, where fierce protests forced the prime minister to resign and flee to a naval base, and where, in a gambit for survival, his brother, the embattled president, has sworn in a former political opponent, Ranil Wickremesinghe, as the new prime minister, the Indian online journal, the Wire, has this to say:
“Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. The crisis is caused in part by a lack of foreign currency, which has meant that the country cannot afford to pay for imports of staple foods and fuel, leading to acute shortages and very high prices.”
https://thewire.in/south-asia/ranil-wickremesinghe-sworn-in-as-sri-lankas-new-prime-minister
In army-run Myanmar, thousands, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and a great many students, languish in prison. In large tracts of the country, insurgencies and drug-making have long had a profitable alliance. This is what Praveen Swami, a veteran strategic affairs observer, writes in the Indian online journal, the Print:
“Myanmar’s narcotics warlords are finally becoming the arbiters of the fate of the state. Last month, more than 3,000 people lined up on an athletics track in Mong La in the Kokang region for the three-day funeral rites of the 91-year-old international warlord, gun-runner, narcotics trafficker, and money-launderer Peng Jiasheng. Friends as well as enemies came to pay homage. It was hard to tell which was which: representatives of the Arakan Army, the Shan State Army, the Karenni Nationalities Defense Force, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, and the Kachin Independence Army were all there.
“Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of the Myanmar military’s Kengtung-based Golden Triangle Command—and most important of all, diplomatic representatives of the People’s Republic of China were present as well.”
I will not say anything here on India’s deeply troubling and rapidly deteriorating scene, but would like all who read this blog to know what I have written on ndtv.com in India about the war on and in Ukraine:
“Indians cannot merely sit with folded hands and watch Russia slide rapidly downhill as a result of Putin’s Ukrainian misadventure.
“That would be almost as heartless as watching without any reaction the daily destruction of Ukrainian buildings -- including schools, hospitals, homes, even a museum! -- by Russian shells, bombs and missiles. Both Ukraine and Russia, once intimately connected to each other, both possessing critical ties with India and a number of other countries, are crumbling before the eyes of a world that seems unable or even unwilling to arrest the destruction.
“While there was something unexpected and impressive about Europe and the western alliance getting its act together to assist a nation attacked by a more powerful neighbour, the smell being emitted by the war’s continuance is not pleasant. The continuing devastation of Ukraine cannot be the only way to teach Russia a lesson.”
Finally, here is what Max Boot, a former Republican who has turned independent, says about the U.S. in a Washington Post column:
“It doesn’t matter if you disagree with Democrats on some issues. The overriding issue is the preservation of our democracy. That might sound hyperbolic to some — but that’s precisely the problem. Like so many Ukrainians before Feb. 24, most Americans remain in denial about the threat to our country.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/11/americans-in-denial-trump-threat-jan6-elections/