Zimbabwe
It is with disgust I see the ongoing mess in Zimbabwe. For those like me who were in grade school in India and wider British Commonwealth, birth of Zimbabwe it ended the British colonial rule in the world.
Also in India it marked continuation of optimisim that began with independence of India and gained momentum as more countries gained independence. In India we were still worshipping leaders who worked for India's independence, as more contries gained independence they were added to this list. When Rhodesia gained functional independence to become Zimbabwe we celebrated. Some of my friends fathers travelled to setup basic infrastructure like the railways and the central banking system. We even began equating Mugabe to Mahatma Gandhi
But within few years lot of things unravelled, rot in the Indian system became apparent, independence leaders of many countries became despots or deposed in a coup.
What is happening in Zimbabawe is a pattern that happened post colonial era across the world. Only this time in front of the camera
Comments
I do remember a conversation we had long ago, once India, China starts consumerisim the way US was doing in 1990s, the world will run out of resources very soon. What we see in Zimbabwe could happen very soon in countries like India: runaway inflation, scarcity and so on