Democratic decay in most countries in South Asia has suddenly made it fashionable once more to say some pretty (politically) incorrect things in public. Things like: maybe things were better in the bad old days of Zia-ul Haq, or Gen Ershad, or the Emergency, or the Panchayat. Three countries: Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal overcame years of dictatorship within a span of a few years in the past decade, and regained democracy. Pakistan´s transition was hastened when Gen Zia-ul Haq went down in a C-130 near Bhawalpur in 1988. In Nepal, economic hardships caused by an Indian economic blockade helped fuel an uprising that forced absolute monarch Birendra to grant free elections and a pluralist constitution in 1990. In Bangladesh, Gen Husam Mohamed Ershad found his days numbered and was swept by a popular surge for freedom in 1990.
Six years later, the stench of democracy in decay hangs in the air in all three countries. Pakistan has gone for three elections since 1989 and is preparing for a fourth. Benazir Bhutto has been ignominiously dismissed, twice, in almost identical fashion by piqued presidents. Each Pakistani government scaled ever-higher heights of corruption, mismanagement and nepotism than previous ones. Benazir was given a second chance, and she blew it.
For its part, Nepal has had only two elections, narrowly having averted a third. Like moths, the Communists got their brief flutter near the light in 1995, making Nepal the world´s first Marxist-Leninist monarchy. Many countries cannot afford bloated and corrupt governments, but Nepalis cannot even afford the elections to vote kleptocrats out of power. So teetering coalitions held together by tendrils of patronage rule precariously on, while the country itself ´ goes to pot.
Bangladesh mastered the art of The Nationwide Shutdown like no other South Asian country. When Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League brought the country to a halt for weeks on end. The economy ground to a standstill. Sheikh Hasina has now fulfilled her dream of being prime minister, and the economy is getting back on its feet. So, it is Begum Zia´s turn to shut down the country for weeks on end, just you watch.