2011 is the new 1989

I am thrilled by the events in Egypt. The protests have intensified, and more than a million people turned out yesterday to protest the 30-year old dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, and by evening Mr. Mubarak was forced to announce his plans of stepping down by September 2011. The protestors would have none of it, and the protests are expected to continue, if not escalate. The United States, ever the dependable ally of despotic regimes, has done an about turn and urged Mr. Mubarak – till Tuesday morning a sweetheart ally of the US – to speed up his succession.

There’s something intoxicating about these events, exhilarating even, as Simon Jenkins mentions in this searing comment:

“What is happening in Egypt is plainly exhilarating to any lover of civil liberty. So too was Georgia's rose revolution, Ukraine's orange revolution, Burma's saffron revolution, Iran's green revolution and Tunisia's jasmine revolution. Few people scanning the pastel shades of designer Trotskyism will remember which were successful and which not, but they made great television.

In each of these cases people burst out in visceral opposition to dictatorship. Driven beyond endurance, they took the last option available to autonomous individuals and marched down the street. The outcome depended on the security and self-confidence of the regime and its command of the army. It rarely depended on the approval or assistance of outsiders. Indeed the most effective weapon deployed against an uprising in a moment of national crisis is to call it a tool of foreign interests. This was certainly the case in Iran.”

Reports also arrived last evening about Jordan’s king sacking his cabinet and promising structural reforms. Given the pace of these changes – the oppressive regime in Tunisia has already been changed and was a trigger for this widespread protests in the Arab World – it is tempting to think of 1989 again, the tumultuous year that permanently altered the World’s political map and prematurely and peacefully ended the cold war. Around 1989, the USSR disintegrated, many despotic regimes in Eastern Europe – most notably the Ceauşescu (Chauchesku)regime in Romania – ended, and Germany unified. These events were again triggered by a set of peaceful, popular mass actions. Looking at the images multitudes of people in the Tahrir square at Cairo, it is difficult to escape a sense that History is being made.

I mentioned yesterday about my dream of seeing a similar popular uprising in India, and also briefly discussed why such an event is unlikely. Also, the Indian economy is growing healthily, and as long as the middle class continue to expand, its members and the elite media won’t be bothered to come to streets and protests, which, anyway, as per a Supreme Court dictat, is  ‘illegal and unconstitutional.’ A 1989-style replication in India would mean one strong trigger that would affect a regime change in one of the states (Bengal? Karnataka?), that would tap the festering anger and frustration in the Indian public. Given the function of elections as a safety-valve to release this angst, coupled with the Indian intelligentsia’s infamous disinterest, makes such a trigger a remote possibility.

Still, there are Black Swans….