World as I see it - May 2011 6th

How is an event like west asia crisis/corruption wave in India/any major event created/handled from an issue? What precipitates an event?

At any given time, we have common people, the interest groups(foreign players, players not directly connected like courts, business), the govts of the day affecting the national issues.

An event has people trying to affect it from the top-down, horizontal and bottoms-up approaches. We get to read and understand only the top-down influences and try to guess the future events from it. We only get to judge their motivations from the events already past. The world is a fluid entity which has escaped all the attempts to model it, thankfully. To even attempt it, is a huge undertaking for anyone.

That there was a pent-up frustration in middle-east was known to all, but that the self-immolation by a fruit vendor would provide the spark could almost never be judged. A good player in geo-politics is not someone who creates events, but someone who can save himself from the tsunami of the after effects of an events and gathers himself, co-opts the wave, then simply diverts the flow in his desired direction.

The congress handling of the corruption in the recent past is an excellent approach of the same.
Event: The anti-corruption wave from BJP, Ramdev with the 2G scam, CWG scam, and all the other scams. It was clear that the Indian middle class was behind the wave with its pent up frustrations. If the wave would have succeeded, it would have drowned Congress and Sonia.
Saving itself and Coopting it: What does one do? Congress exists for more than 125 years for a reason. It builds a small psuedo wave of its own backing someone like Hazare, on a bill which it knew which solves exactly zero problems. Then after 2-3 days of high drama, it gets Sonia to ask the Govt to accept the bill (dont ask, who else is Sonia, except the govt??). With some deft foot work, Congress and Sonia have projected themselves as pro-corruption.

Diversion: The anti-corruption has been diverted into a lokpal bill agitation. In the lokpal bill, now congress can do what it wants. It would want that the lokpal bill be itself mired in day-day, so that each day Congress can say it is doing something. The Bhusans controversy is an excellent example of the same.

It is clear for every one who is reading the reports, that the location of Osama was known to US since a long time. So the immediate question is, why now? I believe that the reason is not in Pakistan but in Tahrir Square of Egypt, where the protest erupted. With a swift blow to Osama, US has achieved a success in delegitimizing the his version and an opportunity to divert these revolutions. Whether they are successful in diverting the wave into their preferred variations or they themselves get swept in the repurcussions of this Osaman killing, we will have to wait and see.

As they say in hindi, ye khel kache goliyon waale ke liye nahi hain.