Editorial | Grass always suffers

In the confrontation of great powers it is finally the people who suffer the most, and suffer always. The big ones, in all the countries, are the least impacted entities, finally.  We have seen how in the good old days of cold war the two super powers created their proxy zones and made the lives of people miserable. The hundreds of conflicts where people died in numbers, economy was shattered, and societies ruined, were a direct fall out of the competition between the erstwhile the USSR and the USA. The people in these conflicted sports suffered the big power confrontation directly, but the huge majority of the peoples in other countries also suffered in a significant way, though indirectly. The effects on economy, and politics in many countries because of the super power rivalry were always very adverse for the people.

The rise of military dictatorships, or the deepening of anti democratic trends in many countries was a fall out of that confrontation. In a nutshell, the competition between the two great powers made the lives of people around the globe very difficult. Add to it the investments made on arms in all the countries. At  whose cost does all this come from finally. In the current pandemic this talk of inordinate spending on arms and ammunition surfaced up like never before.  What makes the thoughts of the cold war era come back and haunt us, is the gathering of a storm in our own region. This is the time when the global leadership is under test. If it fails and allows the super power rivalry to turn into direct and indirect hostility, peoples around the world generally, and in our region specifically are bound to suffer in the long run. The effects of this confrontation on economy, polity, and society would be huge. As we go through time times because of covid 19 crisis, we should have thought of building alliances to mitigate human sufferings, but it looks like that everything is going in a reverse gear. The problems for the mankind are just mounting.

   

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