Tuesday 11 January 2011

We get what we deserve: being citizen of a developed or poor nation!


Currently history of how the US became favourite destination for immigrants in early years, back in 1400s, and how it grew from there is my favourite reading interest. So I am exploring this topic a bit. And this has made me think how few countries became wealthier and others remained poor despite almost same opportunities. Here I give my take on this as to why some countries became wealthier and others not.

I wonder how so many countries like US, Australia, New Zealand, and even Brazil and many other, which are all completely full of immigrants only with very low native population, have same characteristics, well almost, but only the US is a super power but others not. Local native population in these countries is very less or in fact negligible they are mostly migrant population and all are natural resources rich. So we can say that all these countries had almost same kind of people or culture to start with when these lands began to take form as countries. But today they are all at different stage of development or influence in the world.
Similarly lot of Asian countries like Japan, China, Korea, India, Malaysia to name a few were all at almost the same level of development around 60 years ago but today they are very different. Some have rushed way past and others are left way behind and it will take them decades to catch up with others.
Similarly, at the time of independence India and Pakistan both were at almost the same stage but today the gap between the two have widened beyond imaginations both politically and economically.
Almost all these countries I mentioned up here were all at the same stage of development at some time and had same sort of resources to start with but some of them have gone way up in development but others are lingering at the same level where they started, or just a bit up from where they started. All had everything same except the people who led them were different, or of different characteristics.
So in my understanding what it says is that the two countries, with same sort of problems, and same amount of resources at their disposal to start with may end up being completely different countries few years down the line if the political masters who ultimately takes the decisions about the future of a country are not competent enough. So the future of a country and ultimately that of its citizen lies completely in the hands of politicians of the any day. How today’s politicians behave today will decide our and country's future tomorrow. It’s only the decision makers at the helm that differentiate a country from other. If a country has an able and competent leader at the helm it’s surely going to go in the right direction. This seems to be the reason why US and Japan are where they are today and other countries are not there yet.
Then if we see little deeper, these all countries are democracies, or mostly have been democratic in their history, so their leaders were and are decided by the societies of these countries only. That means the leader of a country is as good as selected by citizens of that country and deserved by that country.
So does it prove that if a country is developed it’s citizen deserve it and if a country is not developed it’s because its citizen do not yet deserve it? Else they would have chosen such leaders to lead them to a developed future? So ultimately the future of a countries is in the hands of the citizen of that country and politicians are only there to be blamed.