The good old days have gone forever.

We, in India, have come to accept that we have no control over our lives. As countless scams have proved the rich have politicians and civil servants in their pockets who enact laws to suit the rich at the expense of the rest. Turns out that we are not alone. A study by Martin Gilen and Benjamin Page shows that some laws suit both rich and poor but where the interests of the rich clash with those of the poor the poor inevitably lose. How do politicians get elected if they are agents for the top 1%? In the US they use immigration reforms, abortion and fears of gun control while in India they use pseudo-secularism, caste division and blatant bribery by dishing out freebies on taxpayer money, such as free televisions, free electricity and free goats. But there is a price to be paid for this unprincipled chicanery. People are fed up of so called traditional politicians and are looking to punish them. The Congress has ruled India for 57 out of 67 years since independence but was so severely punished that it could not get even 10% of seats in the Lok Sabha to merit Leader of the Opposition status. Scotland votes in a referendum to break away from the UK in 2 days, Catalonia and the Basque region want to secede from Spain as does Quebec in Canada. People are voting against the EU. The Alternative Party got 10% of votes in Saxony in Germany, Marine Le Pen would trounce Hollande if an election were to be held today in France and the UK Independence Party could beat the Tories in 2015. The world is yet to recover from the Great Recession following the fall of Lehman Brothers 6 years ago. Governments rescued banks by taking on their loans but did not protect people from losing their homes to mortgage foreclosure. Interest rates have been kept near zero, penalising savers to protect borrowers, mostly the rich. Unemployment has reached an unbearable 20% in parts of Europe, which is battling fears of deflation. The rich have recovered their wealth because of  a phenomenal rise in property and share prices as cheap money has piled into assets. While economic growth has slowed in India property prices continue to surge, fed by a boom in black money. In olden days governments could control the spread of news. Now we can access news from across the world through the internet and social media. China controls its citizens by feeding them a fictitious history cooked up by the Party while our Dear Leaders snoop on us without any control. We are too divided to protest but pockets of resistance keep breaking out. The good old days have gone. We want to be equal.