Utopia or pressure cooker. We wait to see.

The world is a much safer place since the end of World War II. And there are figures to prove it. More people are living in democratic nations, which means that the majority of dictators have been eliminated. President Mahinda Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka has just been thrown out of office. Brutality won the war against the Tamil Tigers but, as with any dictator, he did not know how to win the peace. He apparently asked the army to use force to overturn the election result to keep him in power. The army refused. Corruption, appointing his brothers to key ministries and sending General Sarath Fonseca to prison on trumped up charges, which would have been insulting to the army, resulted in his defeat. Globally, death from wars and homicide are markedly down, absolute poverty has been reduced, nutrition of populations across the world has improved and even rates of malaria are coming down. Although people continue to die of HIV/AIDS, numbers of new cases are falling slowly. The levels of education are rising everywhere. In India even illiterate people have become aware of the value of education, with even daily wage earners striving to send their children to good schools. Whether the availability of cheap televisions, bringing pictures of the world to our living rooms, and mobile phones have spread this awareness we do not know. If so, it would mean that entertainment is a valuable educating tool. Rapid increase in technology is improving the quality of life. The advances in fracking have brought down oil price, helping to reduce the cost of transport of goods and making travel cheaper. So, is it a chance to rejoice? Is Utopia finally here or is it the " End of History " as Francis Fukuyama predicted in 1992, who thought that with the collapse of the Soviet Union there will be no more wars in a unipolar world under the dominance of a benign US? The attacks in Paris in the last few days have shown that it is not so. In the 1970s and 80s you would never see any woman covered in a burqa in the UK or in Europe. Today it is a common sight. Will there be a Clash of Civilisations after all? The steep fall in the price of oil, while good news for India, is devastating for the economies of Russia, Nigeria and Venezuela. Europe is looking at the possibility of deflation and if Russia were to default on its debt European banks will take a massive hit. If Venezuela or Russia do default on their international obligations there will be a stampede out of emerging markets, and their currencies, which will be very bad for India. Incidence of suicides are the highest in low income countries. So is the world becoming a happier place to live in or is it a pressure cooker waiting to explode? Time will tell.