The opium of non-violence.

While the people of Bihar were voting for handouts, such as Rs 1000 for unemployment benefit, free wi-fi and reserved government jobs for women, on taxpayer money, people of Myanmar, which used to be Burma, were voting for freedom from army oppression and genuine democracy. Democracy is not a one time celebration, like a wedding party, but a long drawn process, like marriage, so what you do with it is most important. Do you build a klepto-socialist, pseudo-secular, mendacious intellectual democracy, like in India, or do you have a government that builds infrastructure, provides education and creates genuine jobs, not a nation of beggars? The politics of Myanmar is extremely complex. The National League for Democracy of Aung San Suu Kyi is sure to win the largest number of seats but to get a simple majority in parliament it has to win two-thirds of all the constituencies being contested, because 25% of seats in the parliament are permanently allocated to the army. Will it? Myanmar has several internal conflicts raging since independence where ethnic groups have been fighting the army for greater autonomy. In Rakhine state there is a hardline Buddhist  movement, called Ma Ba Tha which wants to get rid of Rohingya Muslims, originally from Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Burmese are living in refugee camps in Thailand. Aung San Suu Kyi is banned from becoming president because she had a British husband and has 2 sons who are British citizens. Her father was a general who was assassinated just before independence from the British and she was educated in India before going to Britain. She has been built up heavily by the western press as a modern day Gandhi, just as Gandhi was built up by the west. That the British left India because of Gandhi's non-violence is a myth, built by the Congress to persuade the people to tolerate poverty while politicians enjoy extreme luxury with taxpayer money. Whether Suu Kyi will be able to persuade the military transfer genuine power to a civilian government through non-violence remains to be seen. Precedents are not good. The army in Pakistan will never relinquish its hold on power because it controls a huge business empire. It was the army's refusal to accept Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as prime minister that led to the independence of Bangladesh. When the revolution in Egypt overthrew Hosni Mubarak the western press hoped that it would become a secular democracy like Turkey. We did not agree. The Egyptian army has huge business interests which it will not surrender. Meanwhile, Turkey has become and Islamist state under Erdogan. Non-violence is an opium for the people. The powerful resort to extreme violence if challenged. As they do in India.