'Tiger economies' in a quandary

The debate over the relative merits of democracy and development -- whether the two are mutually exclusive for a Third World nation -- seems to have ended abruptly. Protagonists who had stridently advocated the dubious philosophy that the introduction of democratic freedom should await a measure of economic/industrial development must be beginning to backtrack.

The current currency-cum-economic crisis their countries are facing threatens to quickly dissolve into chaotic social upheaval, undermining their miracle. The so-called "tiger" economies of Southeast and East Asia, basking in the sunshine of super-fast development in the past decade, are finding that the authoritarian governments that enabled this and their immature political systems are ill-equipped to handle the crisis.

The economic reforms that the International Monetary Fund is now demanding, entailing as they do unpopular and painful measures, can be put through without major social upheavals only by a government that has the people behind it. A repressive regime will feel particularly handicapped.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi