When people choose wrong

In 1947 the British were finally driven out of India after 200 years of rapacious colonial rule: steady pilferage of raw materials, wrecking of local industry, neglect of education and healthcare, indifference to economic growth.

I wasn't yet ten but I was astounded to hear some people say, "We were better off under the British rule." Some Indians, whatever the havoc they saw around them, craved for the little island of security they imagined themselves to be in under the majestic rule of the British empire.

Forty years later, I saw Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos flee from the Philippines after 20 years of misrule – 14 years as dictator – with rampant corruption, torture and extrajudicial killing, when people finally rose in fury. Then I was aghast to hear some Filipinos say, "We were better off under Marcos." These were the poor and middle-class people the Marcoses had most robbed and oppressed, but they still imagined themselves somehow secured under their thieving autocracy. They admired Ferdinand's gilded Malacañang Palace and adored, possibly envied, Imelda's ornate 6,000 pairs of shoes.