, Columnist
Asia’s Newest Revolutions Are Just Beginning
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Asia’s urban migration is bringing about an “explosive transformation,” the Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid writes in “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” “the supportive, stifling, stabilizing bonds of extended relationships weakening and giving way, leaving in their wake insecurity, anxiety, productivity and potential.”
The political potential of this transformation is immense across the region -- first underscored three decades ago by Iran’s Islamic revolutionaries, who built a loyal constituency out of the peasantry uprooted by Shah Reza Pahlavi’s grandiose attempts at double-quick urbanization.