A joke from a declining USSR regime..
A Communist Party bureaucrat drives down from Moscow to a collective farm
to register a potato harvest.
“Comrade farmer, how has the harvest been this year?” the official asks.
“Oh, by the grace of God, we had mountains of potatoes,” answers the
farmer.
“But there is no God,” counters the official.
“Huh”, says the farmer, “And there are no mountains of potatoes either.”
Another one from contemporary India..
A journalist asks Manmohan Singh "Tamara raj ma at atla kaubhando thai chhe tamara mantrio hajaro karodo rupiya khai jai chhe tame kem kai bolta nathe?"
PM's reply "Hu khati vakhte bolto nathi"
There were many humorous slogans during Egyptian revolution, Pakistan has become a 'hotbed' of satire not all of them political.
Its almost universal that when people are frustrated things being out of their control, when governments are suppressive, satire inevitably comes out. I think if we find out popular satire of a particular society in a particular political,economical milieu we can understand their perception of the condition. It effectively captures the mood of the times. If we track down how satire changes its forms and modes of expression we can view history from popular point of view. This might further illuminate us in a modern mode of historiography called 'subaltern history'.
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