How many countries are there in the World?

Answer this. How many countries are there in the world? Your options are:
A. 196
B. 206
C. 193

D. Can't we Google for stuff like this?

E. Fuck it!! Let us drink one glass of sugar-cane juice!

I have written many "Made easy" pieces where I took complex ideas and made them as simple as possible. This time I will take a simple idea and tell you how complex it is. The idea is the idea of a nation/country. Most south Bengalooreans would agree that people in Maratha Halli and Whitefield act like they have descended from a different country, would Whitefield qualify as a country? What is the definition of a country anyway? Roughly speaking, I would want a place to meet the following criteria to be called a country:

1. If I walk into a nation and ask 20 people where the borders are, I should not be getting 40 different answers. There should be well defined boundaries. Border disputes here and there are okay. But if the entire stretch from Kanya Kumari to Kashmeer is disputed that would be a problem.
2. If I ask, "Who is in charge of this place?", they should not take 20 minutes to answer that question. There should be a stable Government.
3. The Govt should not be like Manmohan Singh's govt. Government should not be asking somebody else's permission to do things(sovereign state)
4. If there is an argument over a piece of land the guy with the AK 47 should not be winning the argument. There should be law and order.
5. If we ask questions like, "Who will construct the roads and schools? Who will supply the electricity?" these folks should not be looking into the sky. Govt should provide the public services.
6. If I wake up on a lazy Monday morning and decide that I will take over Sri Lanka this Wednesday, it should not be possible for me to do so. There should be a military to stop me.
7. I secretly think that Pakistan, Bangla, Afghan, Burma, Lanka are all part of one Akhanda Bharata. This may or may not be a good idea but will the rest of the world agree with it? I can call myself a Hamsalekha or AR Rahman but what if others run for their lives when they listen to my songs? Recognition matters.

With that in mind let us start counting. Can't we consider the number of countries in Olympics(204)? Take the West Indies cricket team. Isn't West Indies a country? Nope. West Indies is a collection of 10-15 Island nations like Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica etc. We had seen a Bermuda cricket team but Bermuda also is not officially a country. England and Scotland have cricket teams but they belong to a country called United Kingdon(UK). Sports teams don't always represent countries.

Isn't United Nations(UN) like a club of all countries in the World? Isn't their count(193? 196? 205?) official?

  Well, The UN was created by the 5 biggest countries that won the 2nd World War, these biggies are: USA, UK, France, Russia, China. They are the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. This means that they are like our masala film heroes(think of heroes in Telugu films), they have superman like superpowers. That leads to funny situations. Here is a brief history of Taiwan:

A Whatsapp Conversation from the late 1940s, somewhere in China:

China Communist: You low-life scumbags should be pelted with thorny jackfruits
China Republican: You Commie bastards should be made to watch those reality shows that Indian tv channels are churning out

*Civil War* *Communists win*

China Republican: You good for nothings may rot in this hellhole. I am going to this new place(Taiwan).This new place will now be China.
China Communist: LOL. That new place(Taiwan) already belongs to me!!

Thus we had 2 Chinas. Taiwan calling itself Republic of China and the Communist China which called itself People's republic of China, both belong to Chinese people, so which one is the real China? And the commie China claimed that Taiwan belongs to them. China was the member of UN Security Council remember? Question now is which China are we talking about? Taiwan or Commie China? Till 1970s it was Taiwan, then because of Cold war politics USA said that the Communist China is the member of UN Security Council. Meanwhile Taiwan made great economic progress and became a country. Taiwan looks like a country, functions like a country and is a country if you ask me. But nobody recognises it as a country. Why? Because China says so! As per China Taiwan is not a country, nobody wants to mess with China. So Taiwan is not a country as per UN!

If the Chinese president gets drunk and declares that India is not a country UN will stop identifying us as a country! This is kind of why Modi and the previous PMs were asking Obama/US to make India the permanent member of security Council.

Similar story for Kosovo. After World War 1 a country called Yugoslavia was created. This was like a Copy Pasted nation made up of Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian and few other type of people. This was a bit like my plan to combine Pakistan, Bangla, Afghan, Burma, Lanka with India to form an Akhanda Bharata. It had a powerful and popular dictator called Josip Tito. This Tito guy was friends with Russia and then they broke up. Stalin tried to get this Tito fellow killed, there were some 20+ assassination attempts on Tito. Finally Tito said, "Enough is enough" and sent a letter to Stalin that looks like a para straight out of a Salim Javed script, this is what he wrote: "If you don't stop sending killers, I will send one to Moscow. And I won't have to send a second." Nobody had the guts to ask for a nation when a guy like Tito was ruling.
Once he died every frustrated teenager in Yugoslavia started asking for a separate country. Hence Yugoslavia got broken into 6 different nations in the 90s(Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and all). What was left was called Serbia.

There was another section left in Serbia which asked for another country as if it was asking for another masale dose in a hotel. They fought, people died and Kosovo was created. Now Kosovo claims that it is a country, Serbia does not agree. Most importantly Russia does not recognise Kosovo. Hence Kosovo is not a country as per UN.

Some 110 countries accept Kosovo, others don't. I suggest that we call Kosovo a half country or something like that.

What about Hongkong? Hong Kong was a former British colony that was given back to China in 1997. It is a capitalistic state, has democracy, has a different culture, it even issues passports. Yet it belongs to China now. Hong Kong is the most country-like country which isn't a country. What about Greenland? It's foreign affairs, security, and financial policy are controlled by Denmark.
What about Syria? Nobody knows who is controlling which part of Syria now, 3-4 lakh people have already died and some 20-30 lakh people have left the country. It is more like a WWF ring than a country now.(Read my made easy post on this topic: http://sharathbhats.blogspot.sg/…/paris-attack-and-syrian-c…) Same with Iraq. Half of Iraq is controlled by a crazy terrorist group called ISIS, Kurdish people control another 1/3rd of Iraq(Kurdistan). Both Syria and Iraq won't qualify as per my criteria. Stable Govt? Not really. Law and Order? What? Borders? Anybody can use MS paint and draw the Iraqi and Syrian borders wherever they want!

Then there are some 20 countries that officially don't have a military and some countries have armies so weak that an overexcited terrorist group can defeat them! Send your resume to MadeUpNations@NoJOb.com if any of you is interested in taking over these countries.

Africa is a different story. There is a country called Central African Republic, this is the type of place that gives bad name to entire Africa, nobody here knows what law and order is, nobody knows how many have been killed and how many suffered from how many types of human right abuses, no public services, no Govt, nothing. It is one of the poorest countries on earth. Democratic republic of Congo also has looked more like a graveyard than a country. Close to 50 lakh people have died there in civil wars, yes 50 lakhs! And nobody knows where the borders are. Sierra Leone(The Country shown in Blood Diamond movie) also can hardly be called a country, it also is one of the worst places on earth.

Central African republic

There is an African country called Mali(Timbuktu is a famous city). It had a glorious past, in the middle ages it had some of world's leading scholars and intellectuals. It was a decent place in recent times also. Recently some radical Islamists took over the country and implemented Sharia law. These freaks burned the great books of the past, they banned everything including music! Heck,they even banned football, can you believe it? France had some commercial interest in this region, so finally the French army intervened. It is yet to be fully stablilised.

Then there are places where you can cover the entire nation in an auto rickshaw in 20 minutes. Monaco's total area is just 2.02 Sq km.

This is how Nauru looks

A country called Nauru just has 10000 people. These are well recognised countries mind you. To top it all there is a country called Sealand. It is just abandoned World War II sea fort. Some crazy guy claimed it and called it a country. It just has 22 people ! It has a Govt, well defined borders(no disputes) and even postage stamps.

Sealand!

 But nobody recognises it. If you can recognise Monaco and Nauru why can't you go one step further and accept Sealand? There are 50-60 such micro-nations. I am planning to declare a new country called Democratic Republic of Sharath's bedroom. Why not? It is a mad mad mad mad world indeed. 

Now let me ask the question again. How many countries are there in the world? Your options are:
A. 196
B. 206
C. 193
D. Can't we google for stuff like this?
E. Fuck it!! Let us drink one glass of sugar-cane juice!