Budget 2018-19

  Internet restored a day after blockage Tens of thousands of people rallied across Myanmar on Sunday to denounce last week’s coup and demand the release of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in the biggest protests since the 2007 Saffron Revolution that helped lead to democratic reforms. In a second day of widespread protests, crowds in the biggest city, Yangon, sported red shirts, red flags and red balloons, the colour of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD). “We don’t want military dictatorship! We want democracy!” they chanted. On Sunday afternoon, the junta ended a day-long blockade of the internet that had further inflamed anger since the coup last Monday that has halted the Southeast Asian nation’s troubled transition to democracy and drawn international outrage. Pope Francis expressed “solidarity with the people” on Sunday and asked Myanmar’s leaders to seek “democratic” harmony. Massive crowds from all corners of Yangon gathered in townships, filling streets a...

  The National Voters’ Day has been celebrated on January 25 every year since 2011, all across the country to mark the foundation day of the EC on 25th January 1950 The Election Commission of India (ECI) has made striking contributions towards strengthening our democracy by ensuring smooth conduct of elections, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of 11th National Voters Day. “National Voters Day is an occasion to appreciate the remarkable contribution of the EC to strengthen our democratic fabric and ensure smooth conduct of elections. This is also a day to spread awareness on the need of ensuring voter registration, particularly among the youth,” tweeted PM Modi on Monday. The theme for this year’s National Voters Day celebrations is ‘Making Our Voters Empowered, Vigilant, Safe and Informed’. It envisages active and participative voters during elections. It also focuses on EC’s commitment towards conducting elections safely during the COVID-19 pandemic. The National ...

  The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded The year 2020 was, by any measure, rich in awakenings and reckonings. None were as earth-shaking as those forced upon the United States, Britain and India. The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded and encumbered with states that had steadily rendered themselves incapable of performing their most basic duty: protecting human lives. In each case, stridently advanced claims — whether to be a new superpower (India), to become one again (Britain) or to provide moral leadership to the world (U.S.) — were broken on the wheel of an unforgiving virus. The socio-economic challenges before these countries suddenly seem immense, greater even than those faced after the calamity of two world wars. The conventional formulas for national uplif...