SUNDAY FEATURE

New Delhi: As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the Union Budget on February 1, had proposed to develop 10 prominent tourist sites across the country into iconic tourism destinations through a holistic approach, involving infrastructure and skill development, development of technology, attracting private investment, branding and marketing.

The selected tourist locations were announced this Tuesday and one among the 10 tourist destinations across India to be developed as ‘Iconic Tourism Site’ by the central government is the ‘Hampi monuments’ which are part of Karnataka’s cultural heritage.

New Delhi: The expatriate Indian Princess Sophia was honoured by the British Royal Mail with a stamp to mark the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which gave women over 30 and all men over 21 the vote.

She was one of the earliest women to fight for social justice and equality in the UK and had a massive impact on the social movements of that time.

Princess Sophia Alexandra Duleep Singh (8 August 1876 – 22 August 1948) was the daughter of Maharaja Duleep Singh, who had been taken from his kingdom of Punjab to the British Raj owing to political manoeuvring by Governor-General Dalhousie in India, and was subsequently exiled to England.

New Delhi: VannadilPudiyaveettilDhananjayanand ShantaDhananjayan , also known as the Dhananjayans, are regarded as the legendary dancing couple of India.

V.P Dhananjayan was born into a Malayali Poduval family on 17 April 1939 in Payyanur, Kannur District, Kerala, India. He was born into a family with eight children struggling to make ends meet while ShantaDhananjayan was born on into a well-to-do Malayali Nair family in Malaysia.

They came from opposite worlds, but Bharatanatyam brought them together and forged an unbreakable bond.

Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies—particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are under assault and in retreat globally, says Freedom House, an independent watchdog organization based in US and “dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy around the world.”

A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the great ideological battle of the 20th century.

Today, it is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened. For the 12th consecutive year, according to Freedom in the World,global freedom has been found to have declined. Countries that suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains.

Usually, here in winter we feel very uncomfortable with cold conditions and will be eagerly waiting for the springs to come. But nobody have the idea how much cold does the coldest places on earth are experiencing every winter.

This world is considered as the masterpiece of nature. It is because if there is light in some parts of the world then there is darkness in the other parts of the world. If some parts of the world are receiving high rain then at the same time there are different parts of the world that are facing shortage of rains.