Policy Ledger

When outrage travels faster than truth, democracy becomes vulnerable to manipulation. Democracies are not weakened only by coups, censorship or constitutional crises. They can also weaken slowly through fear, distrust, misinformation and emotional exhaustion. In the neo-digital age, where public life moves at the speed of algorithms and outrage, the preservation of democracy increasingly depends on dignity, trust and the ability to think beyond the emotion of the moment. Democracy is more...

The out-of-sequence nature in which the development of VIA was undertaken means that the new upgrades, while in addition to costing more, may have begun to depreciate well before certain facilities went into service. The expansion of the Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL) managed Velana International Airport (VIA) between 2016 and 2023 was one of the most ambitious infrastructure programmes undertaken by the Maldives. The new Code-F runway, the Noovilu seaplane terminal and the new...

After four decades of treating tourism as the Maldives’ national salvation, the country faces a harsh reality; the sector, while supplying foreign exchange, has not delivered a resilient economy. For more than four decades, successive Maldivian governments have invested heavily in tourism and promoted it as the country’s economic saviour. It became the organising idea of national development; expand resort capacity, attract more arrivals, earn more foreign currency, and assume prosperity will...