Home » Signs of a ‘South Asian Spring’

Signs of a ‘South Asian Spring’

Source

Headlines can capture events. Yet trends often give them meaning. In South Asia, a series of recent political events has suddenly changed the region from being low in democratic values, as one think tank put it, to possibly enjoying a “South Asian Spring.”

In India, for example, voters broke a decade of one-party rule in elections earlier this year. Protests in Bangladesh ousted an autocrat in August and relaunched democracy. In the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir between India and Pakistan, residents are casting ballots this week for the first time since 2014.

Now it is Sri Lanka’s turn. On Sunday, voters in the island nation rejected the established parties and elected a former Marxist as president, marking the first leftist government in the country’s history.