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New Delhi: At midnight, Washington pulled the plug on itself. For the 21st time since 1977, the United States federal government has entered shutdown and this time triggered by Senate Democrats blocking a Republican-backed funding resolution.

The images are familiar: federal workers sent home without pay, national parks shuttered, uncertainty washing through bureaucracies. Yet beyond the spectacle, shutdowns reveal a structural flaw in how the world’s most powerful democracy funds its government.

Shutdowns are not great calamities like wars or financial crashes; they are farcical products of partisan bargaining and legislative dysfunction. But the consequences are real—hundreds of thousands of workers are furloughed and public

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