I am delighted to be returning to Bangladesh in its Golden Jubilee year, and I look forward to celebrating the tremendous achievements of the past half century with friends old and new.
As is known, the current provisions of the EU’s Generalised System of preferences (EU-GSP) scheme are being revised at present in anticipation of the new scheme to be put in place as of January 1, 2024.
Upon reading the news headline for the incident I am about to discuss, I only felt a momentary, dull pain in my gut or thereabouts. Because while it is a shocking incident that would rob you of hope, the elements of the story are all too familiar to us all.
As tensions over the Taiwan Strait mount, everyone needs to think about whether war is inevitable. Ukrainian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once said: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” And if we slip into war by what World War I historian Barbara Tuchman called the March of Folly, can the Great Powers step back from mutual nuclear annihilation?
The year 2020 marked a watershed in global efforts to end tuberculosis (TB) by 2030. First, it was because, by 2020, the TB-affected countries aimed to achieve the first set of “End TB” milestones: a 35 percent reduction in TB deaths, a 20 percent
I have been feeling unwell since October 13. After the mayhem in Cumilla, I knew it wouldn’t be the last. With a broken heart, my father-in-law and I, along with my son, decided to continue with our tradition of puja visits and mandap-hopping, yet we were all deeply disturbed, witnessing the carnage unravelling with a helpless rage.
Today, on October 22, we celebrate National Road Safety Day. But why? Not why we care about safety—the devastating toll of accidents makes it clear why it is important—but why call it Road Safety Day? If we are using roads to travel from place to place, and we want to be able to do so safely, why not call it Safe Travels Day?
I was around 10 when I first heard about the idea of, as it was then known, global warming and how Bangladesh will one day go underwater as sea levels rise.
The finance minister has recently rejected the survey findings of multiple organisations on the number of “new poor” created due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
My friend Fouzul Kabir Khan’s recent book, “Win: How Public Entrepreneurship Can Transform the Developing World”, has brought back an issue critical to the development discourse in these pandemic times.
On this day 50 years ago (Sunday June 13, 1971), a report by Neville Anthony Mascarenhas, a Pakistani journalist, that appeared in the Sunday Times (London), shocked the world and made global-leaders take notice of the Pakistan Army’s genocide in Bangladesh.
We are living in a time of self-doubt, of suspicion, of negation, and of regret.
My former classmate, now the finance minister, presented in the Parliament the budget for the year (also the golden anniversary of our independence), and I congratulate him for this honour.
With the February 2021 military coup, Myanmar once again hit global media headlines. While the military junta continues to clamp down on pro-democracy protestors and the country is wracked with conflict and unrest, how will the changing political situation affect the Rohingya community in Bangladesh and in Rakhine State in Myanmar?
The Covid-19 pandemic has undone a lot of progress towards ending child labour, globally. What can Bangladesh do to recover some of that progress?
Yesterday, leaders of the industrialised nations, known as G7, started their first day of discussions at the English seaside county Cornwall—the first meeting since the Covid-19 pandemic started, which has already claimed more than 3.75 million lives and the livelihoods of over a billion people.
It reads like a Netflix blurb of a horror movie. A young man took a machete from a street coconut seller, uttered his last words: “please forgive me”, and then slit his own throat in front of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
Much has been written about the flawed and controversial National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the northeastern Indian state of Assam and the mammoth humanitarian crisis that it has triggered.
