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.
More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, we have witnessed how it has not only caused a public health crisis across the globe but also brought us face to face with a myriad of socio-economic challenges.
The infection rate and deaths from the coronavirus have been increasing after the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays. On June 26 the infection rate was 22.50 percent (with 4,334 cases) and there were 77 Covid-related deaths, fuelled by the Indian Delta variety, which is a lot more infectious and deadly.
Cotton is the lifeblood of the Bangladesh RMG industry, with our country among the world’s four largest users of this miracle fibre. The other three are China, India and Pakistan, the latter two of which also have large home textile markets.
The current pattern of global economic development is unsustainable. It is based on the extraction of natural resources and use of a carbon-intensive production and consumption system to produce goods and services for the economy.
Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) kill 41 million people globally every year, more than a third of them prematurely. The four major NCDs—
The rise of hardline President-elect Ebrahim Raisi has prompted some analysts to counterintuitively suggest that it could pave the way for reduced
With its geography largely consisting of low-lying delta plains and its high-density population, Bangladesh is exceptionally vulnerable to climate change.
In Bangladesh, while the pandemic has impacted businesses of all sizes, plus life and livelihood, evidence is mounting that the enterprises that employ between 1 and 249 workers—officially the micro, small and medium enterprises—are bearing the brunt of the economic slowdown.
A female student of mine walked out of her dentist’s chamber at Bailey Road at around 8pm on June 7, 2021.
Muhammad Ayubur Rahman Bhuyan, a long serving faculty member at Dhaka University’s economics department (1970-2004), was an outstanding colleague to fellow academics, a dedicated teacher, and an eminent scholar.
