Dear readers,

Like the previous years, we are celebrating our 31st Anniversary with yet another colourful, well-illustrated 200 - page special supplement in five segments. The first, which appears today, is titled: "Blueprint for a brighter future"; SEGMENT 2: "Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital transformation" will appear on February 15; SEGMENT 3: "Entertaining a new world" on February 17; SEGMENT 4: "Developing an inclusive and democratic Bangladesh" on February 19, and SEGMENT 5: "Times change, so must we" on February 20.

Despite the immense challenges brought forth by the coronavirus pandemic, Bangladesh has done remarkably well to recover from it, despite the many ups and downs. Our selection of this year's themes has been inspired by Bangladesh's great efforts to recover from the pandemic and our aspirations as a nation as we move forward. The rubric of creating a sustainable and prosperous Bangladesh includes a wide range of issues, which, the constraint of time does not allow to cover. We have thus done our best to select those issues under the theme that need relatively more focus than the rest.

We are happy to say that the contributors, who are experts, practitioners, researchers, eminent economists, scholars and academics, have done a commendable job in presenting us with very insightful and rich articles.

We have tried to make the contents rich, thought-provoking, objective, constructive and positively directional, with appropriate suggestions and recommendations, which we are confident will add value to the existing work on the topics covered in the supplements.

We also take the opportunity of expressing our gratitude to our readers and patrons who have inspired us consistently and have shown keen interest in our continuing progress and lent unstinted support in fulfilling our motto, Your Right to Know.