THE ICONOCLAST FILES
Why the Himalayan Third Pole is crucial in climate governance
The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is of seminal importance to climatic changes affecting our planet.
Bangabandhu’s foreign policy legacy can still guide us
Bangladesh's geostrategic importance has catapulted astronomically with global focus swivelling to the Indo-Pacific region.
Coping with coronavirus and preparing for a life after it
April 13 was Easter Monday, an everlasting testimony to the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion and its symbolic assertion that there is life after what is perceived as death. In the midst of a somewhat stifling home confinement in fear of the ubiquitously merciless and relentlessly marauding novel coronavirus, somehow the day and its symbolism was comfortingly reassuring.
Preparing for a post COVID-19 world
Three days ago, on March 25, listening to a briefing on the then available latest global statistics about the COVID-19, I learnt that the global total of recorded cases was then a little over 400,000, spread across over 169 countries.
The concept of sovereignty and internal affairs of state
When political events in the domestic sphere of a state transcend the internal space of that state, through a process of empathetic osmosis, and impacts negatively upon the domestic political and governance harmony of one or more neighbouring states around or adjacent to it,
THE ICONOCLAST FILES / Addressing the critical challenge to our water security
At the very core of our entire ecosystem is the location and availability of fresh water on which sustaining lives and human livelihood are fundamentally dependent.
Reviving the Bengal Presidency template of connectivity
The historical-civilisational Indian sub-continent, now known as “South Asia”, was for millennia the most integrated region in the world.
Addressing the problem of trash and plastic waste
Our attitude to garbage disposal and plastic waste is flagrantly callous. What is particularly eye-soring is the mass of plastic waste of all types, ubiquitously filling up unending stretches of areas beside roads, railway lines, all conceivable nooks and crannies between buildings/shanties and, most egregious of all, as flotsam floating listlessly on all types of water bodies that have still managed to escape attention of insatiable land-developers.
Whence comes our culture of impunity?
These days, I assail myself with questions triggered by the everyday acts of thoughtlessness that I witness committed by the multitude around me everywhere, young and old, male and female.
Rising above the sea of "yes-men"
In Shakespeare's great tragedy King Lear, a powerful man comes to a tragic end because he surrounds himself with flatterers and banishes the friends “who will not varnish the truth to please him.”