Many experts have argued that Iran’s greatest mistake was not to acquire nuclear weapons
People across South Asia are increasingly realising how far they are being left behind in a world that is rapidly moving forward.
India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recently made some strong remarks about Bangladesh at the Delhi University Literature Festival.
The student movement’s ability to inspire people to stand up to a vicious oppressor was truly remarkable.
History and ordinary people in general will remember very well what happened over the last week or so.
Unfortunately, all the mechanisms meant to address corruption seem to have been weakened, if not completely destroyed, one after another in recent decades.
While a privileged minority, sitting in their high castles, continue to enjoy a larger and larger share of the fruits of “development,” it is becoming obvious that the vast majority are increasingly struggling.
It's been a while since the Hallmark Group has been mentioned in the news. Except for when it has been used as an example of severe corruption and criminality, to illustrate the grave consequences that arise when certain principles and rules are ignored.
In a reversal of its stance, the Bangladesh Bank (BB) on August 27 decided to allow Beximco Ltd to reschedule its loan of Tk 430.05 crore, thus in principle approving the rescheduling of restructured loans.
Having acceded to the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) on October 1998, Bangladesh was obligated to submit its initial State Report under Article 19 of the UNCAT to the UN’s Committee against Torture (CAT) by November 4, 1999. But it took Bangladesh 20 years to comply—and only after the CAT sent a letter to the Bangladesh government on December 10, 2018, reminding it of its overdue initial report and about the possibility for the Committee to proceed with a review in its continued absence.
Bangladesh’s economy has made massive strides since 1971. After independence, the initial challenges that the economy faced were enormous. And while Bangladesh managed to overcome most of them, many new challenges emerged in the years that followed.
If you said pre-2013...that the most private moments of your lives were being watched and recorded...people would call you a conspiracy theorist.” – Edward Snowden
Moving against the current of expert opinion, the government, in the budget for FY2019-20, opened up a five-year scheme to convert black money into white.
The Tk 5,23,190 crore budget proposed by the government, which is the biggest in our country’s history, was somewhat of a letdown. Governments sometimes struggle to fully make use of their budgetary plans in electoral democracies because the party in power may
One of the best instruments the government can use to serve those it works for—presumably the citizens—is the national budget. Unfortunately, if one was to ask ordinary citizens, independent analysts and experts to rate how successfully the government implemented
No matter which approach is used, every method of measurement shows inequality has risen in Bangladesh (at least) over the last 10 years. If we take the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, we see that the country’s Gini coefficient—a measure of inequality—went up (indicating disparity has grown) from 0.458 in 2010 to 0.482 in 2016. From a different angle, a report released by Oxfam towards the close of last year ranked Bangladesh 148th in the world—out of 157 countries—for reducing inequality.
In the last decade at least, we have seen two things happening side-by-side globally. One is the rise of the executive branch of government—the significance of its role in the workings of government and society at large. The other is the decline of civil liberties—some of which, such as the right to privacy and free speech, people are now “willingly” compromising on, or no longer view as inalienable even.
