THE SOUND AND THE FURY
Did we have to pay such a heavy price for this verdict?
The verdict is in. The Appellate Division through its observations has recommended that quotas be restricted to seven percent: five percent for freedom fighters’ descendants, one percent for ethnic minorities, and one percent for people with disabilities.
The violence of silencing a rape survivor
That justice for rape survivors is a mirage in this country is no news, with a miserable conviction rate of three percent in rape cases.
The price we pay with each deleted word
With each new term of the ruling regime, and each new provision or law, we have learnt a bit more of self-censorship.
Opinion / Govt's priority is to access, not protect, our personal data
The government has heavily invested in purchasing surveillance equipment and enhancing the capacities of various agencies to use them over the years, but it hasn't shown an iota of the same interest in what should have been its priority—protection of citizens’ data
You can’t quell workers’ hunger by opening fire on them
Rather than assuage the workers by announcing a respectable wage, the wage board has essentially fuelled workers’ outrage and made a mockery of the wage negotiation process
Why the delay in declaring minimum wage for RMG workers?
Will the wage board and our policymakers truly hear the stories of backbreaking work and heartbreaking debt of the garment workers, who have kept the economy going even at its worst phases?
Why I feel suffocated by Dhanmondi
Dhanmondi these days is a cacophony of people, traffic, events, vendors, schools, hospitals, restaurants, and construction sites.
From remittance-warriors to criminals
If life were a film with a wholesome ending, traffickers of the 106 Bangladeshis stuck in Vietnam would have been swiftly arrested.
Deadly encounters
In a rare instance in the long and not-so-glorious history of extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh, justice, it appears, is on its way to being served for the murder of Major (retd) Rashed Sinha.
Ethical business is not a one-way street
It really warms my cold, judgmental heart when I hear grandiloquent statements from Bangladeshi RMG factory owners about the importance of ethical business as they plead with big global brands to “do the right thing” and “stand by poor Bangladeshi workers”.
Corona is only as cruel as capitalism’s weakest link
That capitalism is cruel should come as no surprise to those who understand either the meaning of cruelty or the logic of capitalism.
One more nail in the coffin of free press
A barrage of fireworks light up the smoggy skies of Dhaka and I feel as if I’m in the opening scenes of a dystopian film.
The devil in development
The word “development” - eliciting as it does grandiloquent notions of progress - has become, at least in Bangladesh, something of a red herring.
If our democracy could talk, what would it say?
When people resist what the government would like to wholesale, impose, or force-feed as “development”, democracy seems quite at ease to quell people's resistances, violate pledges and dismiss the age-old demands of the adivasi communities.
Who says we're not free?
Last week, Freedom House, an independent watchdog organisation that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom...
When only men make the news
On the onset, it seems women are everywhere in the media. You switch on the TV, there is inevitably an attractive woman luring you
A lesson on lessons not learnt
Eleven years ago, on a hot, stuffy day not unlike today, a building had come crashing down on the sweating workers of a sweater factory.