Opinion
ESSAY / Ali Riaz’s ‘More than Meets the Eye’ and a writer’s responsibility
Writers and intellectuals are obligated to stir moral indignation at gross injustices and the plight of the masses.
Why Randomised Controlled Trials need to include human agency
There’s a buzz abroad in the development community around a new way to tackle extreme poverty. For exemple BRAC’s Targeting the Ultra Poor (TUP) programme combines asset transfers (usually livestock), cash stipends, and intensive mentoring to women and families in extreme poverty in order to help them “graduate” into more sustainable livelihoods within two years.
After Bhola / Five takes on the proliferation of fake news to instigate communal unrest and its larger political implications
Violence in Bhola preceded with a familiar pattern of events, blaming a member of a religious minority for demeaning Islam, creating a frenzy and then mobilising the angry people to the street.
A BAN ON STUDENT POLITICS / Cutting the head to cure a headache?
Speaking as a representative of the students, I want to reiterate that the BUET students are demanding that only party politics be banned on campus—not student politics in general. To be more specific, they are demanding the ban of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL).
A Vices’ circle
I don’t know whether to call it luck that we get to witness the development of a brand-new English phrase right under our noses. The
From victims to villains: The changing discourse on Rohingyas
Yet another attempt to send Rohingyas back to Myanmar ended up in an embarrassing debacle last week: Not a single Rohingya
Opinion / Neoliberal apologetics: The fallacy of boycotting meat to save the Amazon
This week, the tragic news that massive wildfires are raging in the Amazon has shocked the world. As photos of burning trees, fleeing
Opinion / The one thing missing from the conversation
What Priya Saha cited to Donald Trump is a statistical fallacy, and downright irresponsible, but what is way more problematic was our reaction to it.
The true story of fake news
This May, an online portal deliberately used a photo of Shrabonty Ananna—a model and social media influencer—in one of their reports with the title, “Illicit relationship with the uncle, girl arrested for killing her newborn”. Since stories accusing women never fail
The Problem with Straight Intentions
On June 13, 2019, each of us received frantic messages from our queer community friends in Bangladesh. One of the messages said, “Another fiasco! Please someone… email her and ask her to stop this madness.” The “madness” was referring to a recently minted
UNSC should stand in solidarity with survivors of rape in conflict
The honour bestowed on us by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in late 2018, when we jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize, comes with tremendous responsibility.
From a t-shirt to Nusrat: Our right to protest
Nusrat Jahan Rafi died for protesting against sexual harassment on the same week that social media hyenas were tearing women apart for daring to wear the ga gheshe daraben na t-shirt on public buses.
Don't rub against me
Since my student days, I've been a regular commuter on public buses in Dhaka city. When I was in college, the money that my father sent every month was barely enough to cover my tuition and living costs...
Why #MeToo is not happening in Bangladesh
The #metoo and #metooindia hashtags are felling old oaks in Indian media including the likes of veteran actors such as Nana Patekar and Alok Nath, singer Kailash Kher, filmmaker Sajid Khan, author Chetan Bhagat and even deputy foreign minister and former founder editor of The Telegraph MJ Akbar.
Teen protest movement demanding safe roads: Their allies, adversaries, and others
The last time I heard of a student protest movement with secondary school children was in 2011. Secondary school children had joined university students in Chile to denounce their neoliberal education system that had commodified education, expanding social and income inequality between the rich and the poor.
Hostage in our own country?
“In Maharashtra of India, 33 people were killed in a road accident, but do they talk about it like the way we do? Whenever something happens in Bangladesh, no matter how insignificant it is, everybody makes a fuss,” commented Bangladesh's shipping minister Shajahan Khan, who is also the executive president of Bangladesh Road Transport Workers Federation.
Frida in colours of capitalism
Before she made it to our saris, chunky jewellery, phone cases, and magazine covers, Frida Kahlo was a genius, a socialist, a feminist, and an anti-imperialist nationalist, whose mere presence in history is radical.
Will the white man ever stop trying to “save” us?
A few days ago, I came across a viral video by Mikko Foundation, an organisation run by a brother-sister duo from Seattle with a “burning desire to give back to community.” The video showed the founder, who is white, trying to persuade locals in Gulshan neighbourhood to wear t-shirts designed by the organisation, supposedly as a humanitarian gesture of giving back to a struggling community.