A society in which the “honour of the huzur” matters more than a child’s cry has not yet learned justice. A state in which poor families are afraid to seek justice has not yet learned equal protection.
This first article in a three-part series argues that Bangladesh’s celebrated growth story was always more fragile than it looked. Now that growth is slowing and investment is yielding less, the hidden costs of that model are becoming harder to ignore.
In a world driven by technology and innovation, the value of human intellect far exceeds that of raw materials. Countries that fail to recognize this shift risk being trapped in cycles of dependency and underdevelopment.
Petitions are circulating now to remove these sites from search engines. Outrage is building, slowly. But it is not enough. But the real shift needs to start within us, in these awkward conversations. Stop correcting the numbers, stop making excuses and start confronting what actually happened.
An extended war would not only upset the oil market, but could also disrupt development projects. Our workers, mainly in construction, cleaning and other blue-collar professions, are thus at high risk of mass layoffs.
The contrast between our technological ambitions and our moral shortcomings raises an uncomfortable possibility. What if our progress is fundamentally unbalanced? What if we have mistaken the expansion of capability for the advancement of civilization?
US remains Bangladesh’s single-most important export market, major source of FDI and a key development partner. US is also a market with substantive export potentials as far as Bangladesh was concerned. Remaining engaged with the US should be the way to go forward.
The final irony of our current moment is that while the world watches the dramatic surface conflicts and the crises that dominate headlines and social media feeds, the deeper system is already adjusting, already adapting, already moving towards a different configuration.
55 years ago today, Pakistan as it existed then came to end as the Mujibnagar Government was formally formed. Two generations on, the peoples of the two countries share a common yearning for democracy. On both wings of the erstwhile Pakistan then, a prayer for democracy.
The economic man treated nature as a storehouse. The social man must learn to treat it as a home -- and eventually, as an authority.
The war shut down every long-term supplier in a week. But the permanent damage may not be Bangladesh’s problem.
In 840, the mayor always wins. The machine keeps humming. The tenders keep flowing. But the film exists. Someone made it. Someone watched it. Someone wrote about it. And that, perhaps, is where the next story begins.
For civilians, of course, the distinction between pause and resolution may seem academic. The absence of immediate violence is a tangible relief. But from a structural perspective, the conditions that produced the war remain unchanged.
Former American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase “unknown unknowns” best captures the near impossibility of predicting what comes next. That said, the ongoing Iran-United States ceasefire, offers a brief window of opportunity to take stock: A highly precarious, at best partial, cooling-off period in a region that remains very much in turmoil.
BNP must ensure that the caretaker government system, now revived, is built to last, not as a tool of partisan advantage but as the institutional guarantee that, now and going forward, no government, can close the door on the voters' right to choose their leaders.
