![A Ledger of the Soul: Navigating the Allah-Bhagavant Nexus in a 19th-Century Puruṣākāra Jñāna Caupara [Gyan Chauper]](https://counterpointbd.com/uploads/images/202608/image_430x256_6a93baa3b09a7.jpg)
Bangladesh’s future depends not just on dismantling authoritarian systems, but on building institutions resilient enough to safeguard rights, mediate conflict, and hold power, whoever holds it, accountable.
If a hostile landlord evicts us from our rented housing, or if an institution terminates our employment based on proven discrimination, we will be able look toward our Constitution with hope for reassurance and justice.
56 previous conferences have produced 56 joint records. The 57th record will be written in New Delhi over four days beginning June 8. It will either mark the beginning of a different kind of diplomacy, one in which Bangladesh’s written commitments mean something and India’s violations carry consequences, or it will confirm that the pattern has been accepted as permanent.
If South Asia wants its uprisings to mean more than a change of management, it has to stop mistaking collapse for transformation.
When a person dies at a railway crossing, we do not abolish the railways. When a pilgrim is trampled at a religious gathering, we do not demolish the shrine. We install gates. We create safety protocols. We manage risk. In Bagerhat, none of this was attempted.
The legal proceedings unfolding after Ramisa Akhter’s rape, beheading, and murder should be anchored in a fundamental jurisprudential principle and not be designed to appease public emotion: Even in a high-profile case where guilt appears certain, due process is not a concession to the accused, but a guardrail protecting the integrity of the criminal justice system.
The most important reforms, including tax modernization, banking-sector restructuring, and stronger central bank independence, remain incomplete. The coming budget will therefore be more than a financial document. It will be the first serious indication of whether the government intends to match cautious rhetoric with sustained reform.
When institutions operate without transparency or accountability, they forfeit their legitimacy and become the very source of the wounds they were meant to heal. For the post-uprising state to heal the nation, it must first heal itself, by dismantling these deeply rooted practices of exception and institutionalized violence.
After the 2024 uprising, there was a genuine window to order a forensic audit of Rooppur's finances. That window was not used. The interim government moved on. The contracting architecture remained intact.
The compact’s energy architecture amplifies rather than mitigates geopolitical shock exposure. A rational energy-security doctrine would diversify suppliers, transit routes, and contract structures; this agreement funnels us toward a single, unbuilt source over which we possess zero strategic control.
The path ahead is neither simple nor short. Decades of accumulated practices cannot be undone overnight. Yet the absence of immediate transformation should not become a justification for inaction.
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.
I am hoping against hope that the issue of LGBT rights in Bangladesh can be viewed by most people in the country through the lenses of anti-discrimination and not through that of any special rights, and certainly not through any notions of promotion. There is nothing to promote here.
The education system of Bangladesh is not merely a ministry. It is one of the largest social systems in the world. Running such a system is not simply a policy challenge. It is an administrative challenge of almost unimaginable scale.
The Rohingya are not “fully dependent” on anyone. They are dependent only to the extent that they have been made dependent -- by design, by policy, and by a system that manages dependency rather than ending it.
Comprehensive reform of the judicial system has emerged as a major national demand.
