![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)
Jon Danilowicz and Zafar Sobhan sit down to ask a question that goes beyond the pitch: Can a shared love of the beautiful game actually ease international tensions — or does the World Cup merely become another arena for political theatre? As always, The J-Z Show brings together informed analysis, historical perspective, and candid discussion on the issues that matter most to Bangladesh.
In this episode 06 of Counterpoint With Zafar Sobhan, host Zafar Sobhan is joined by Shayan Khan, Acting Editor of UNB and Executive Editor of Dhaka Courier. In this episode Zafar Sobhan, a football enthusiast engages in a discussion with Shayan Khan on the FIFA World Cup. From the selection to 32 teams and the tournament's evolution to the rise of emerging football nations, they explore what makes the World Cup the biggest sporting spectacle on earth. The conversation also covers their favorite teams, dark horses, standout players, and expectations for the tournament as...
The ceasefire has created an opportunity. Whether the parties seize it will depend not only on the negotiators in the room but also on political leaders willing to accept outcomes short of their maximalist positions. Transforming that opportunity into lasting peace remains the region's greatest challenge.
A country becomes innovative not when its officials announce innovation, but when its inventors no longer need to beg them for the right to build.
Postponing LDC graduation won't help us unless we use the time to fundamentally turn things around.
Why the $6 billion expressway must be financed by the people who will drive it -- and what the Global South can teach the West about infrastructure.
The most obvious solution is the legal system must criminalize online shaming and punish the cyber-harassers instead of forcing women to disable their accounts.
Today, that familiar polarizing language can be heard on both sides of Sher-e-Bangla’s hated ‘false wall,’ a wall which has since devolved into a barbed wire fence, on which dead and dying Bengali bodies have been hung.
Women are neither vessels of national honour nor laboratories of cultural experimentation. They are citizens. And the value of a citizen lies not in her clothing, but in her ideas, her voice, her political convictions, and her contributions.
The US-–Iran memorandum ended a war on American terms. But the fine print on the Strait of Hormuz, like the rise of the mediators who brokered it, tells a more complicated story.
The language of our food carries a social order within it. That is what we name, what we price, what we celebrate, and what we quietly demand of women versus men at the dinner table is not neutral tradition. It is instruction, delivered warm in a serving bowl, generation after generation.
Bangladesh now has the diagnostic tools, the legal framework, and crucially, the public honesty about the scale of the task that previous governments lacked. What it does with that foundation over the next two to three years, not the next two to three months, is the real story still being written.
This asymmetry raises an uncomfortable question: If globalization is presented as a two-way exchange, why does cultural traffic so often move in one dominant direction?
It is prudent for the Indian government to appoint H.E. Dinesh Trivedi, a former politician, as the High Commissioner to Bangladesh at a time when relations between the two countries are experiencing turbulence over the ouster of the last government.
The government and private sector have an opportunity to work together to translate the positive policy signals contained in the budget into tangible investment outcomes. If we do so successfully, Bangladesh will not only attract foreign capital but also encourage successful members of the Bangladeshi diaspora to invest their expertise, resources, and networks in the country's future.
Bangladesh cannot claim to protect cultural diversity while systematically demolishing the indigenous land system that supports that culture.
