Posts

They Are Not In Power. They Are in Office.

Democracy should not borrow the language of rulers to describe public servants.

They Offered Chocolate, Then Took Their Lives

Ira and Ireen and Ramisa were not symbols. They were children. Now they are gone. The least we owe them -- the very least -- is to refuse to let their deaths become background noise.

Iran Has Already Won

A nation fighting for its survival generates a depth of will that a nation fighting for its credibility simply cannot match.

What Does Farakka Long March Day Mean to Us?

The Farakka Long march of 1976 was ultimately a march for dignity, justice, and survival. Even after five decades, its meaning has not faded. Rather, it has become more urgent than ever before. Because when rivers survive, nations survive too.

Can Government Run Without Taxes?

When citizens pay taxes, they demand services, transparency, and governance in return. This creates a feedback loop between the state and its people

The Madonna-Whore Trap

Woman keeps waiting for the world to realize that Lilith and Eve are not two women, polar opposites, black and white, dark and light. They are one. But Man either sees dark or light. We are all performers.

When Hospitals Cannot Save Us

The doctors of Bangladesh are not the disease. They are symptoms of a system that has been starved, stretched, and left to collapse quietly while our politicians fly to London and Singapore for their own check-ups. Someone needs to call this what it is. A national emergency. A moral failure. A crusade waiting for people willing to fight it.

How Dhaka’s Gig Workers are Getting Squeezed

West Asia is burning again as the US-Iran conflict takes new turns. The heat of the conflict has reached the queues for fuel in Dhaka’s filling stations, where a new class of working poor is born in real time.

Francis Fukuyama, Your Carrier Group Just Turned Around

But the Strait of Hormuz never read your book. It does not care about Hegel. It does not care about the "universalization of liberal democracy." It cares about the presence of a warship within 500 kilometers of its shores -- and it has learned to fire a missile that can make that warship regret its existence.

A Day’s Trade, A Night’s Debt

Financial inclusion cannot be measured solely by account ownership. It must be judged by whether a vendor can access 10,000 taka at 2 AM at a known cost, without humiliation or hidden charges, and with a pathway to better finance.

The Rebel, the Ruler, and the Reckoning

Mamata Banerjee governed Bengal through emotional familiarity. She spoke the language of neighbourhood grievances, middle class anxieties, and Bengali insecurity about national marginalization. For years, that intimacy protected her from anti-incumbency.

Canal Digging Program and Its Sustainability

If canals worth thousands of crores of taka are excavated but become filled up or abandoned within a few years, the country will suffer irreparable losses, which would go against the intentions of our policymakers.

What Our Teen Performers Really Need on the Field

Knowledge is not power in sport; it is fuel

The Post-TRIPS Reality

Bangladesh will not experience a shock, but it will face a shift -- from a system dominated by generic competition to one where intellectual property plays a more active role in shaping market access and industrial upgrading.

Why Do South Asian Mothers Struggle To Let Go

Who is she when she is no longer needed every moment? What remains of her when the role that gave her respect, purpose, and visibility is taken away?

Why Bangladesh Needs a Layered Approach to Truth, Justice, and Healing

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.