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Anti-Corruption Commission must clean its own house first

AN ANTI-CORRUPTION agency that cannot rid itself of corruption risks becoming worse than useless; it becomes a shield for the very ills it is meant to fight. The revelations surrounding the Anti-Corruption Commission — an institution entrusted with protecting the country from the decay of bribery and abuse of power — are, therefore, as alarming as they are disheartening...

Quantitative and qualitative reading

THE macroeconomic outlook of a country can be projected quantitatively through a large number of economic tools applied on a plethora of variables. However, the numbers do not always reflect the real truth hidden behind the projections. More importantly, the projections often make realistic assumptions, which hold a number of explanatory variables fixed at their...

Tectonic shift over the fault lines

On March 1, 2001, president George W Bush, speaking at the National Defence University in Washington DC, stated that the United States and Russia ‘are not and must not be strategic adversaries.’ Yet, more than two decades later, as the 2024 US presidential elections approached, Republican nominee Donald Trump remarked during a televised interview on November...

Bridging the divide

WE LIKE to think that enough food means enough nutrition. It does not. Food is what we eat; nutrition is what our bodies use to grow, stay healthy and thrive. A plate full of staples such as rice does not guarantee that a child will grow tall or that a woman will lead a healthy life. In Bangladesh and beyond, this disconnect fuels a silent crisis: the food–nutrition gap, eroding...

Gender equality and nutrition

BANGLADESH has made notable strides in health and development over the past decades, with declining poverty, improved access to services, and rising life expectancy. Yet nutritional indicators remain alarmingly poor. The country records one of the highest rates of low birthweight globally at 28 per cent, while anaemia affects nearly 29 per cent of women...

Govt, too, is indifferent towards road safety issues

PUBLIC transports remains fatally unsafe for passengers as the interim government has so far kept the sector off its reform agenda. The Passengers Welfare Association of Bangladesh on September 13 reported that at least 86,690 people died and 153,257 became wounded in 62,619 road accidents in 11 years. The number of fatalities, however shocking, is not surprising as...

Govt should tie all loose ends to meet timely textbook supply

THE National Curriculum and Textbook Board, meant to provide about 40 million students with textbooks on January 1, when the academic year begins, could print about 410.5 million copies of textbooks for the current academic year and complete the distribution by March, three months after classes began. The failure earned the board criticism. The board could run into...

India disavows ‘Tianjin spirit,’ turns to EU

INDIA found itself in an uncomfortable situation like a cat on a hot roof at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation event in Tianjin, China, with western media hyping up its unlikely role in a troika with Russia and China to chariot the world order toward a brave new era of multipolarity...

How cognitive bias shapes world

Effective pesticides against dengue

DENGUE is a neglected tropical disease listed by the World Health Organization. In other words, it is primarily a disease of disadvantaged communities who lack access to proper housing and basic amenities worldwide. The environment that favours mosquito breeding is inevitably hostile to humans. Environmental pollution, poor water management, and inadequate...