IT IS reassuring that the government has taken steps to investigate the police action against a rickshaw puller, who was arrested on August 15 after being physically assaulted by a 鈥榤ob鈥� for trying to place flowers and pay his respects to the founding president of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibar Rahman, at Dhanmondi 32 in Dhaka. The beaten and injured rickshaw puller was taken...
WHILE food inflation has put a large number of poor, low- and fixed-income people into difficulty, the persistent increase in rice prices appears to be pushing many into food insecurity. The increase in rice prices, moreover, remains the major contributor to food inflation. Fine rice inflation has stayed in double digits over the past twelve months, while the medium and coarse...
Donald Trump came into office promising to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now, six months later, his high stakes meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska may have put the United States and Russia on a new path toward peace, or, if this initiative fails, could trigger an even more dangerous escalation, with warhawks in Congress already pushing for another $54.6 billion in weapons for Ukraine...
THE luminous white stones of Sadapathar, glistening in the currents of the River Dhalai, have long been celebrated as a wonder of Sylhet. Tourists travel miles to marvel at this natural treasure, yet behind its beauty lies a thriving, often lawless, industry of stone and sand extraction. Along the Companiganj鈥揃holaganj highway, stone-crushing machines run ceaselessly...
IN SIDNEY Lumet鈥檚 12 Angry Men, there鈥檚 a moment when Juror 8, played by Henry Fonda, stands alone against a mounting verdict. 鈥業t鈥檚 not easy to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first,鈥� he says. He adds very little to the prevailing noise in the room, yet his voice carries a weight far beyond its volume, grounded in moral authenticity...
DHAKA, a teeming capital, is a living example of what happens when urbanisation can outstrip planning. A sprawling city with more than 20 million, it is about to explode. Its crowded, polluted streets, survival struggles and squalor tell the story of a desperate metropolis. Every morning, millions of Dhaka residents endure agonising commutes, stuck in traffic that snakes...
THE decision to cancel the studentship of a gender minority student of a private university raises concern about the exclusionary academic environment and the integrity of the administration. More than a hundred citizens in a statement on August 16 expressed concern and termed the expulsion of Sahara Chowdhury, a transwoman in the Metropolitan University...
THE national consensus commission on August 16 sent the final draft of the July national charter 2025 to political parties, with a prologue that says that the document has been 鈥榰nanimously鈥� worked out after a series of dialogues that the commission held with more than 30 political parties and alliances between March 20 and July 31. But what remains problematic...
IT WAS astonishing to read about the death of Ahmad Saeed Tazazaa (20 years old) on August 3, 2025, inside Israel鈥檚 Magiddo prison. Just months earlier, reports emerged that Israeli forces had killed another Palestinian prisoner in Megiddo, Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad (16 years old), on March 24. Both young men, boys really, had been picked up from the...
PEOPLE in Bangladesh are not dying solely from poverty; they are dying under the crushing weight of cruelty, superstition and hypocrisy. Three recent incidents have laid bare the nakedness of our collective moral bankruptcy. They are not isolated tragedies; they are symptoms of a deeply unhealthy social structure and of our contempt for the very religious...
ONCE, in the villages of Bangladesh, the night air shimmered with tiny golden lights. Fireflies, the living lanterns of the countryside, would drift through paddy fields and hover over darkened rivers, their glow guiding the imagination of poets and the steps of night-time travellers. Bengali literature even gave us the image of 鈥榓 boat in a dark night finding its way...
WATER runs through the veins of Bangladesh 鈥� shaping our land, feeding our people and sustaining our economy. With more than 700 rivers and a maze of wetlands, ponds, canals and coastal ecosystems, the country is blessed with extraordinary freshwater and marine wealth. Yet this abundance is underappreciated, undervalued and increasingly under threat. As...
THE interim government鈥檚 efforts to keep the kitchen market stable have not been successful, as prices of essentials continue to rise. The prices of almost all essential food items, including onions, eggs, broiler chickens and vegetables, remained high on August 15 in the capital鈥檚 kitchen markets. Broiler chickens are sold at Tk 170-180 per kilogram at retail markets, which was...
IT IS disappointing that the government has made no progress in implementing the recommendations that the Anti-Corruption Reform Commission made to strengthen the Anti-Corruption Commission and free it from political and bureaucratic influences. The Anti-Corruption Reform Commission, formed by the interim government, submitted its report to the chief adviser on...
WHAT if the most sinister achievement of modern capitalism is its ability to convince people that their suffering is entirely self-inflicted? Netflix鈥檚 Squid Game, which burst into global consciousness in 2021, isn鈥檛 merely a dystopian thriller, it is a masterclass in economic allegory. On the surface, it tells the story of 456 people who voluntarily sign up to compete in...