EACH Eid, millions of Bangladeshis undertake long journeys to reunite with loved ones, carrying with them gifts, savings and hopes. These homecomings, rooted in ritual and emotion, are meant to be moments of joy. Yet, with alarming regularity, they are punctuated by devastating reports of road crashes. This year was no different. The Bangladesh Jatri Kalyan Samity...
GOOGLE Translate has become among the handiest apps for a good reason. It discards the clich茅 about the meaning getting lost in translation and helps strangers to connect in a naturally multilingual world...
BANGLADESH is one of the prominent developing countries in Asia, with a population exceeding 180 million, of which 48.8 per cent are under the age of 25. This young demographic holds immense potential. If provided with quality education and adequate training, this segment of the population could become a formidable asset for the country鈥檚 economic growth...
AT THE start of 2025, Sudan registered an alarming debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio of 252 per cent. This means that the country鈥檚 total public debt is 2.5 times the size of its entire annual economic output. It is not hard to understand why Sudan is in such dire straits: as we outlined in last week鈥檚 newsletter, the country has been engulfed in a conflict for...
WHEN the government forcefully evicted sex workers from the brothels of Tanbazar, Narayanganj, in 1999, they did so under the guise of 鈥榬ehabilitation鈥�, claiming it was to rescue women from violence and exploitation. But for those of us who stood witness, it felt like a cruel betrayal masked as benevolence. I was an undergraduate student of anthropology then 鈥� young..
CRIMINOLOGY offers a lens through which we can understand the motivations behind criminal behaviour and the psychological traits that predispose individuals to crime. A recent Netflix series, Adolescence, dramatises the story of a 13-year-old who commits murder. However, such portrayals are no longer confined to fiction. Bangladesh is witnessing a disturbing...
IF DANTE had been born in Dhaka, I suspect he wouldn鈥檛 have written about nine circles of hell 鈥� he would have simply described a morning commute involving the BRTA and a short stroll along a Bangladeshi footpath. Because truly, what else but infernal suffering could explain a place where getting a driving licence requires divine intervention, a briefcase full of...
NOT long ago, artificial intelligence made headlines for what many described as a creative breakthrough. OpenAI鈥檚 GPT-4 ranked in the top one per cent on standardised creative thinking assessments 鈥� those same tests used to measure human originality and problem-solving. Around the same time, an Artifical Intelligence generated song that mimicked the...
CONSEQUENT to the escalated Zionist genocide of Indigenous Palestinian people, and after a blockade of all goods since the beginning of March 2025, Gaza is experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis, with widespread food scarcity and starvation among its population. Human rights organizations and international agencies report the Israeli blockade has led to...
THE fag end of Secondary School Certificate and equivalent examinations have seen record number of student having been from the examinations halls that actually began with the first day when 26,928 students were absent although registered for the examiantios. The examinations began on April 10 and the theoretical exams ended on May 13 and that day 31,55...
AS A transnational feminist scholar of social movements, when the Women鈥檚 Affairs Reform Commission鈥檚 report came out on April 19, I became keen on reviewing the 433 recommendations under 15 thematic areas. I was initially a bit frustrated to see that the report primarily focused on 鈥榚quality between women and men鈥�...
A COUPLE of weeks after Israel began its campaign of terror in Gaza two Octobers ago, a journalist and novelist named Omar El Akkad published a note on X, formerly known as Twitter, that has stayed with me ever since:...
THE ravages of nature are becoming an unrelenting part of rural life. Sudden storms, untimely rains, long droughts and devastating floods 鈥� these extreme weather events strike at the heart of peaceful villages, stripping away not only livelihoods but the rhythms of daily life. In a country like Bangladesh, where agriculture remains the backbone of the economy, the...
Failing to satisfy citizens鈥� expectations of democracy leads to serious societal problems, including the intensification of conflict. This is a finding from research (a collaborative research with SOAS, University of London, exploring parliament and public engagement) that my colleagues and I conducted in Bangladesh from 2014 to 2017. In Bangladesh, the 2018 quota...
MANY people are now openly saying that the government and the state are not functioning well. There is no reason to brand everyone making such observations as fascists or their sympathisers. A significant portion of those who directly participated in or supported the anti-fascist movement in the past are also openly voicing such concerns, motivated by their...
