The mounting pressure on Myanmar and its sum total effect
Last week, for the first time I heard an eminent Burmese citizen and a former advisor to the military government admit that massacre and atrocities were committed against the Rohingyas. He also acknowledged that Rohingya villages were burned in Rakhine.
21 November 2019, 18:00 PM
On the road to prosperity
Bangladesh has made phenomenal progress in the last two decades in terms of improving the standard of living of the masses.
12 November 2019, 18:00 PM
The quest for a better life
Thirty-nine migrants seeking a better life perished in a refrigerated van, and their bodies were found in an industrial site about 25 miles east of central London.
3 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Making the SDG goals a reality
Bangla-desh has expressed its interest to participate in next year’s SDG voluntary national review (VNR) which will be placed before the UN in July 2020.
27 October 2019, 18:00 PM
The battle against privation
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to a trio who came from three different continents to teach and work together in Cambridge, USA. Abhijit Banerjee hails from India, Esther Duflo grew up in France, and Michael Kremer was born and brought up in the USA and finished his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Harvard. Their research focuses on poverty alleviation, and more specifically on the design of policy to guide development practitioners and government.
16 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Why a no-deal Brexit may spell disaster for Britain
In Ian McEwan’s “Sweet Tooth”, a novel based on the social life of London in the early 1970s, we see a vivid description of conditions that prevailed in the UK which was then facing several crises on different fronts, and was completely torn apart by industrial and social unrest with slowing economic growth and rising unemployment.
9 October 2019, 18:00 PM
Is poverty a dirty word?
In most countries in the world, barring a few, poverty appears to be a dirty word. Even in rich countries such as the USA and UK, it is difficult to find any reliable statistics on the existence of poverty, the level of poverty, or a headcount of poor people. It has recently
3 October 2019, 18:00 PM
How to boost FDI
At some of the conferences on Bangladesh held in the USA, particularly at Harvard University, I have noticed that introductory speeches often mention Henry Kissinger and his infamous remark about Bangladesh being a “basket case” or “bottomless basket”.
24 September 2019, 18:00 PM
Brexit: How will Boris Johnson play this game of strategy?
I am sometimes asked by my family members and confused friends to explain Brexit and the drama that is unfolding every day in the United Kingdom.
11 September 2019, 18:00 PM
World leaders fiddle as global economy (and Amazon) burns
Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7), comprising the world’s largest economies, met for three days in Biarritz, France on August 24-26 but failed to address any of the important global issues including climate change, trade war(s), the looming economic slowdown, etc.
1 September 2019, 18:00 PM
Repatriation of Rohingyas: Evidence of Myanmar’s lack of preparedness
The Rohingya repatriation is now rumoured to start in a few days, on August 22 to be specific. “Repatriation [of Rohingyas] is always on the table.
20 August 2019, 18:00 PM
An economist’s campaign against age-obsessed billionaires
It is well-known that once you become rich, you can stay rich with little effort. Some of the super-rich in today’s world, for example, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Jack Ma of Alibaba have accumulated an enormous amount of wealth already and are likely to get richer in future. In the parlance of business, the super-rich or billionaires are on a path to exponentially increase their “net worth”.
29 July 2019, 18:00 PM
‘Name and shame’ as an antidote for non-performing loans
Right after he took office as the new Finance Minister of Bangladesh (FM), AHM Mustafa Kamal declared at a meeting in Dhaka on January 10, 2019, “From today no more money will be added to the defaulted loans and it will gradually decrease from now on.”
5 July 2019, 18:00 PM
Rohingya negotiations through the lens of ‘game theory’
The Rohingya population in Bangladesh continues to grow. There are now over one million Rohingyas living in Bangladesh, and with each passing year, their number is increasing by approximately 20,000.
17 June 2019, 18:00 PM
The proposed budget and its impact on vulnerable groups
In the proposed budget for fiscal year 2019-20, the government plans to spend Tk 74,367 crore, or 14.21 percent of the total expenditure, for social safety net programmes (SSNPs).
16 June 2019, 18:00 PM
Why are bumper crops such a headache for Bangladesh?
A bumper crop used to be good news for Bangladesh in the past. For farmers who have to wait for almost four to six months after the sowing season before they can see the fruits of their labour,
2 June 2019, 18:00 PM
Elevating the rank of Dhaka University
The Dhaka University Alumni Association of New England (DUAANE) organised a seminar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA on February 24, 2019 to discuss and debate the low standing of Dhaka University in the global academic arena.
25 May 2019, 18:00 PM
Are vested interests influencing our economic policies?
Is Bangladesh heading in the direction where a few at the top control all the levers of power? A story published in this newspaper voices concerns about the harmful effects of influence-peddling at the highest levels of government in Bangladesh.
14 May 2019, 18:00 PM
Why do bombs fall on the hungry poor?
In Angola, an oil-rich country in Africa, over 2.3 million people are now on the brink of starvation due to drought. In Yemen, the United Nations warned that 13 million people are facing the prospect of famine.
5 May 2019, 18:00 PM
US Central Bank fights back executive manipulation
If you live in the US, it is hard to miss the ongoing tug of war between the White House and the US central bank, The Federal Reserve System (the Fed).
28 April 2019, 18:00 PM