Can't we outsmart the corrupt?
We need to outwit the graft-taker, outsmart him. In fact, we should try to be one step ahead of him so we can beat him in his own game! The reason why I am suggesting such an unconventional, even a little surrealistic method is simple and easy to understand.
2 March 2018, 18:00 PM
Honing social skills
Our social skills have somewhat blunted over time. Virtues that we had taken for granted in the past almost sound like pipe dreams today. Tolerance, live-and-let-live, mutual, professional respect between men and women, consideration for the elderly, civility, courtesy, compassion, and hospitality—once the markers of social behaviour—have turned utopian, unattainable!
23 February 2018, 18:00 PM
Clarity of thought and action for a livable Dhaka
Traffic congestion has become synonymous with dwindling livability and quality of life in Dhaka.
8 February 2018, 18:00 PM
Values tumbling like a can of worms
We have a shiny sheen of socio-economic indicators, compared to those of most other South Asian countries—Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen never ceases to mention this.
25 January 2018, 18:00 PM
Soft underbelly of connectivity projects?
One would have thought that the much-heralded plans for regional, sub-regional and inter-regional connectivity projects should have added up rather than subtracted from each other.
18 January 2018, 18:00 PM
The cold facts
There are quite a few things to be noted about the on-going cold wave. Of them, two are obvious. For one thing, it has been relentless in its pattern, and therefore, cumulative and gripping in its chilling effect.
11 January 2018, 18:00 PM
Assam is not Rakhine
THE Indian state of Assam is engaged in the process of creating a database of its citizens. It is going beyond the demographic details that were available in the national census report to make use of. No other state of the Indian Union is undertaking such an exercise, and that's where the catch is.
4 January 2018, 18:00 PM
Elections and the Ershad factor
Contrasting speculations linger over the Rangpur mayoral election results. Was the poll “stage-managed” or was it a “calculated game”? Awami League and Jatiya Party, having been broadly on the same side of the political spectrum
28 December 2017, 18:00 PM
Child heroism, mother's loss, deaths in stampede!
Three human stories hogged news headlines last Monday and Tuesday touching the deeper chords of our sensibilities. Evocative of
21 December 2017, 18:00 PM
Reflections on the Pope's visit
As the impressions of Pope Francis' back-to-back visits to Myanmar and Bangladesh sink in, some self-evident truths glare through the mists of Naypyidaw, the new Burmese capital.
7 December 2017, 18:00 PM
Closer China-Bangladesh ties shouldn't worry India
We need to emphasise the importance of reworking China-India-Myanmar trilateral equations to be energetically responsive to Bangladesh's concerns over a snowballing multidimensional Rohingya crisis.
30 November 2017, 18:00 PM
Two colourful feathers on our cap!
We have been picking our brains hard to find a creative solution to the task of shoring up the stagnating tourism sector in Bangladesh. In spite of its location-centred magnetism, how long would Bangladesh languish on the side-line of a relatively peacetime globe-girdling tourism industry when comes its turn?
17 November 2017, 18:00 PM
One step forward, two steps back!
It is a supreme irony that victimhood and villainy sometimes get weighed on the same scale with material stake getting the better of the moral imperative.
9 November 2017, 18:00 PM
Making Myanmar behave - A worthwhile mission
When levers and counter-levers pull away in opposite directions the object of delivering change is stuck on the pulley, as it were. This is understandable as a scientific concept. But what is so eerily unethical is the oxygen of support Myanmar not only receives from a handful of countries, but is also pumped up by.
3 November 2017, 18:00 PM
Isn’t Bangladesh’s stake worthy?
One can draw two significant messages from Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's just-concluded visit to Bangladesh: First, she has basically reiterated India's position that an incumbent government is obligated to hold...
26 October 2017, 18:00 PM
Nurul Islam Anu as I knew him
Munshiganj High School, Haraganga College playground, and Idrakpur Fort are where we would rendezvous in the mid-fifties—Nurul Islam Anu; my elder brother Shah Ali Imam, a freedom fighter; and myself.
19 October 2017, 18:00 PM
Lessons from the South African test series
As they say, in the hard world of competitive cricket, “You are as good or bad as your last performance”.
12 October 2017, 18:00 PM
Dealing with a chameleon
The traditions of Myanmar's hermitage, of which the Burmese military remains a purveyor, sometimes come to the fore in awkward ways.
5 October 2017, 18:00 PM
Is the bastion against Europe’s far-right hobbling?
Political ideologies ranging from populist and nationalist to far-right neo-fascist have been making inroads into the European political landscape. In fact, capitalising on a migration crisis, economic inequality, increasing disillusionment with the European Union and a sense of lost national identity, right-wing parties have made electoral gains in a growing number of European countries.
28 September 2017, 18:00 PM
If not Myanmar's, whose responsibility is it?
Aung San Suu Kyi's opting out of the UN General Assembly session is a reflection of the same hiding syndrome that made the Rakhine state out of bounds for UN staff, aid agencies and the media for a long while.
14 September 2017, 18:00 PM