Tariq Karim

Cool-headed rationality standing with feet on the bedrock of pragmatic realism.

South Asia was fragmented in 1947 at the macro (regional) level, but even more egregiously so at the micro (nation-state) level.

The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is of seminal importance to climatic changes affecting our planet.

Bangladesh possesses substantial potential for renewable energy deployment.

The Bay of Bengal countries have the potential to form a cohesive community that fosters economic cooperation, promotes peaceful connectivity, and addresses common challenges, charting a path towards prosperity and security for the region and beyond.

Bangladesh's geostrategic importance has catapulted astronomically with global focus swivelling to the Indo-Pacific region.

Our Planet Earth was so named by human beings who are essentially terrestrial creatures. But how would a visitor from outer space, from another planet or galaxy, react on discovering our planet for the first time?

Bangladesh this year celebrates its 50th anniversary of independence as well as the birth centenary of our Father of the Nation. On August 15, the nation also mourns the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu 46 years ago—a heinous act designed to erase all that he stood for.

We celebrate 2020 as “Mujib Borsho”, to mark our Founding Father Bangabandhu’s birth centenary; we also mourn, and reflect on, his brutal assassination 46 years ago on the 15th August 1975.

April 13 was Easter Monday, an everlasting testimony to the resurrection of Christ after his crucifixion and its symbolic assertion that there is life after what is perceived as death. In the midst of a somewhat stifling home confinement in fear of the ubiquitously merciless and relentlessly marauding novel coronavirus, somehow the day and its symbolism was comfortingly reassuring.

Three days ago, on March 25, listening to a briefing on the then available latest global statistics about the COVID-19, I learnt that the global total of recorded cases was then a little over 400,000, spread across over 169 countries.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues marauding the globe, flattening developed and undeveloped, urban and rural, national and regional landscapes, blithely jumping across oceans and continents, one may be forgiven for thinking, somewhat desperately: is this the advent of Armageddon in our times?

One cannot conceive of India emerging as an independent, modern nation-state without the leadership of Gandhi,

When political events in the domestic sphere of a state transcend the internal space of that state, through a process of empathetic osmosis, and impacts negatively upon the domestic political and governance harmony of one or more neighbouring states around or adjacent to it,

At the very core of our entire ecosystem is the location and availability of fresh water on which lives and human livelihood are fundamentally dependent.

India’s biggest challenge when dealing with its immediate neighbours is, first and foremost, the sense of its sheer size that dwarfs the combined size of all the others.

At the very core of our entire ecosystem is the location and availability of fresh water on which sustaining lives and human livelihood are fundamentally dependent.

The historical-civilisational Indian sub-continent, now known as “South Asia”, was for millennia the most integrated region in the world.

Our attitude to garbage disposal and plastic waste is flagrantly callous. What is particularly eye-soring is the mass of plastic waste of all types, ubiquitously filling up unending stretches of areas beside roads, railway lines, all conceivable nooks and crannies between buildings/shanties and, most egregious of all, as flotsam floating listlessly on all types of water bodies that have still managed to escape attention of insatiable land-developers.

These days, I assail myself with questions triggered by the everyday acts of thoughtlessness that I witness committed by the multitude around me everywhere, young and old, male and female.