The Greatest Bengalee

By Zillur Rahman, Gandaria, Dhaka
4 May 2004, 18:00 PM
After thirty-three years of our independence, while any Bangladeshi media or organisation has failed to conduct anything to select the greatest Bengalee of all time, it was a laudable initiative by BBC that it organised an opinion poll in this respect.

The media, intellectuals, general people and BBC listeners followed the survey with keen interest and attention. Like all other regular listeners, I also listened to the programme with much attention and sent my opinion to select the greatest Bengalee of all time. I have also read several newspaper reports to find out how many listeners participated in the whole survey and how many listeners gave their opinions to select each of the twenty greatest Bengalees, but failed to get the exact numbers. As a regular listener of the BBC Bengali Service, I sent my query twice by email to "Pritivajonashu (listeners' question hour) programme" but the BBC Bengali Service didn't respond to my query.

If everything was done according to the rules, then why can't BBC give us the full picture?