In mid-June, the IMF in a country focus report on Bangladesh said that the economic impact of Covid-19 has most notably been felt in three main areas: a fall in remittances; a decline in RMG exports; and a drop in domestic economic activities.

Bangladesh has made remarkable growth in agriculture since independence.

It’s mind-boggling to think of a situation where there is an urgency, poor people are in dire need, and money is in the hands of the government allocated to help those in need, but the money is not being distributed properly.

The coronavirus crisis posed serious threats to the global stock markets.

Not long ago, I was watching a webinar on the plight of returning migrant workers streamed live on Facebook by The Daily Star.

Monday July 6 proved to arrive with ominous news for international students studying in the US, some of them still in the US, others back home for the summer as well as those who were scheduled to start university this fall.

The government of the United Kingdom has had a very cordial relationship with Bangladesh since our independence and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been a significant bilateral development partner for many years.

Mass movements are characterised by a euphoric tempo. Thus, it was understandable when on June 7 “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) demonstrators in Bristol brought down and defaced the statue that commemorated 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston. Perplexing though was the inclusion of the statue of Baden-Powell, the founder of the worldwide Scout Movement, in their “Topple the Racists” list of sixty statues.

Three months after most of the major global markets of Bangladeshi garments entered a lockdown period and closed many of their shops, we are beginning to get a better picture of how the industry might look as we move beyond Covid-19.

No pandemic has had such severe global impact, both in terms of its global reach and the related consequences, as has Covid-19. Records show that major pandemics have occurred at a hundred year interval, if we consider the last half the millennium, e.g., the cholera epidemic which originated in India and spread up to China by 1920, lasted seven years.

The ongoing economic recession due to coronavirus pandemic has created opportunities for countries to replace the standard growth path with the green growth.

At the beginning of this year, policymakers in many countries, including the US and the EU, decided to lock down the entire country in order to save lives and to push back Covid-19.

Let’s admit it: our education today is in crisis. And it was in crisis even before the pandemic was here. The pandemic has exposed the skeletons we have been hiding in the open for a long time.

So it’s official now. The government is going to shut down all 25 state-owned jute mills operated by Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) and lay off about 25,000 workers involved with them.

In his address to a seminar on “National Strategy for Prevention of Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism 2019-2021” in November 2019, Finance Minister Mustafa Kamal said that it is not only that money laundering “creates macroeconomic distortion”, but it is “largely destroying our country in various ways”.

We need to do better. We need a complete “industry reset”. We “cannot go back to the way things were before”. I hear all of these sentiments and read about them each day on my various social media feeds. Part of me thinks, “yes, we must strive for a better industry”.

The recent announcement of merging the UK Department for International Development (DFID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has made the development community baffled and anxious.

There was a broken black chair by the window near the gate. On it there was a thin plastic bag containing some mixed up rice, daal, and probably vegetables or curry.

In 1883, the American poet Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet about the virtues of diversity and inclusion.

The Awami League celebrates its 71st birth anniversary on June 23, 2020. Looking back, any ardent student of history would come face to face with the fact that the divisions that were to characterise the differing interests of the educated Muslims in the then East Bengal, began to manifest themselves in the penultimate years of British rule in India.