In family businesses, the concept of “succession planning” is well known. It is the process of identifying and developing new leaders who can replace old leaders when they leave, retire or die.

In the 80s, one sarcastic comment—for reasons better not stated out of respect for the deceased—was aired every now and then: hurl a stone in Dhaka’s air and you are sure to hit either a poet or a crow. On the surface, it was an innocent joke about the sheer number of creatures—those who fly with their wings and those others who dream to do so with their imagination.

One of the interesting perks of being a brown South Asian, travelling anywhere in the world, is the special attention you get from various official quarters.

Jeanine Cummins, the author of the latest American best-seller novel “American Dirt”, is taking a lot of flak for her story based on the experience of a Mexican woman named Lydia and her eight-year-old son who flee their home and cross over to the USA.

Bangladesh, quite rightly, has aspirations to meet the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as the Climate Change goals by 2030, and then to graduate into being a middle income country by 2041.

"You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything,” stated Beth Comstock, former vice chair of General Electric, and I feel this is true when we consider the advances in sustainability made by the apparel industry of Bangladesh and the growing global awareness of the importance of the sustainability agenda.

Election time is full of promises. Wowed by the vows, some of us are the happiest. Many of us are steeply sceptical; we suffer the most. Most of us believe the rhetoric, or pretend to, otherwise candidates would not have been spewing material for us to build castles in the air, election after election.

By the time you will be reading this piece, I “should” be on board our national carrier, Biman Bangladesh. I write “should” because nothing about Biman can be said with certainty; listen to the passenger’s mumbling at the boarding bay or lend your eyes and ears to the incidents on the aircraft itself, you are sure to get an endorsement.

Bangladesh began 2019 with a renewed hope that its newly elected government would bring in political and economic changes as promised in its election manifesto.

If the heavens are kind this time and everything pans out as expected by the mayoral wannabes, a golden age for Dhaka is now within reach.

Like many of President Trump’s actions in the last three years, the recently rolled out “Deal of the Century” is a farce. The so-called peace plan was crafted by the President’s son-in-law over the last three years, drawn up without the participation of the only other stakeholder—the Palestinians.

All over the world, in poor and the richer countries, the communities that are the most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change are generally the poorest ones.

We need to talk more in the workplace. We need to communicate better. We need to get things out in the open, to air grievances, share our hopes, fears and concerns and, where appropriate, ideas, aspirations and goals for the future.

Last Sunday, supporters of the BNP mayoral candidate for Dhaka South, Ishraque Hossain, and those of the AL councillor aspirant, Rokon Uddin Ahmed, clashed while carrying out election activities on behalf of their respective candidates.

Over the past three months, I have lost many nights of sleep, abandoned my favourite political TV programmes, and ignored household chores.

The following anecdote I have narrated before, but it merits repetition for sheer context.

Two days after the Interna-tional Court of Justice (ICJ) approved emergency “provisional measures” asking Myanmar to stop persecution of the Rohingya in all forms— including killing, raping, and destroying homes and villages—two Rohingya women died in Rakhine State when the Myanmar army shelled a village. One of them was pregnant.

I first met Sir Fazle Hasan Abed in 2012 at an invitation-only meeting in Washington, DC.

I did myself a favour, as pleaded on Facebook by a colleague, and read Greta Thunberg’s chapbook, “No one is too small to make a difference.”

When Harry met Meghan, two things were set in motion.