Just when we thought we've seen enough of Bangladesh Chhatra League, an organisation that has been the subject of one shocking headline after another over the last eight years, the student wing of the ruling Awami League has found a way to send us into collective shock again.

It was my cousin's wedding. The perfect setting for disastrous meetings between the Aunty gang and poor, hapless unmarried lasses. Cue Grandmother Z, who I've hardly met four times in my lifetime, with her “Bushra, how are you?

The World Health Organization's (WHO) data shows that 1.25 million people are killed and as many as 50 million people are injured in road crashes every year.

In late 1840s, London was hit by a vicious cholera epidemic. Health officials struggled to curb the spread until Dr John Snow painstakingly collected data on the location and history of each case and traced the source to specific water supplies in the city.

Innovation and technology are seen as the solutions to the educational deprivation of millions of children in the developing world.

One of my teachers at college would often say, “Even if you take a walk through a (public) university campus, you will learn many things about life.”

Despite the fact that Bangladesh made considerable progress in gross-enrolment in primary education for both genders, the country is seriously lagging behind in ensuring quality education for all. Because data for many of the targets related to Goal 4 are not available, we have studied a few available indicators which are consistent with the goal 4.

November has arrived. I have been looking forward to November since I came back mid this year. It is the month when rays of light fall differently on your face, sound travels differently, sunshine thins, and the mist thickens.

Lessons learnt: an effective intervention in the lives of slum dwellers may begin with small steps. It is important to understand the everyday practices of slum dwellers, rather than impose on them what professionals think slum dwellers need.

It is oftentimes a lie that we tell ourselves to either ignore or mask the hideous inequalities and injustices that make Dhaka one of the most dangerous cities for girls and women to live in.

Tales of global-media-mogul Harvey Weinstein's decades of sexual abuse of women in Hollywood have been unravelling over the last few weeks.

In a world dominated by ruthless battles for corporate supremacy, it is the intellectual right or ownership of a product that mostly emerges as the deciding factor. In an age of open market economy, free trade and corporate globalisation, multinational companies are legitimising their control over all the vital resources and knowledge.

Eradicating modern slavery in a country marred by entrenched poverty is no easy task, especially when the majority of it occurs in the private economy—in our private homes and private businesses.

Our society has quantified the education process so enthusiastically that we have forgotten to consider the risks of the regressive models of rote memorisation and lack of conceptualisa-tion across almost all subjects being taught at public schools.

Not so long ago, I wrote a piece about the misconceptions and cultural othering that madrasa students are subjected to and why it is important to accept diversity. After it was published, there were mixed reactions.

This is the moment in history when Bangladeshi medical science marked a milestone by successfully completing the remarkable surgery separating the ten-month-old pygopagus twins Tofa and Tahura. Twenty-four doctors spent nine hours inside an operating theatre operating on the spine of the twins.

Maybe 15-year-old Rima will not be seen as a child by some, given the ambiguity that surrounds the legal age of consent. Maybe her suicide, after being accused of immoral behaviour, will not be seen as a crime perpetuated by society but rather something she did to herself.

Recently, I came across a friend's Facebook status that read: “The rain is supposed to bring forth life from land, and comfort our stressful minds. Not flood our cities and villages, nor wash away homes and livelihood.

On July 30, a father in Narayanganj burned his nine-month-old female infant alive since he “wanted a son” and was enraged at the birth of a girl (“Father 'wanted son', burns baby girl alive”, The Daily Star, August 4, 2017).

In this era of information and communication technology, “data” has become the new gold rush for both state actors (governments, law enforcement agencies, intelligence, etc.) and non-state actors (corporations, multinational companies, individual hackers or hacker groups, terrorist organisations, etc.).