A weekly newspaper offering bold opinion, critical analysis & fresh perspectives. Print every week. Online daily. #CounterpointBD
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A seven-year-old girl reportedly told her family that she had been sexually abused by a senior teacher at her madrasa in Tongi. The accused vice-principal was arrested and sent to jail pending proceedings.
Yet the public controversy appears to have shifted with remarkable speed from the child's allegation to an altogether different injury: A slap allegedly delivered to the teacher by the child's father.
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Should the world surrender to the illusory ideas of these Jesus-like tech giants that the algorithms will know better than human beings to run the world? Should we surrender human intelligence to machine-driven superintelligence? Should consciousness be subjugated by intelligence for technological development, with little regard for human civilization?
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A university classroom is supposed to be a place where ideas are tested, assumptions challenged and disagreements resolved through reason.
In Bangladesh, however, an increasingly troubling question confronts higher education: Can a teacher still teach without fearing that a disagreement may become an allegation, a classroom exchange may become a social media controversy, or an unpopular opinion may invite demands for punishment before an impartial inquiry has taken place?
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Although the Hindu share of the population fell by eight percentage points during the 20 years between 1951 and 1971, it declined by only six percentage points over the following 52 years. And over the 25 years since 2001, it has fallen by just one and a half percentage points.
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Niketan is sometimes called the Hollywood of Dhaka. Home to several agencies, studios, and production houses, it is a world of its own.
At every tea shop, you hear film crew members talking shop like where to find light stands at this hour, an overbearing director, the tardiness of an uncooperative model, feedback from a client who can't seem to make up their mind.
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It would not be unwarranted to say that the run up to the expiry of the GWT is fraught with competing priorities, perceptions and power asymmetry fueled by geopolitical calculations. A certain breathing space will be required for both sides to go through steps to get to an effective negotiating position.
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Bangladesh is a country of extraordinary possibilities. Its people have demonstrated resilience in the face of poverty, natural disasters, political turbulence and economic uncertainty.
Its entrepreneurs, farmers, workers, professionals and young people have repeatedly shown that, when given opportunity, they can achieve remarkable things.
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When you stand up for your citizens you earn respect. It doesn’t close doors, it opens them. If we don’t have respect for ourselves and our own people, how can we expect the rest of the world to?
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A few days ago, a Bangladeshi woman asked me whether she could present another woman, a British citizen, as her partner in order to secure immigration status and eventually a British passport.
I asked what exactly she had in mind. She replied with striking calm: They would live together and everyone would know them as partners. The relationship would exist on paper and in public performance; the intended destination was immigration status.
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Nazrul Islam was 22. Sweety Akhtar was a young woman who just wanted to survive. They were alive on September 30. And the system, from Riyadh to Dhaka to Washington, chose to let them die.
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Somewhere tonight, another Bangladeshi man is finishing a shift he did not choose in a country that does not care to learn his name. What he has left goes to a mother who needs medicine, a sister who needs a wedding, a child who needs school fees. Somewhere tonight, a woman is working in a locked house, her phone in her employer’s hands, counting the days until her contract ends.
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Since the beginning of this decade, the world economy has been subjected to a set of shocks and developments -- a global pandemic followed by major wars causing supply chain disruptions to energy and food markets, as well potentially disruptive technological changes, and realisation of fiscal risks around major economies -- that might have triggered a global recession, if not crisis, by now.
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Almost 20 years ago, Dr. Mohammad Yusuf and I sat down with a team of statisticians to design a voter ID. Nadia Hashemee, an American graduate student researcher working with me at NDI, helped us. Politics was in ferment. We argued over digits: 10 or 12? Someone raised the idea of a national ID. Dr. Yusuf opposed it.
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A historic election was held 18 months after the government's resignation with an electorate of approximately 44% under 35. Yet fewer than 10% of candidates were under the age of 35, and just twelve were elected to parliament.
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Two Bangladeshi citizens have been executed in Saudi Arabia. The public has been told that they engaged in “immoral acts” in a mosque in the Mecca region. What precisely constituted the alleged offence, however, remains unclear in the publicly available account. Whether they received meaningful consular assistance throughout their detention and trial is also unclear.
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When we host a meal at home and there are Hindu friends among the guests, we do not cook beef. This is a matter of simple courtesy.
Our Hindu friends, when they invite us to their homes, make arrangements for us to pray. I have seen that many non-Muslim families in Bangladesh even keep a prayer mat for this purpose.
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