Meet the poorest president of the world – Jose Mujica, the head of state of Uruguay. He lives in his ‘wife’s farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital Montevideo’. He has spurned the luxurious house reserved for Uruguayan leaders…
HOW Bangladesh has swung into the spotlight of world’s concern! John Kerry calls Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, virtually questioning the integrity and standards of the War Crimes Trials. He enters a plea with her not to go ahead with the…
Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh told senior journalists in Dhaka on Wednesday that “the world’s eye is on Bangladesh … we keep discussing with our strategic partners” (the developing scenario in the country). It is a perfectly meaningful statement couched…
BANGLADESH is having more than its share of martyrs. And, incrementally at that, so we are losing count of them. They are not even entombed, many would have died unnoticed, unsung and as nondescripts. None but their near and dear…
THE curtain has been drawn on the ninth parliament with a ring of finality, if not quite a swan song. The prime minister is to continue in office heading the interim government till the general election and power transition. The…
PAKISTAN-TIME political lexicon contained a blood-hungry slogan: Hum khun se holi khelenge (we will play holi with blood). Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s response was elemental as a champion of democracy. He would say: “We will fight will ballot.” But the walkway…
ARE we any better off after the announcement of proposals and counter recipes by the ruling Awami League and the opposition BNP? Notionally perhaps, but not in reality — as yet. On the contrary, the signs and symptoms are ringing…
It hurts to know that Dhaka city’s liveability ranking is just a notch above Harare’s, the bottom-most city in the latest global habitability reckoning. But things are not all that miserable when you discover Bangladesh’s better standing on the happiness…
IT’S a pity that national election, a festive occasion for the people of Bangladesh, a civilised means for peaceful transfer of power, and a vehicle for expression of popular sovereignty is being approached with unqualified trepidation. At a time when…
INDIAN external affairs minister Salman Khurshid’s welcoming remarks to Bangladesh media delegation around the third week of last month in New Delhi exuded extraordinary warmth towards Bangladesh and its people. He began by saluting the land that produced the famous…
TIMES of India Group’s senior editor, foreign affairs, Indrani Bagchi, literally took the words from our mouths. In an interactive session between a 12-member Bangladesh media delegation and a distinguished panel of interlocutors in the Indian capital on September 17,…
Indian Railways Minister Mallikarjun Kharge has said Bangladesh-India cooperation in railways has been contributing to enhancing people-to-people contact, a mature professional relationship and sharing technology and management practices. He was interacting with a group of Bangladeshi journalists in New Delhi…
Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid has hinted that the constitutional amendment bill on the land boundary agreement with Bangladesh might be placed in the winter session of the Lok Sabha. While meeting with a media delegation from Bangladesh in…
WE are masters in the art of misreading positive signals in politics whenever they glimmer in a corner. Soon they would disappear from the radar, thanks to misinterpretations. Khaleda Zia has apparently settled down to a moderate line. She would…
Those who read Prothom Alo’s takeaway Saturday supplement Chhutir Din-e (on a holiday) of 24 August must have been touched by bus conductor Humayun’s single-handed act of bravery on Chittagong-Dhaka highway. The story goes like this: On 25 July, 32…
MY esteemed colleague in this paper, Executive Editor Syed Badrul Ahsan, wrote on what he terms ‘Sheikh Hasina’s legacy’ in his last Wednesday column. One would have much rather he had phrased it as Hasina governments’ ‘performance’ or ‘scorecard’ spanning…
The spectre of ‘no-fly-zone’, air strikes, carpet bombing and cruise missiles whizzing ashore from the warships stationed in the Mediterranean is rising over Syria. Damascus has ‘crossed the redline,’ according to a US set threshold based on what is touted…
MAJED Sardar, an old Dhaka icon, much revered in that part of the capital city well into the eighties, when asked about his reading of the prevailing political situation, said: “During the British we saw administering (shashan), in Pakistan times…
INVARIABLY, a hartal call has a casual and cruel footnote to it. The armchair bound announcer implores people to put up with the shutdown in greater national interest, imbued with a spirit of sacrifice. What ‘greater interest of the country’…
It is usually said that people after fifty who are away from their ancestral abodes must feel bonded to their roots. This is an innately human pining for the lost or occasionally visited land of one’s own! You might call…
The inevitableis happening: Dynastic lineage is coming on to the frontline of national politics. Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia slipping into their twilight years are looking to their progeny to take up their mantles. But it is hardly swan song…
The US Congress broke into a rapturous standing ovation to Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu’s as he had finished his address to a joint audience of Senate and House of Representatives last year. The applause went on for what seemed like…
Three trends have been watched with concern lately. The first one is the virtual launch of election campaigns by AL and BNP chiefs without having settled their differences over the modalities of the next election. They do not even talk…
ONE would have thought in sequel to AL-backed candidates’ defeats in recent mayoral contests that the ruling Awami League would immerse itself in serious soul-searching. That they have gone in for some introspection cannot be in doubt but judging by…
I know of one classic case of a ‘blessing in disguise’ sending an ill-fated fugitive to a better life in USA, all because he had fisticuffed a traffic policeman. This is how it happened with a youngster, and happens to…
NORMALLY, reactions are calibrated to the level of a contest, and collateral damage to the losing side is by definition supposed to be peripheral. These two rules, however, do not apply to the consequences of Gazipur City Corporation election. A…
KOLKATA daily The Telegraph, in its online edition on June 26, published a report by Charu Shudon Kasturi titled “Delhi does not lose sleep as Khaleda scores.” This piece informs that India is not unduly worried over BNP-backed candidates’ clean…
A Swedish study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface makes one sit up and take note of the strangeness of human nature. Conventionally, one would have thought that audience applause is a recognition of good performance on…
THE city corporation polls have left some carbon footprints. The first among them was the attempted vote buying behind the scenes. This allegedly was done in two ways: Cash passing hands and the glitzy postering far beyond the campaign spending…
WHICH is the elephant in the room? Obviously, ‘the missing of the most important item by most’ i.e. ignoring the vital and paramount agenda of conflict resolution over a nonpartisan poll-time government versus an extended elected interim government. Constitutionally,…
A leopard never changes its stripes. Chameleon, literally a certain species of lizard, however, keeps changing the colour of its skin. The first one is a metaphor for political rigidity and the second of expediency and opportunism. Both are used…
A global social attitudes study has put a badge of dishonour, so to speak, on our lapel. It claims that most racially intolerant populations are in the developing world, with Bangladesh, Jordan and India in the top five. Respondents from…
LEADERS everywhere in the world face difficult choices. They often have to navigate rough waters but a steady hand stewarding the ship coasts home with the best possible harvest. Take for instance, President Barack Obama. Acting commissioner of the Internal…
If it wasn’t for the media playing its role with passion, vigour and commitment, the flow of information about catastrophic human tragedies would have been under-whelming rather than overwhelming. The naturally hyped coverage has served as a scanner on evacuation,…
A Bengali proverb captures the mood of the moment. A disputant tells the judge: “Whichever way your ruling goes, the palm tree is mine.” When the bone of contention is fleshed out to make a meal for one, the other…
What went through every citizen’s mind on Sunday was a living hell unfolding before one’s own eyes. We have seen nothing like this before, let alone experienced it at first hand. Even by the standards of our convulsive history, the…
IT felt like a horror replayed from Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. The film showed seabirds invading Santa Cruz township in California in 1961 leaving the dwellers petrified, utterly helpless and fleeing their abodes to safety. Those who had seen…
AT long last, clouds are clearing over the political horizon. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, in a dramatic move, following the opposition leader’s withdrawal of the May 2 strike in response to her request, has offered a dialogue with the opposition.…
Dhaka is a happening city with slowed down mobility. This is not a contradiction in terms but a reality on the ground. One could almost say, considering the still-photo-like congestive traffic, that in a queer way, it’s an exciting metropolis…
ASK any politician on either side of the aisle, he or she will feign complete ignorance of his or her party having an anchor point — I mean overseas. But in private, they will confide in you that such indeed…
PRIME Minister Sheikh Hasina in her latest interview with BBC Bangladesh correspondent, Ambarasan Ethirajan, came into her elements like she did in Stephen Sackur’s HardTALK encounter on July 30, 2012. She refuses to be cornered by any question, however provocative…
The world’s most celebrated couple, US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, has come under spotlight for a gaffe each of them mouthed out to their audiences. President Obama waxed effusive about Indian-American Kamala Harris, a Democrat top…
Bangladesh’s economic growth is regarded as something of an enigma, a veritable puzzle, by most economists. The conditions of the economy are far from ideal. Sustained political instability over the last two decades, if only worsening with time, and lack…
AN anecdote goes like this: Abraham Lincoln, the legendary US president, when asked by a youngster, why was he so serious-looking that he couldn’t put up a smiling face, the great man replied that he found nothing to smile about.…
When the economy creates a brighter image for Bangladesh, politics destroys it. In a world where primacy of economy is accepted and rooted for, politics usually takes a backseat. Even historically inimical countries do not piggyback on any past baggage,…
NOT quite, I would say. This is because of the life and fight left to Projonmo Chottor’s Gonojagoron even after one and a half months of its sprouting into a phenomenon. The spirit of Shahbagh lives on in some form…
The maxim you know is: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” But given the highly negative and incendiary political gamesmanship being traded between the AL and the BNP, I have turned the dictum around to say something ventured, something lost. For, the…
“Television has raised writing to a new low”, said Samuel Goldwyn, the famous American film producer of late twentieth century. Obviously, as a man connected with films, most probably, he had script writers on his mind. He must have been…
The answer is, yes. We voted for change by massively mandating the AL to govern the country while the BNP found itself in the opposition, thanks largely to its misrule. But what we have got now is insanity all around.…
One time during hartal, I decided to walk from our office back to my residence, some 5km away. The trek easily stands out as one of the most memorable of my experiences on the streets. This is how it opened…
