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Spotlight

Bangladesh in next 20 years

Syeda Marzia Hoq Kisma

I grew up in a society where women are denied of their fundamental rights. The worst experience in my life is that of my neighbor Shumi (17), who was forced to get married just because her parents were poor and wanted to get rid of her. She had a dream; she wanted to study; but now her life is ruined. She is a mother of three at a very early stage with broken health, bearing the burden of a family like an animal. After three and a half decades we are unable to give a girl what she deserves and provide her with fundamental rights. She is not alone; millions of girls like her have to embrace this fate every year. Bangladesh has one of the highest rates of child mortality and pregnancy related mortality. These are easily avoidable and I want see proper laws in place that will stop child marriage and rights to education respected within ten years from now.

Women still face violence everyday everywhere at homes, in the roads, in workplaces. They face discrimination in getting a job or other amenities. It takes a strong will of people and action taken by the government to bring gender equality. I look forward to seeing a level field for men and women.

As a child I was barred from playing with kids from the slums. I used to ask my father, “why there are so many beggars in the city, why they don't live in a decent place, or why their children do not go to school like us? The answer I got was that they are poor and they don't have work. Someday things will change and they'll have decent living, and their children will go to school. That someday never came; the situation has only worsened. Now I know that every year hundreds and thousands of people lose their crop and habitat due to flood and river erosion. Once they lose their habitat and livelihood, they move to the cities looking for a job and shelter, adding extra pressure to the already over-saturated cities. This leads to the growth of slums, which are shelter for criminals and drug runners. We can easily solve this problem by creating job opportunities in the places where they are coming from.

The traffic problem is getting worse everyday. There seems to be no end to it. I think we need to take drastic measures, undertake economic activities in the rural area that will create employment and motivate people to be relocated.

These are not just dreams. I know these are possible. Visionary leaders like Mr. Lee Kuwan Wee and Dr. Mahathir Mohammad have done it. So why can't we?

(BBA 10th Batch, UODA)

The history of our National Flag

As a student I was always curious about our National Flag. I wanted to know when was the first flag replaced with the new one and who had designed it. From various websites and documents I have compiled the following story for the readers.

The national flag of Bangladesh was a product which first came into the mind of painter Quamrul Hasan. On the 3rd March 1971, ASM Abdur Rab the then VP of Dhaka University Students´ Union had hoisted the first flag of Independent Bangladesh on the Dhaka University premises popularly known as Bat-tala.

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman hoisted the flag of independent Bangladesh at his residence, 32 Dhanmondi R/A on the 23rd March 1971.

It was an unknown Awami League worker who hoisted the first flag of independence at the historical meeting in the Ramna Race-course on 7th March 1971 where Sheikh Mujib had called for armed struggle against Pakistani occupation Army.

For Quamrul Hasan, making and shaping of the flag needed several months to complete. The red circular disc with the map of Bangladesh symbolizes blood of thousands of Bangalis killed by the Pakistanis since 1947. The green backdrop, nevertheless to say, symbolizes the vitality, youthfulness, greenery and of course our land as the agrarian since the pre-Vedic age.

The present flag , quite different from the first one, is bottle green in the background, without the golden- colour map of Bangladesh, rectangular in size in the proportion of length to width 10:6. The red circle has a radius of one-fifth of the length of the flag. Red circle´s centre is placed on the intersecting point of the perpendicular drawn from the nine-twentieth part of the length and the horizontal line drawn through the middle of its width.

The flag of Bangladesh was first hoisted in the UN in September 1974. China used her veto against admission of Bangladesh in the UN in 1972 and repeated in the year 1973. The Bangladesh flag appeared later in the UNs´ stamp series Flag of the member states.

Source: Internet
Compiled by Mainul Hassan