Editor's Note

The month began with the on-going floods that threatened to overwhelm the nation and ended with an incident on Dhaka University campus escalating into country-wide agitation that saw, for the first time since the state of emergency was declared, wanton vandalism and destruction of property.

Our lead story, written by contributing editor, Rashida Ahmad, and with exclusive photographs by photo editor, Amirul Rajiv, tries to make some small sense of the violence that paralysed the nation for two days before order was restored.

In fact, this is a month for photo-journalism and our photo feature this month is a little different. Instead of featuring a single photographer, we have put together a spread with photographs from eight photographers from around the country, with their own individual takes on the recent floods. We hope you'll be as moved as we were by their stunning and thought-provoking images.

The other big story of the month was, of course, prices, and renowned chess grandmaster, Niaz Murshed, who is also a trained economist, takes a close look at how price fixing may have played a role and what can be done about it. In addition, we put industrial policy under the microscope, with a piece by Md. Khalequzzaman on coal and one by Ghulam Rahman on garments.

This issue also attempts to focus on various issues relating to education. Rumi Ahmed has a timely piece on student politics, and this is supplemented by Enamul Haque's brief in defence of private universities and Lubna Choudhury's evisceration of the coaching class culture that has so disfigured primary and secondary education in the country.

Moving overseas, we have a piece on Tibet and one looking back on the assassination of Chilean president, Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973. M. Shahid Alam returns with a stunning essay on similarities between how the West viewed China in the 19th century and how it views Islam today.

Finally, as a special feature, this month's issue marks the welcome return of distinguished Daily Star columnist Megasthenes, with a sublime essay on war and military leadership. Megasthenes is well known to Daily Star readers as perhaps the country's most erudite and eloquent pundit, and we are proud to present him to Forum readers this month and hope that this is the start of a long and rewarding friendship.