I am almost as old as Bangladesh. While I may not be considered young anymore, my country is still a child. Thirty-nine years is nothing but the age of teething in the life of nations. The country still needs to be handled with care. Before its birth, the people of then East Pakistan had...
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The neon of ZIA finally went off. Speculations buried but the action has spawned enormous demagogy in all type of media formats, as usual. More than BNP had it, it gave our gloriously neutral intellectuals fodder to indulge profusely in munch and muse. The comments discreetly chided Government’s act as meanness, madness or dastardly....
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On June 23, 2009 in the Energy related round table conference at CIRDAP Auditorium, Dhaka, we made several recommendations to confront prevailing and emerging energy crisis. The round table was attended by the Energy Advisor of Prime Minister, current State Minister of Energy, some leading Parliamentarians, current Chairman of Petrobangla, Current and Past FBCCI...
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In most interactions with Kolkata journalists, writers and artists, I have found them to praise Dhaka as the beholder of Bangla language. Going over my signature in Bangla, even a hotel manager in Kolkata tearfully exclaimed: “You Bangladeshis have truly sustained the honor of this language.” And then a senior journalist in the same...
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Was it necessary? – was my first reaction after hearing this news. Awami League-led government has decided to change the name of Zia International Airport to Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport. Sad but true, this cabinet meeting was headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Her press secretary Abul Kalam Azad told reporters, “According...
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The row between the government and the opposition remains repetitive and as time-wasting as Samuel Beckett’s stagnant stage of Waiting for Godot. Nothing changes. People don’t get security or health service from the state; education fails to accommodate a wider generation and police continues to humiliate civil citizens. No political party works towards establishing...
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Bangladesh is possibly the most undemocratically democratic country in the world. Since its emergence, it has been ruled, in total, for 17 years by meta-democratic, often military-led regimes and born-out-of-Cantonment pseudo-democratic parties. Here party councilors do not elect political leaders but they are selected. Political leaders are succeeded by their heirs. They are selected...
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The first day of February, the beginning of the month in which the primary foundations of Bangladesh were launched in the year of 1952. It was the month and the day 21st of that month when our language was salvaged from the new-fangled regime’s foremost oppressive touches. It was the month and that devastating...
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We have been hearing about the glory of Bangladesh student politics since our childhood but unfortunately that struggle has lost all signs of its industrious past. Students’ role in the language movement obviously ranks as historic; the uprisings of ’62, ’66 and ’69 had solid contributions in strengthening the Bengali nation’s pilgrimage towards freedom....
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16th December, 1971 – the milestone of victory of Bangalee, after a brief interlude of couple of years morphed into an epitaph of failure. In the wee hours of the fateful night of 15th August, 1975, all our gains, all the glory, joy and pride of Bangalee abruptly turned into numbness of pain, anguish...
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