Here is a big question — has there been a single person that you have found who has reason to cheer the recent renaming of the airport?
Farewell to ZIA
The birthplace of microcredit contemplates mobile money
Could new technologies in Bangladesh enable formal financial services to reach two-thirds of adults by 2020?
Conditions in Bangladesh offer scope for some optimism. Famous for high population density, Bangladesh may be able to deliver a larger volume of financial flows over a relatively smaller distribution network; possibly making the business case more tenable. The demand for remittance services is likely to be high. There are large numbers of Bangladeshis remitting from overseas. There are plenty of internal migrant laborers needing to send money home – well illustrated by the the ubiquitous rickshaw drivers of Bangladesh’s capital, as one example. Other countries, notably Kenya, have seen branchless banking surge because of domestic money transfers.
Isolated case indeed
- By Tanim Ahmed via BDnews24.com
The home minister was right. Abu Bakar Siddique was indeed a stray incident, ‘isolated’ as Sahara Khatun termed it after a meeting with the law and foreign ministers on Feb 4. Although she did not say so, the other case of Faruk Hossain, a final year mathematics student of Rajshahi University, could also have been written off in the same fashion. Of course, like any other previous administration, the government reacted much differently since Faruk was not just another student. He was, after all, an activist of the ruling party’s student wing. He was another isolated case nonetheless.
Both Abu and Faruk were not supposed to end up where they were killed in the first place. They were supposed to be somewhere in rural Tangail or Joypurhat weeding a paddy field or engaged in some such menial labour desperately trying to eke out a living. They were supposed to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers and go into subsistence farming. Not that there is anything wrong with that. After all it is the 25 million small, marginal and landless farmers that virtually provide the lifeline of the economy besides employing about half the labour force. Unfortunately, both the young men had defied forbidding circumstances to find their way into university hoping for a better future that what small scale farming might have offered.
Read more…
The charm offensive
Zafar Sobhan
Anti-Indianism has been the mother’s milk of Bangladeshi politics ever since the BNP decided to make it the cornerstone of the party’s electoral appeal to the country in the 1970s.
With explicitly or implicitly anti-Indian governments in control of the national narrative for almost all of the time since, this alignment has had a devastating impact on Bangladesh’s political and social evolution.
Politically, it has made any rapprochement with India very difficult, even for governments who felt that better bilateral relations were in the national interest. The India card was always there to ensure that there would be a high electoral price to pay for such diplomatic heresy.
This tilt has disfigured Bangladesh’s domestic politics for the past 35 years and poisoned our relationship with the rest of the world. It is for this reason that fixing our relationship with India is in Bangladesh’s best interests and must be a top policy priority.
Thus, Sheikh Hasina has made the country’s India policy the centre-piece of her government’s policy agenda. She has done what no Bangladeshi prime minister has ever done before: put herself at immense political and personal risk to address India’s legitimate security concerns.
The big 1 year poll
The big 1 year poll is out. Before we get to analyse it, here is the link to it.
Update: DS poll shows similar results
To actually see the graphs, see the eprothomalo version here
ক্রসফায়ার’ ও দলীয়করণ নিয়ে নেতিবাচক প্রতিক্রিয়া
মোটামুটি সঠিক পথে সরকার
আওয়ামী লীগের নেতৃত্বাধীন মহাজোট সরকার প্রথম এক বছর মোটামুটি সঠিক পথেই দেশকে পরিচালিত করেছে। কৃষিতে সরকারের উদ্যোগ প্রশংসনীয়, এক বছরে আইনশৃঙ্খলা পরিস্থিতির উন্নতি ঘটেছে, কর্মসংস্থান পরিস্থিতি ভালো হয়েছে এবং শিক্ষা খাত সংস্কারে সরকারের নেওয়া পদক্ষেপগুলো ছিল প্রশংসনীয়। বঙ্গবন্ধু হত্যাকাণ্ডের বিচারকেও স্বাগত জানিয়েছে দেশবাসী।
তবে সমালোচনা এসেছে বিচারবহির্ভূত হত্যাকাণ্ড বা ক্রসফায়ার নিয়ে। গত এক বছরে দ্রব্যমূল্য নিয়ন্ত্রণে সরকারের নেওয়া পদক্ষেপ সম্পর্কেও রয়েছে মিশ্র প্রতিক্রিয়া। সমালোচনা এসেছে দলীয়করণ নিয়ে এবং তা… বিস্তারিত
জনমনে সরকার ও বিরোধী দল: এক বছরের মূল্যায়ন
The Verdict – part 2- Live Blogging – Nov 19th
Tune in below to participate in the discussion as a commenter, as the verdict announcement of the appeal hearing of the Supreme Court takes place.
My Chiggy Wiggy
Hey readers, the last entry was quite a hit. So here goes another one. Do not mean to moan and groan like rest of the gariwalas in Dhaka. I just want to document some of the things that I do here so that you get a glimpse of Dhaka life.
The day started dealing with the mistiri (workman). Oh, what precious little creations of the world mistiris are. They don’t change no matter which part of the world you live. ’Tomar to Attai ashar kotha chilo, nota baje, kothai tumi?” ”Sir, amar jor. ” After three days of dilly dallying the mistiri’s “gari chole na” excuse. By the way, this is a very common excuse in Bangladesh and not just prevalent among the mistiri class.
” I have fever. I can’t come for 9 days”, I got a text a few days ago from a co-worker. Precisely 9 days, he said. If I was a snoopy boss, I would have called and checked if he had a foreign tone in his mobile. He was so sick that he couldn’t come to the office, couldn’t answer his emails but there he was happily on facebook posting ‘I wanna Chigi Wigi’ with you’ by Kylie with Akshay. Fair enough Chigi man, how about my deadline? Why are you chigi wiging with it to screw me? A friend calls in, “Get used to it, dude. I can write a mohakabbo on the excuses that I get.”
