Badiuzzaman Bay

Catherine Masud is an American-born filmmaker and road safety activist. Until her late husband-director Tareque Masud’s death in a road crash in 2011, they worked together to produce numerous award-winning documentaries and features.

My deleted sentences are like the children I never had.

You see them every day. Clad in sarees or some other cheap, gaudy outfits, walking in groups along busy thoroughfares, in less affluent neighbourhoods, and marketplaces.

It’s been 10 days since Jahangirnagar University went into lockdown after the activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League attacked protesters demanding the

A small, upmarket café housed in what may seem to be a refitted basement is the setting for my interview with Martin Kämpchen, the German author, Tagore translator and journalist.

Mark Twain once famously said that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth’s ability to outperform fiction is limitless, not just in terms of strangeness, but also in the most outrageous, disgusting and horrifying way conceivable.

To say that Chhatra League is in crisis presupposes that Chhatra League, too, can be reduced to facing a crisis, a fact that would have been unthinkable even a few weeks ago.

Seeking clarity amidst chaos is something that most human beings do. But seeking chaos amidst clarity is a prerogative of the politicians.

This year’s World Teachers’ Day celebrates teachers with the theme “Young Teachers: The Future of the Profession”. How bright is the future of the profession in a country plagued by a dysfunctional education system, where teachers no longer enjoy the formidable reputation they once did? What went wrong?

An interesting debate has been swirling around the future trajectory of tourism in Bangladesh after two of its top officials were locked in a public duel of sorts over the legalisation of casino gambling.

First of all, this demonstrates the extent to which politicians can go to exploit an issue and the devastating effect that it may have. After the release of the final NRC in Assam, the number of the excluded came down to 1.9 million (an earlier list had excluded about 4 million).

Does the outpouring of anger and grief after some of the high-profile rape crimes in recent months signal a social awakening?

Twenty-eight years is a long time to wait. It takes a lot of sitting, sweating and soul-searching to do to get through it, a lot of courage to start again once it’s over, and a lot of catching up to do as a new phase begins under a different sky and far different circumstances.

Like all things bad and ugly in Bangladesh, the latest offensive against our sanity is playing out in a wearily predictable fashion.

As of July 23, seven people died and at least 35 were injured in mob beatings sparked off by a rumour about human heads being collected—yes, you heard it right—for the construction of Padma Bridge, the dream project of the Awami League government.

On April 17, 1971, in the midst of a genocidal operation by the Pakistani forces, a quiet voice of sanity reminded the world what was at stake, and went on to lay the groundwork for an independent Bangladesh.

Of all the dysfunctions that plague life in Bangladesh today, none is perhaps more pernicious than the transport sector. Just consider the fact that an average of 20 lives is lost to road accidents every day.

The 2019 Indian general election, which will have its third round of polling today, is proving to be as challenging as predicted.

We launched the quota movement on February 17. It lasted for nearly eight months, until October 4 when the public administration ministry issued a circular officially scrapping the quota system.

The Ministry of Primary and Mass Education has recently decided to discontinue exams at grades 1-3, which means students of those classes will no longer have to sit for formal exams. How do you see this development?