Naznin Tithi

Monsur Ahmed Chowdhury, Founder Trustee, Impact Foundation Bangladesh, and Member, Executive Board, Disability Council International, talks to The Daily Star’s Naznin Tithi about how to ensure an inclusive environment and society for persons with disabilities.

It is hard to believe that three children still die of pneumonia every hour in Bangladesh, according to a recent Prothom Alo report.

Recently, Dhaka South City Corporation has brought some changes to its waste collection system, unfortunately creating more dissatisfaction among its inhabitants than relief.

Shameran Abed, Senior Director of the Brac Microfinance and Ultra-Poor Graduation programmes, talks to Naznin Tithi of The Daily Star about Bangladesh’s progress in reducing extreme poverty and the challenges ahead, how Brac’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) programme has fundamentally changed how we look at the ultra-poor, the importance of innovation, women as agents of change, and what the Covid-19 crisis has taught us.

I can’t stop thinking about Lovely—the 14-year-old adolescent girl who used to work at our house and became a full-time companion of my four-year-old son. She first came to our house with her aunt in search of a livelihood. Hailing from a disadvantaged family in Mymensingh, Lovely studied till grade IV and then was sent to the city by her parents to earn a living.

Mujahidul Islam Selim, president of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), talks to Naznin Tithi of The Daily Star about the spirit of the 1962 education movement, the current state of our education system, and how commercialising it helps create further inequality in society.

Two years after the countrywide road safety movement, many of us feel a sense of frustration and disappointment as the much-expected changes are yet to occur.

Marina Tabassum, a seasoned architect who won the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the Jameel Prize for designing the Bait Ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka, talks to The Daily Star’s Naznin Tithi about the future of housing in flood-prone and coastal regions as well as the importance of local knowledge for a sustainable solution to housing.

Dr Safiqul Islam, Director, BRAC Education Programme, shares his thoughts with The Daily Star’s Naznin Tithi about the challenges associated with school reopening, ways to recover children’s learning loss over the extended break from school, and BRAC’s education model for this crisis situation. This interview is part of an interview series by The Daily Star that aims to give readers an idea of what changes to expect in a post-Covid-19 world.

Prof. Muzaherul Huq, former adviser, South-East Asia region, World Health Organization (WHO), and founder, Public Health Foundation of Bangladesh, talks to Naznin Tithi of The Daily Star about the way forward in our fight to contain the spread of Covid-19.

The government has decided to keep all educational institutions closed until June 15. Earlier, the PM said that schools might remain closed till September, if the situation did not improve. If schools remain closed for a long period, how will it impact our primary education sector?

For Nasima Begum, a 40-year-old who works as a domestic help in the capital’s Mirpur area, balancing between her paid and unpaid works has become a daily battle ever since she came to Dhaka in search of a livelihood.

It was March, 1948. A 13-year-old girl in a remote village in Cox’s Bazar would often hear her seniors at school talk about the extent of discrimination the people of East Pakistan faced everywhere.

Every morning, as I step out of my home to go to work, I am faced with the same nuisances: the dilapidated road in front of my house which has been like this for as long as I can remember, the piled up garbage here and there, the open manholes spreading obnoxious smells, and the nonchalant vendors selling vegetables (and even fish) taking up half the space of the road.

It is most unfortunate that the situation of the Buriganga could not be improved much even after taking so many steps and projects.

The new transport law has been watered down quite a bit because of opposition from the transport owners and workers. Even so, the workers called a strike recently demanding amendments to the law. How would you evaluate the new law and the workers’ demands...

As I pass the planning commission office in Agargaon on a rickshaw, on a jam-packed road in the evening, I cannot help noticing the big advertisements

On October 24, Abiron Begum’s family members received her dead body in a coffin from the Shahjalal International Airport.

In the aftermath of Abrar Fahad’s murder in a BCL “torture cell” at the Sher-e-Bangla Hall of Buet, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina directed all the educational institutions to look into their student dormitories to find out if there are similar torture cells there as well.

After last year’s countrywide road safety movement, we hoped that there would be some significant changes in our transport sector because of the big promises made by the government. But unfortunately, the government could not keep its promises, and so no substantive changes have been made.