The second April of the pandemic is here, and it seems we are back to square one. Just as most institutions were planning to reopen (all of them intending to exercise proper health guidelines, one hopes) after having lost a year to the Covid-19 pandemic,

For this year’s World Health Day, the World Health Organization wanted to highlight the importance of building a fairer and healthier world. In terms of fairness, how do you rate our healthcare system? And when it comes to ensuring a healthy population, how would you rate its performance?

As I settle down to pen this write-up, the incessant calls and messages on my phone serve as a poignant reminder of how our lives have been reshaped and defaced by the Covid-19 pandemic. In response,

This World Health Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) is highlighting the opportunity we have to build a fairer and healthier post-Covid-19 world. For well over a year now,

One of the existential challenges facing the free world today is its disunity over emerging technologies. Divergence between the United States and the European Union in this area has helped China and other autocratic regimes as they forge ahead with developing new tools and establishing rules and norms that will guide many aspects of our lives,

March, the month we just passed, is a very important month for the Bengali nation. Especially, in the year 2021, the significance of the month of March has reached extraordinary levels in the national and historic perspective.

That gross domestic product (GDP) is not a fully satisfying measure of a country’s progress is no longer news. The awareness of GDP’s inadequacies in revealing a nation’s state of development is now almost mainstream.

The lack of representation of marginalised groups in the corridors of power—political, financial, and cultural—is a growing source of global concern.

On March 23, nearly two weeks ago, I tested positive for Covid-19. My symptoms are random and sporadic: dry coughs, intense fever, headaches, and a loss of appetite.

Sometimes an industry needs a helping hand. It happened in many countries, at different junctures of history.

After about a year, since March 2020, Bangladesh has now gone into a second lockdown in view of the worsening Covid-19 situation.

The latest crisis surrounding the Suez Canal appears to have come to a favourable resolution, avoiding a full-blown disaster. The world was watching with bated breath for almost 10 days, as the Suez Canal drama was playing out last week.

Barapukuria underground coal mine in Dinajpur district is the only coal mine in Bangladesh. The coal deposit was discovered at shallow and mineable depth in 1985 by the Bangladesh Geological Survey.

The streets and squares of different towns and cities including those of Rajshahi, Sylhet, Chattogram and Brahmanbaria have witnessed outbreak of wanton violence and mayhem over the last week or so.

"April is the cruellest month”, so said the poet TS Eliot in his 1920s poem, the Wasteland. The April Spring meetings of the IMF/World Bank will be held virtually this year, locked down by the pandemic that is raging into its third wave worldwide.

At this time of celebrating the 50th anniversary of our independence, it is also necessary to think deeply about our success in eliminating the social and political injustices that existed in our country during the pre-independence period.

In 2020, climate disasters overstrained Bangladesh. First, the cyclone Amphan with winds up to 150 kmph crossed 26 districts from South to North on May 20.

A recent report in the Wall Street Journal observes that Bangladesh’s economic growth, while stellar of late, lags behind that of much faster growing economies like Cambodia and Vietnam.

Covid-19 is back and it is back with a vengeance, as if to puncture the false confidence we were assuming about the antidotes.

BRAC’s journey is almost as long as Bangladesh’s. It celebrated the 49 years of its founding on March 21, 2021. As a development worker and women’s rights activist,