Community partnership can minimise learning gaps

While schools are primarily responsible for facilitating schooling activities for the students, there are other factors as well that play crucial roles in ensuring the best learning experiences. Community partnership is one of them.
7 September 2021, 18:00 PM

The politics of mass literacy: Where we stand

On the occasion of International Literacy Day, proclaimed by the United Nations in 1966, there will be pronouncements with much fanfare about the vital role of literacy in national development and the progress that has been made.
7 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Legal empowerment: the missing catalyst for human trafficking victims

When you first read it, it may seem like something scripted for the silver screen: the story of a Bangladeshi woman who is struck by an awful tragedy—her 17-year-old daughter lured away by traffickers and forced to work in a brothel in India.
7 September 2021, 18:00 PM

India and the great power game over Afghanistan

As Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla was wrapping up his talks with senior US officials in Washington on the evolving situation in Afghanistan,
7 September 2021, 18:00 PM

White Man’s Media: A Short History

To be fair, modern media is white men’s invention. Even though the Chinese invented paper and printing, Gutenberg’s type-set printing of papal indulgences and the Bible launched media into the religious, commercial and cultural space, which initiated the Industrial Revolution and imperialism.
5 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Using our climate funds right

When I talk about Bangladesh’s climate change response, I get excited by the thought of three milestones.
5 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Schools are finally reopening, but what’s next?

The government’s decision to open educational institutions is a welcome development. All educational institutions have remained closed since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the promise of online education has failed miserably to deliver.
5 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Column by Mahfuz Anam: Who do our ‘public servants’ serve?

What happened recently in Barishal between a local mayor and an Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) is not the real story. Why it happened is. And in that story is hidden many facets of the crucial issue of the state of our governance.
2 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Abul Mansur and his political wisdom

Abul Mansur Ahmad was a polymath well-known for his work as a writer, journalist, editor, legal expert and politician at the same time. Few others possessed such a diverse set of talents—in that he remains unmatched in contemporary history.
2 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Tackling Covid-19: Are good days waiting for India?

In its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, India achieved two milestones in five days between August 27 and 31 while vaccinating its people. Both relate to a new high in the number of vaccine recipients—1.03 crore doses on August 27, and 1.28 crore on the last day of a month that saw nearly 18 crore doses being administered, up from 13.45 crore in July and 11.97 crore in June.
2 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Escaping the empires’ graveyard

Now that the United States’ destructive 20-year war in Afghanistan has ended, Afghans tremble at the last laugh of the Taliban.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM

What Bangladesh can learn from the reopening of US schools

About 56 million children in 130,000 primary and secondary schools in the United States, including about six million students in 30,000 private schools, are returning to a second school year this autumn under the spell of the pandemic,
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM

The case for a food systems stability board

The Covid-19 pandemic, rising rates of global poverty and inequality, persistent conflict, and the escalating climate and biodiversity crises are shocks and stresses that together contribute to increasing hunger, as well as growing food and nutrition insecurity. To help tackle this urgent problem more effectively, and make the global food system more stable and resilient,
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM

What should be our development strategies during Covid?

Seeing the varying degrees of Covid that the world has experienced over the last one and a half years, we can safely assume that this pandemic is here to stay.
1 September 2021, 18:00 PM

Af-Pak takes on a new meaning with the rise of the Taliban

Recent attacks on Kabul’s international airport by the Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate raise multiple questions, as well as the spectre of paradigm shifts in the drivers and expanding geography of political violence.
31 August 2021, 18:00 PM

Afghanistan faces a grim economic future after Taliban takeover

The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan—that is yesterday’s news. That thousands of distressed Afghans were crowding Kabul Airport to try and escape the country has also become an old fact.
31 August 2021, 18:00 PM

Captain Nawshad: A life of grit, determination and sacrifice

Captain Nawshad Ataul Quaiyum has passed away. The world goes on, you and I go back to work, and perhaps everyone will soon cease to talk about him except occasionally—even the hundreds of passengers he saved back in 2016. Everyone, except his family. But today my heart is heavy, and so I can’t help but write.
31 August 2021, 18:00 PM

Can AI improve our budget implementation scenario?

On July 25 this year, the Prothom Alo English edition published a news item about a bridge being built somewhere on the outskirts of Dhaka that led to nowhere.
31 August 2021, 18:00 PM

Let’s not kill the spirit of journalism

“Safety first. Because let’s face it. If you get injured while covering a protest, your colleagues will come to see you in the hospital, send good wishes to your family, talk about the incident for some days…
30 August 2021, 18:00 PM

Love, peace and freedom: The philosophy of Bangabandhu

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation, spent most of his life in politics outside state power.
30 August 2021, 18:00 PM