On June 8, South Asia acquired a rare salience at the United Nations after the Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid was elected as the new President of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) for a one-year term beginning in September.

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown major challenges to public policy framing. While responses of the states to the pandemic differed significantly,

In February 2021, Covid-19 numbers started rising again in South Asia with the official daily case counts rising beyond 400,000 in India, 6,000 in Pakistan and 7,500 in Bangladesh, straining their health systems. The massive surge in India soon spilled over across the border into Nepal, leading to “apocalyptic” scenes of overwhelmed hospitals.

As Bangladesh turns 50 this year, the country has much to celebrate. Its human-development progress has been exceptional compared to that of its South Asian neighbours.

The legal protection for secrecy of “nationally important” information and its conflict with the free press constitute a dichotomy that has long been debated around the globe. Although governments are usually granted legal protection to keep certain documents and information undisclosed, guarantees of right to information and press freedom are considered essential to ensure government accountability.

There is a well-grounded belief that irrespective of the state of socio-economic progress, democracy as a form of government has not been able to take firm root in many societies.

The Purbachal Residential Model Town, spanning around 6,227 acres of land, was supposed to have been an extension of Dhaka city—to support its growth momentum and accommodate its ever-growing population.

Whether economic growth has an inherent mechanism to reduce both poverty and inequality has been extensively studied in developed and developing countries.

The development gains and hard-earned productivity of Bangladesh are at risk of being inverted if the 1.5 degree Celsius limit of the Paris Agreement is breached.

It is not easy to defend a cricketer who has kicked the stumps and uprooted them in successive overs in broad daylight, and that too on camera. His status as the world’s number one ODI all-rounder makes that task impossible. And yet, a diagnosis is necessary for even a terminal case.

Ravaged periodically by natural calamities, long dependent on foreign aid and remittances, and a perennial source of refugees and emigrants, Bangladesh was once “a basket case of misery,” as Zia Haider Rahman put it in his great debut novel, In the Light of What We Know.

“We see all governments as obscure and invisible,” said Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher and statesman, in 1605.

As Bangladesh looks forward to its next 50 years, there remain significant human development challenges for the country.

The Southwestern coastal region of Bangladesh has been marked as a critical disaster hotspot.

Bangladesh is under “strict lockdown” for the past many weeks but what is happening under its guise is anybody’s guess.

The subject matter of this write-up is the ranking of the world’s best universities. But I would like to start on a different note, quoting from legendary journalist Foyez Ahmad’s book “Moddhorater Ossharohi” (roughly translated as “Midnight Horseman”).

The increasing influence of China’s activity, particularly in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region, has raised many eyebrows among western nations and members of the Asia-Pacific region itself.

We all knew the global pandemic would change the business world in some way but, until recently, it has been difficult to pinpoint precisely how. For many of us, the past 16 months have been a fight to remain competitive above all else. Indeed, for some, it has been a fight for survival.

The finance minister has recently rejected the survey findings of multiple organisations on the number of “new poor” created due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

My friend Fouzul Kabir Khan’s recent book, “Win: How Public Entrepreneurship Can Transform the Developing World”, has brought back an issue critical to the development discourse in these pandemic times.