There are iconic pictures that sometimes capture an age, define a moment in history, exemplify beauty, tragedy, or joy, in ways otherwise impossible to evoke. Who can forget the naked, screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm attack on her village in 1972; the Chinese man standing in lonely defiance in front of a column of tanks at the Tiananmen Square in 1989; the Times Square kiss; or the raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima, heralding the end of WWII?

A politician for nearly four decades, Hasan Uddin Sarkar, the opposition candidate in the Gazipur mayoral election, is well aware of the odds against him.

USD 66,600 or approximately Tk 56 lakh—that is the difference between the yearly salary of the highest graded women cricketers of India and Bangladesh. Indian cricketers receive a daily payment, for their participation in domestic cricket, of Rs 12,500. Bangladesh's cricketers, on the other hand, get paid Tk 600 as match allowance in domestic leagues. That is basically what cricketers who aren't in the national contract play for.

The idea of the universal pension scheme is new, but it's just a good idea. With our bureaucratic inefficiency, it's highly unlikely that we would be able to make headway in this regard in the near future.

Syed Manzoorul Islam, retired professor of Dhaka University, who is currently teaching at ULAB and is a member of the board of trustees at Transparency International Bangladesh, talks to Eresh Omar Jamal about the latest proposed budgetary allocation to the education sector and its underlying implications.

Since August last year, the world has witnessed how hundreds of thousands of desperate Rohingyas have fled across the border into Bangladesh, bringing with them tales of unimaginable horror.

A ghost is haunting the global capitalist elites—the ghost of Karl Marx.

This was Samayeen Cooper's maiden visit to the country of his grandparents, from his mother's side. He quickly glanced at his watch: 5:37 PM local time, December 14, 2044!

“Why don't you tell the truth?

Cultural heritage refers to the traditions, values, beliefs, and sense of belonging in a community. It's the shared bond that helps shape our identity. It's the material things, and the tangible and intangible both.

The nature of filmmaking in the 1930s and '40s was quite interesting. It was a time when movies in the Indian subcontinent were entirely dependent on music. A single feature length super hit movie sometimes contained even 60 to 70 songs.

Did Maulana Bhashani—the famous Red Maulana—ever read Marx? I recently asked this question to a prominent biographer of Bhashani—Syed Abul Maksud. His answer was, “Probably not.”

No I am not talking about my encounter with the ghost of Karl Marx in Bangladesh. If you are interested in such stories you should read Howard Zinn's Marx in Soho or Sumonto Bandyopadhyay's Bhuture Molakat (Ghostly Encounter)—two hilarious and, at the same time, intellectually erudite accounts of meeting the ghost of Marx in New York and Kolkata, respectively. Rather, what I am going to narrate here is

It is hardly a new phenomenon to see how governments, especially in South Asia, claiming to be democratic to suit their convenience, become anything but that when it comes to dissenting views. Curbing press freedom, in particular, will always become the target for governments that have succumbed to insecurities of their own creation. Corruption of leaders or their cronies seems to be the topmost reason for state paranoia of the media which is seen as a thorn in the flesh rather than an essential component of democratic maturity.

That's the title of a book published in 2005, by an Indian writer who has dedicated her life to fighting for labour rights and women's

Armen Arslanian, warden of the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection in Armanitola, talks to The Daily Star about the importance of preserving and researching the history of the Armenian community in Dhaka and how it was linked to a broader global community

The student protests that swept the country weeks ago were not just about the quota system in public jobs. As a whole, they should be interpreted as a major symptom of a much more complex disease: soaring youth unemployment that can have serious implications for the country's future.

The suggestion of the parliamentary public administration standing committee members for a “logical reform” to the existing quota system in the civil service system should be considered as a positive step towards the resolution of the ongoing debate on the quota system.

This Garment Sramik Sanghati slogan is a response to Rana Plaza—a death trap for 1,135 workers, and many more injured and disabled. A tragedy caused by a corporate violation of rules, neglect of responsibility in a global chain that starts in the villages of Bangladesh and reaches the world's capitals.

Now that the dust has temporarily settled from the recent agitation for reform of the quota system in government jobs, it is time to calmly reflect on the next steps needed to establish a system that is fair and equitable and makes best use of the potential in our youth.