On October 13, the Women and Children Repression Prevention (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 was passed making some changes to our central law on violence against women and children.

The scandal involving Prashanta Kumar Halder, also known as PK Halder, a former managing director of NRB Global Bank, Reliance Finance and other companies, has been in the national news for almost a decade.

Sexual violence against women, unfortunately, has always been a pressing concern for our society.

One of my favourite quotes goes something like this: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them without doing anything.” The quote is by Albert Einstein and was made with reference to how easy it is for tyrannical leaders to take power and wreak havoc.

Over the last five decades, our economic performance has been impressive, despite various limitations such as resource constraints and weak governance.

You have near perfect vision, or 20/20 vision, if you can see the letters of an eye-chart from a 20 feet distance. 20/20 is an exciting cricket game if you can add two ounces of cricket with one ounce of baseball and garnish it with pom-poms.

The historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change, agreed at the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, France in 2015, was a major outcome that all vulnerable developing countries, including Bangladesh, strongly fought for.

They were once the residents of Rakhine state. Then they became victims of persecution. Then they turned into refugees, desperately crossing the Naf river to seek refuge in Bangladesh.

By now, many people have already watched the video. Others could only stomach the transcript, also shared on social media.

My readers must have by now become sick of hearing about the big loan defaulters in Bangladesh and the scandals involving the Farmer’s Bank (now Padma Bank), BASIC Bank, Sonali/Hallmark, Janata, Prime, and a motley of other shady characters including some leading industrialists of the country.

How many times have we heard government officials and ruling party members mention that this government has a zero-tolerance policy for corruption? The answer is many, of course—that was a rhetorical question. Then why is it that corruption seems to be skyrocketing? That’s the real question.

What does it mean to be nonviolent in a world full of horror and chaos, not to mention weapons and instruments of every kind created to inflict pain?

In last week’s column, I proposed that the Bangladesh National Adaptation Plan (NAP) that is now being developed should be innovative and not just a business-as-usual (BAU) report that will gather dust on a shelf, as many such plans have done in the past.

The novel coronavirus started to expand into all corners of the globe from the very beginning of this calendar year, as the whole wide world watched the silent spread of the contagion from those affected in Wuhan, China—the origin of the scourge—and then from returning nationals in various parts of the world.

Some indicators of the Bangladesh economy have started to show positive signs in the recent period. Among those are remittances and exports of readymade garments (RMG), which were affected hugely since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Bangladesh in March 2020.

A new study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggests that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic will be deep and long-lasting.

The world today is grappling with an unprecedented crisis. More than 900,000 people have already fallen to the scythe of the grim reaper and more are feared to become its victim as winter approaches.

In the columns of this newspaper, an erudite professor highlighted the need to “at least start a dialogue” on reforming the police.

As the old joke has it, there is no lid in the mouth of hell where the Bengalis are kept.

Stories of corruption no longer produce the same shock they once did.