The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered debates between economists and health specialists. I found myself engaged in a conversation with my childhood friend Imtiaz Husain Chowdhry, MD, who is a physician in the USA with a successful practice and long career behind him.

During his regular stroll in the palace garden, Emperor Akbar once saw many crows flying around. He asked his minister, “How many crows are there in our kingdom, Birbal?”

“Don’t worry, I’m safe where I am now!” The scamster had thus assured his wife after multiple fraudulent acts committed by him were exposed by the media, and he found himself a wanted man under the law—the law that he has been violating with reckless abandon as a pretender claiming an ambidextrous competence.

The adverse impacts of human induced climate change are already occurring around the world, including in Bangladesh.

In the last four months, the country has been swept up in the shadowy spectre of the coronavirus, snuffing the life out of our near and dear ones before their time. Lockdowns, sanitisers, face masks and social distancing have dominated public discourses of late.

Management of medical waste has remained a persistent problem for Bangladesh. Proper disposal of these wastes—general, infectious, hazardous, radioactive, and often containing pathogens—has never seemed to be taken seriously by the authorities, resulting in rampant mishandling by all concerned.

In mid-June, the IMF in a country focus report on Bangladesh said that the economic impact of Covid-19 has most notably been felt in three main areas: a fall in remittances; a decline in RMG exports; and a drop in domestic economic activities.

Bangladesh has made remarkable growth in agriculture since independence.

The past two decades have seen the onward march of the corporate social responsibility agenda in the global apparel industry.

It’s mind-boggling to think of a situation where there is an urgency, poor people are in dire need, and money is in the hands of the government allocated to help those in need, but the money is not being distributed properly.

The coronavirus crisis posed serious threats to the global stock markets.

Not long ago, I was watching a webinar on the plight of returning migrant workers streamed live on Facebook by The Daily Star.

Monday July 6 proved to arrive with ominous news for international students studying in the US, some of them still in the US, others back home for the summer as well as those who were scheduled to start university this fall.

The government of the United Kingdom has had a very cordial relationship with Bangladesh since our independence and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has been a significant bilateral development partner for many years.

Mass movements are characterised by a euphoric tempo. Thus, it was understandable when on June 7 “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) demonstrators in Bristol brought down and defaced the statue that commemorated 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston. Perplexing though was the inclusion of the statue of Baden-Powell, the founder of the worldwide Scout Movement, in their “Topple the Racists” list of sixty statues.

Three months after most of the major global markets of Bangladeshi garments entered a lockdown period and closed many of their shops, we are beginning to get a better picture of how the industry might look as we move beyond Covid-19.

No pandemic has had such severe global impact, both in terms of its global reach and the related consequences, as has Covid-19. Records show that major pandemics have occurred at a hundred year interval, if we consider the last half the millennium, e.g., the cholera epidemic which originated in India and spread up to China by 1920, lasted seven years.

The ongoing economic recession due to coronavirus pandemic has created opportunities for countries to replace the standard growth path with the green growth.

At the beginning of this year, policymakers in many countries, including the US and the EU, decided to lock down the entire country in order to save lives and to push back Covid-19.

Let’s admit it: our education today is in crisis. And it was in crisis even before the pandemic was here. The pandemic has exposed the skeletons we have been hiding in the open for a long time.