At 2am in a remote village in northern Bangladesh, a mother waits for a phone call from a hundi broker.

Ekushey February (February 21) is a date that reminds the Bangladeshi people of their culture as well as their originary moments.

If the government seeks a time-bound fast-track reform agenda, logistics offers one of the highest-impact starting points.

In layman’s terms, multispecies justice is a lens that enables us to see ourselves as part of the wider natural world and to realise that all networks of violence and destruction might have their roots in extraction-focused, profit-oriented ideas pushed by colonialism and capitalism.

The newly elected BNP representatives’ refusal to take the oath as members of the Constitution Reform Assembly (CRA) on February 17 prevented what might have been a more meaningful new beginning for both the party and the country.

Through the general election on February 12, Bangladesh has entered a new political reality.

A landslide victory often feels like a coronation. Streets erupt, social media lights up, and the mandate seems unassailable.

Bangladesh has just staged a rare democratic exercise: a parliamentary election and a referendum on constitutional reform on the same day.

What a new government chooses to fund, plan for, or ignore in its first months reveals its level of priority or seriousness about its commitments to the people.

The overwhelming support of voters received by the BNP thrusts upon the new government a special responsibility and a challenge to meet people’s expectations.

On August 5, 2024, we were told that the old order had vanished into the Indian sunrise, and in its place stood a Nobel laureate, handed the impossible task of governing a country that had just been torn apart from within.

Bangladesh passed multiple tests of its democratic credentials through the 13th parliamentary election on February 12.

In its idealised form, an economic system such as capitalism—often known for rewarding productivity, risk-taking, and innovation— is one in which profits follow value creation, competition disciplines excess, and institutions protect exchange.

Imagine a parliament and cabinet with a significant number of competent, capable, and honest women members.

No other South Asian country that has been subjected to reciprocal tariffs has signed such an agreement with the US so far.

The election came after years of severe distrust in the electoral process, questions over legitimacy, and institutional strain, so the poll’s successful conduct has reinforced trust in the process as well as the principle that governments derive authority from the consent of the governed.

Our economy’s overwhelming dependence on garment exports leaves us exposed to global supply chain disruptions, automation threats, trade policy shifts, etc. Tourism offers a useful means of diversification, and it brings foreign currency directly.

Bangladesh remains bound to an analogue collateral regime. Landlessness is not marginal in rural Bangladesh; it is structural.

The interim government’s (IG) disclosure of the assets of advisers on February 10, just days before the scheduled end of its tenure, was not only delayed by 533 days after its commitment to do so, but was also incomplete, flawed, and unfit for purpose.

Large mandates are usually treated as moments of political triumph. In institutional terms, however, they are something else: a change in the conditions under which power operates.