Over time, history has witnessed several industrial “revolutions”. The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanise production.

Whether it’s a place to do business, study, shop, keep in touch, find a partner, or sustain a lifeline to family and friends, we did not need a pandemic to show us why the internet matters.

The lockdown and subsequent restrictions triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in decreased mobility for almost everyone across the globe.

Like the previous years, we are celebrating our 31st Anniversary with yet another colourful, well-illustrated 200 - page special supplement in five segments.

“Graduation” has become a Bangladeshi buzzword. Journalists, scholars, and technocrats were working on that term even before November 24, 2021. On that day, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly green-signalled a possible exit from the “least developed country” (LDC) to join the “developing” list from 2026.

Analytically speaking, if economic growth is to be inclusive, it must fulfil three mutually synergetic criteria: it must be sustained and pro-poor; it must ensure equity in resource availability, access to basic social services and income distribution; and it must be accompanied by productive employment.

The future looks bright for Bangladesh’s RMG sector after a period of profound uncertainty due to the global pandemic. The latest apparel export figures show that, despite the coronavirus pandemic and global lockdowns in key markets, Bangladesh set a new record for apparel exports in the 2021 calendar year.

The onset of the Coronavirus pandemic at the beginning of the year 2020 has affected human civilisation like no other since the Spanish Flu pandemic exactly a hundred years ago.

Bangladesh is gearing up for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). Hardly a day goes by when a national political leader or a prominent civil society stalwart does not bring up the issues relating to 4IR in the national media. One could even say that 4IR is the new buzzword for the country.

Bangladesh has transformed from a war-ravaged, resource-starved and acutely poverty-stricken least developed country (LDC) at independence in 1971, into a low middle income country by 2015.

In the post-independence period, Bangladesh’s number one problem was population growth.

After independence, the agriculture sector was Bangladesh’s main economic driving force. Its contribution to GDP was around 60 percent.

While most economies around the world today are suffering from an economic crisis due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow by 6.4 percent in the 2021-22 fiscal year (FY), according to the World Bank.

In 1960, China’s GDP per capita was USD 89.52. Until about the mid-1990s, China was a low-income country, with a per capita income of USD 317 in 1990.

At the peak of the pandemic in 2020, Japan-based Hitachi launched an IoT application-based airCloud Pro device which could manage large cooling and heating systems remotely.

Research is like the cygnet: it grows and transforms with power and beauty. It represents endurance, elegance, promise and joy! (Adapted from a quote on a consumer product)

The United Nations has called it the “longest disruption to education in history” worldwide. In Bangladesh, schools remained closed non-stop for 543 days from March 17, 2020 to September 11, 2021.