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Road to freedom: emergency a ‘constitutional’ stumbling block
THE gorgeous balloon of the military-driven unelected government of a few apolitical individuals has burst, and that too publicly. It came on January 11, 2007 with a bang, claiming loudly that it would bring in positive changes in politics, dynamism in the pace of economic development, fairness in the justice delivery system, transparency and accountability in the public administration, and what not... [ + ]
Road to progress
LIKE many other problems, education has been and still is characteristically political. It is the power relationship operating within the state that decides the kind of education to be given to the citizens together with the ideology that education should be obliged to inculcate... [ + ]
Road to curing terrorism is educational and doctrinal
JAMAT Ali is a retired public relations officer of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and currently subeditor of an English-language daily. He had a unique experience which he related to me... [ + ]
Bipun babu and his Bangladesh
SOME names always return, decrepit and used but ever ready to tell the same stories to my old ears and to anyone else who might want to hear. In that war year called 1971, when every life was weaving tales, some tall and some black dripping with rain or blood, some just sat and drank the cheap liquor that Dhaka still sold to citizens in amber bottles marked with drug dose labels. Bipin babu was one of them. He lived, a late middle-aged Hindu in Dilu Road, where our extended family had homes. My uncles had a sign painting business and Bipin babu along with several other Hindu painters worked in it, some lived nearby too... [ + ]
Yes, ‘we’ can: reflecting on the future positively in negative times
IT’S been almost two years that Bangladesh is ruled by a bizarre type of government known as ‘caretaker’. Even the constitutional status of the present government is beyond the provisions that are available for the caretakers to rule. It was possible because it is the result of a military coup internationally supported by development partners and domestically backed up and glorified by a section of ‘civil society’ with strong endorsement from a section of the
media... [ + ]
Seeing, remembering, letting go
IT WAS 2002. A small piece of news caught my eye in the dusty files of news clips at the Karachi office of the Dawn. It was exactly 30 years ago, in fact, in March 1972, Pakistan’s Morning News ran a story titled ‘To see the surrender film or not to?’ It centres on a controversy over the telecast of a short but historic event – the Pakistan army’s surrender in Dhaka... [ + ]
Is your liberation
also mine?
‘No, I don’t want to remember ’71,’ she blurted. It had sounded like a half-cry. I did not ask my friend why she wanted to forget, there was a fraction of a pause, I rushed on, ‘But I can’t. I don’t want to. I live by ’71. It gives me strength. It gives me a sense of direction’... [ + ]
A lesser link in the hierarchy of grief
I WAS recently speaking to a friend about the hierarchy of grief while talking about personal losses we faced in the 1971 war. Mothers lost their sons, wives lost their husbands, daughters lost their fathers, sisters lost their brothers. The entire nation empathised with this collective grief. Later, some spoke and wrote about their unbearable loss, some accepted posthumous awards on behalf of their heroic dear ones, others were called to speak at meetings and anniversaries... [ + ]
The road that can be taken for growth
THE monsoon of political manifestos pours down with wish-lists. There is little on the strategic direction for recovering the economic sloth that crept up over the last two years which might be exacerbated by the global economic downturn, and for steering towards economic expansion, allowing the transition from a low-income country to a middle-income one... [ + ]
Lawless laws and road to emergency
IN DECEMBER 2008 it is perhaps still too early to assess how the emergency imposed in Bangladesh in January 2007 will be defined in the future. For, one thing, the future lasts too long... [ + ]
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Road to freedom: emergency a ‘constitutional’ stumbling block