We live under the constant
darkening of the clouds
Enayetullah Khan
This article is inspired by the attempts of think-tanks to: (a) probe the strategic underpinnings of the centre-right ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s tactical electoral alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami professing an Islamic theocratic state, and also with the Islamic Oikya Jote, a rag-tag platform of 11 madrassah-based religious parties; (b) lay bare the myth of the popular vote-base of all the parties of the latter stripe put together; (c) and critique the evident ‘rise of fundamentalist forces’, as alleged, under the overt and covert abetment-scheme of the forces of the right religious reaction now taking deeper root in the state apparatus and institutions like the academia, the umbrella cultural organisations, and the text-book turntable playing the records of revisionist compositions, cancelling the immediate-past partisan and cultist edition of history...[ + ]
Democratic polity of rights, equity and justice
Time to begin at the beginning
Nurul Kabir
Bangladesh was born out of a series of rights-driven movements — movements for democratic equity and justice. The series began with the language movement in February 1952, demanding equal status for Bangla, alongside Urdu, as one of the state languages of the erstwhile Pakistan. The rest of the series of movements was also dedicated to identical causes: political and economic parity for the people of Pakistan’s eastern wing vis-à-vis those living in the western part of Pakistan, thus ensuring justice for all the citizens irrespective of their racial identity. And this was exactly what the Pakistani rulers of the day were decisively opposed to...[ + ]
Industrial policy over the years
A brief history of rhetoric
Tanim Ahmed
During the early days of the wide-scale nationalisation in 1972, there was a marked divide between the political rhetoric and the actual policy decisions of the government. Even the nationalisation process was riddled with gaping flaws. As a large number of industries were virtually abandoned, due to the mass exodus of non-Bangladeshis, the government assumed responsibility of over 750 establishments. It understandably strained the government resources. Regional management boards were set up for the industries on a temporary basis, later replaced by administrators who often did not have the expertise or education to dispense with such responsibilities...[ + ]
Public health, public governance
A problem of service
delivery or culture?
Afsan Chowdhury
The problem and solution regarding the maladies of public health are both in the sources of governance but one wonders if it’s possible to link the two. As long as the ruling elite fails to find direction that creates space for public services undertaking as well as their natural right to appropriate, every public service sector actions will be diminished as they are doing here. Perhaps it’s failing a little more elaborately here because the rules of engagement between the elites -local, national and international- have not been fully set. Nor have been the rules of collaboration between the original sponsors of our existing governance system who are still critically influential in many sectors including providing quality funding for public health...[ + ]
Across the land, at cross purposes
Syed Badrul Ahsan
Education, you will hear a very large number of people informing you at every opportunity they come by, is the backbone of the nation. They will not tell you that the backbone is in rather bad shape today, that indeed the entire corporeal body of education has been in a state of near collapse for the last so many years. But that ought not to be a matter of surprise or of shock, seeing that the symptoms have been there for all of us to see. When in recent months the University Grants Commission decided that quite a good number of the fifty-plus private universities in the country had fallen foul of the laws and so needed to be closed down, the nation came by one more instance of just how chaotic the circumstances in which education operates these days happen to be...[ + ]
A broader horizon, but a smaller view
Irum Ali Khan
Call them what you want: Generation Now, Gen Yo, the Me Generation, the Djuice Generation, or simply ‘those kids’; the truth is that urban university-educated middle-class youth are on the move. They are creating a new social order, one in which the values that underpinned their parent’s realities are no longer the most influential, and in which the horizon no longer stretches to the finite boundaries of the nation. This is the post-post-independence generation brought up in a culture that is free to define its own identity, no longer constrained by the dominance of another. This is the generation firmly placed within the urban middle class, their parents and grandparents having made the physical and conceptual leap to city life and professional careers. This is the generation that is connected instantaneously to the rest of the frenetically-paced world at the click of a remote control button or a tap of the ‘Enter’ key. This is the generation whose life choices have expanded exponentially in the past decade, even compared to that of their older siblings. This is the generation who is trying to forge an identity — caught between the traditional middle-class Bengali values of their families and the siren call of the increasingly globalised world they live in...[ + ]
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