Counterpoint BD

History’s most captivating chapters are often lived in tranquil drawing rooms or in the kitchen of minorities who refuse to blend in completely. When we examine the 1947 Partition, most stories are about violent fractures and Hindus in thousands fleeing to India due to communal riots. Photo Credit: Shutterstock In a quiet kitchen in Dhanmondi, a third-generation Bangladeshi with West Bengali ancestral roots is cooking one of the cuisine’s most comforting staples: Moshur daal.

Those of us who want to eradicate poverty from our societies should redouble our support for these organizations as they work to change the conditions under which the poor live and suffer. This would allow the poor to unshackle the chains of poverty and build fuller lives for themselves and their progeny. Photo Credit: Shutterstock On June 28, Grameen Bank kicked off a historic two-day conference at the Samajik Convention Center, a spacious, modern facility in Zirabo, Savar.

Rethinking Women’s Political Empowerment in Bangladesh Photo Credit: Shutterstock During the era of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, the 30 reserved seats for women in the Jatiya Sangsad were popularly criticized as “30 sets of ornaments” -- present, yet politically insignificant. Decades later, the number has risen to 50. But has their influence grown in proportion to their numbers, or has symbolism simply been expanded?

Bangladesh’s workers abroad now send home three and a half times what all the world’s donors disburse with no conditions, no consultants, and no debt to repay. It is time to say plainly which model is working. Photo Credit: Shutterstock Deep into a Riyadh night, a Bangladeshi labourer, let us call him Faruk, one of the two and a half million working across the Kingdom, concludes his shift. He returns to his dormitory, taps a mobile application, and transmits 1,500 riyals to Mymensingh.

Sylhet’s Tea Garden Adivasis and the Unbroken Architecture of Colonial Indenture Photo Credit: Shutterstock Thandharana Naidu, 81, has spent her entire life inside Longla Tea Garden in Kulaura, Moulvibazar -- and so did her mother. Her ancestors were brought from Jharkhand and Odisha by British plantation companies in the 1860s to harvest tea leaves for the empire.

The republic that declared itself in 1776 was, at bottom, an argument that human beings could be trusted, through reflection and iteration, to correct themselves. Two and a half centuries on, having stumbled badly and then caught itself, it has just offered fresh evidence for that argument. The experiment is older now, but it is still running. This is not the article I had thought I would be writing for this July 4.

Bangladesh now has the diagnostic tools, the legal framework, and crucially, the public honesty about the scale of the task that previous governments lacked. What it does with that foundation over the next two to three years, not the next two to three months, is the real story still being written.

The ceasefire has created an opportunity. Whether the parties seize it will depend not only on the negotiators in the room but also on political leaders willing to accept outcomes short of their maximalist positions. Transforming that opportunity into lasting peace remains the region's greatest challenge. Photo Credit: Shutterstock The confrontation among Iran, Israel, and the United States marked one of the most dangerous moments in the Middle East since the Cold War.

What started as a protest became politics. What was once dismissed as extreme is now the subject of international summits. The questions Green activists were asking 50 years ago -- how do we live within the limits of this planet, and who pays when we do not -- are still the most important questions today.

A country becomes innovative not when its officials announce innovation, but when its inventors no longer need to beg them for the right to build. Photo Credit: Shutterstock We are the heirs of Jagadish Chandra Bose, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, Qudrat-i-Khuda and Munier Chowdhury. At least that is what we like to tell ourselves.