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Articles by Shadique Mahbub Islam
The case for relocating the Secretariat is clear. But why Agargaon?
The case for relocating the Secretariat is clear. But why Agargaon? The proposed relocation raises questions about whether Agargaon is the right site, whether existing government assets are being adequately used, and whether Dhaka can afford to sacrifice another large open space for administrative expansion The existing Secretariat on Abdul Gani Road spans 17.57 acres and comprises 13 buildings, eight of which predate independence.
What 293 zero-pass institutions reveal about Bangladesh’s education system
What 293 zero-pass institutions reveal about Bangladesh’s education system These institutions are not simply bad colleges. They are the end points of weak schooling, child marriage, poverty, teacher shortages, unpaid labour, political management committees and an approval system that counts institutions more readily than learning Only three students from Bagbari Model Women’s College in Bogura sat for this year’s Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examination, and none passed.
Can Bangladesh beat the ageing clock?
Can Bangladesh beat the ageing clock? With only two decades to create productive jobs and build the social protection systems its ageing population will need, the clock is ticking A Bangladeshi child entering primary school in 2026 will probably join the workforce around 2040.
How US politicians weaponised anti-Muslim prejudice in 2026
How US politicians weaponised anti-Muslim prejudice in 2026 The most revealing feature of the 2026 campaign is not that anti-Muslim prejudice survived. It is that leading politicians calculated that they no longer needed to disguise it El-Sayed is framed as an infiltrator whose religious identity creates hidden loyalties and whose election could physically endanger Americans.
How 3 more years can help Bangladesh lay groundwork for smoother graduation
How 3 more years can help Bangladesh lay groundwork for smoother graduation Speaking to TBS, business leaders and economists welcomed the postponement while stressing the work ahead. Representational image. Photo: TBS Bangladesh has secured three more years before graduating from the United Nations' least developed country (LDC) category. For garment exporters, pharmaceutical manufacturers and leading business associations that had repeatedly sought more time, the decision brings relief.
Why the IGP’s ‘crossfire’ remark cannot be dismissed as a metaphor
Why the IGP’s ‘crossfire’ remark cannot be dismissed as a metaphor For a country carrying nearly 3,000 deaths under the term, ‘crossfire’ cannot be an innocent figure of speech.
Raid, record, broadcast: Can police turn its operations into public humiliation rituals?
Raid, record, broadcast: Can police turn its operations into public humiliation rituals? Article 10.12 of the Bangladesh Police Social Media Use Guidelines 2025 prohibits officers from publishing photographs or videos of operations without prior approval On 20 October, police raided a house in Purbachal, detaining 85 people — 59 men and 26 women. The entire operation was recorded, following the detainees through the house. The videos later made it onto the news as well as social media.
As salaries run out in 20 days, people turn to borrowing
As salaries run out in 20 days, people turn to borrowing For many salaried employees in Dhaka, the money runs out almost ten days before the month does. Inflation and rising prices leave them with little or no savings, pushing them into a vicious cycle of borrowing to get by Anas Ahmed works for a private company and earns Tk54,000 a month. He lives with his family and pays Tk20,000 in rent.
How many migrant workers must die before Dhaka speaks up?
How many migrant workers must die before Dhaka speaks up? The execution of two Bangladeshis in Saudi Arabia exposes a system in which Riyadh can deny migrant workers transparency and Dhaka often discovers the consequences when intervention is already impossible Sweety Akhtar last spoke to her father on 13 October. She was calling from a Saudi prison, but mentioned nothing about a death sentence. Earlier, she had told her family that she might be released within two months.
How nighttime heat stress is quietly draining Bangladesh's productivity
Highlights: Nighttime heat stress in Bangladesh is rising three times faster than daytime extremes. Dhaka remains 2.5°C to 5°C hotter than rural areas after midnight. Poor sleep and prolonged heat exposure increase risks of kidney damage and cardiovascular problems. Extreme heat costs informal workers Tk50,630 crore in annual wages. Bangladesh's heatwave warnings overlook nighttime temperatures and humidity-related health risks.
Now Europe is paying the price for failing its youth
A masked protester holds a French flag as French police use water cannons amid clashes during a demonstration on 13 October 2026. Photo: Reuters School gates were blocked in France. Bricks and incendiary devices struck the Education Ministry in Tirana. Café furniture burnt beside Milan's Piazza del Duomo. In Lisbon and Athens, young people answered the housing crisis by pitching tents in public squares and outside parliament.
Giving words to the depressed deaf
At his first PhD workshop with Deaf community members in Bangladesh in 2023, Dr M Tasdik Hasan Dip asked the participants through an interpreter to describe how the interviewees felt. One person turned to the interpreter. "What is he talking about? What is emotion?" Surprised, Dr Dip asked about depression and anxiety, and the room went quiet. The people there had lived with loneliness, exclusion and psychological distress, yet they were never given the signs to name it.
The politics of hating Tagore: How Bangladesh keeps fighting its cultural inheritance
When a group of people claiming to be July activists attempted to smear black ink over a graffiti portrait of Rabindranath Tagore outside Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy in Dhaka's Segunbagicha on 10 October, the incident was about more than an act of vandalism. The woman seen applying the ink described the action as a protest against "Indian aggression", identifying Tagore as Indian and arguing that his image should be removed.
Plans to livestream an execution: Washington adopts the penal practices it once condemned
Plans to livestream an execution: Washington adopts the penal practices it once condemned The Pentagon has decided to livestream the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad.
Hannibal Directive: How Israel sacrificed its own citizens to manufacture consent for the Gaza Genocide
Three years after the cross-border breach of 7 October 2023, the full scale of devastation across the Gaza Strip stands fully exposed as a genocide. What was launched by Israel in the aftermath, under the rhetoric of national vendetta and existential retaliation, has resulted in over 74,000 documented Palestinian deaths, the internal displacement of nearly two million, and the eradication of more than 82% of Gaza's infrastructure.
Why is property ownership a condition for government jobs?
Why is property ownership a condition for government jobs?
How far does a Tk1,000 note go?
A one-thousand-taka note can feel harder to spend than smaller notes, a phenomenon economists call the ‘denomination effect’. But once it is broken, small purchases can make the money disappear almost unnoticed Tasin works at a corporate firm in Bangla Motor. One morning, he stops at an ATM at the metro station and takes out a few crisp Tk500 notes. For a moment, he feels rich. Then the rickshaw puller asks for Tk40. Tasin holds out the Tk500. "Bhangti nai, mama," the man says.
Why learn new skills when the battery rickshaw pays today?
Why learn new skills when the battery rickshaw pays today? It may be tempting to call the use of battery rickshaws technological progress with a positive effect on employment. But a safety valve is not a career Battery-run autorickshaws employ around 1.16 million pullers nationwide, and they need no employer, no training and no factory. Photo: Saqlain Rizve Galib graduated from a degree college in Dhamrai with a plan.
Why Bangladesh’s murder statistics hide more than they reveal
Police measure the number of cases filed, inadvertently excluding the actual number of victims killed, as well as when the murders actually occurred Last August, four members of the same family were murdered in Rangpur. In the police's Crime Statistics for August 2026, their deaths will appear as one murder case, indistinguishable from a single killing. Nothing in the data will reveal that four people died.
Why the state cannot blame Dhaka’s lawlessness on criminals alone
Why the state cannot blame Dhaka’s lawlessness on criminals alone When a regime falls, local power dynamics often simply change hands. The government may insist no formal extortion demand was logged, but in the public mind, extortion and political patronage go hand in hand A damaged section of the Radda MCH-FP Centre in Mirpur-1 following an overnight attack and demolition.
Why can't Bangladesh hold Meta accountable for harming children?
Meta recently agreed to pay up to $18 billion over 10 years to settle a lawsuit in the US which claimed Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed to keep children scrolling, even when that design damaged their mental health. Earlier in August, a New Mexico court separately ordered Meta to pay $942 million, including a $567 million fund addressing harm to young people. But there is a geographic contrast. A teenager in California and a teenager in Cumilla may be under similar risks.
Why isn't Bangladeshi cuisine globally recognised?
Why isn't Bangladeshi cuisine globally recognised? Bangladeshi cuisine has a distinctive geography, history and culinary vocabulary. But unlike Thai, Korean, Japanese and Peruvian cuisines, it is still struggling to build a culinary identity that the world can easily recognise When Kishwar Chowdhury stood before millions of viewers on MasterChef Australia and cooked panta bhat (fermented rice soaked overnight in water), she was doing more than presenting a dish from her childhood.
33 July 2024: Droho Jatra, a girl on a rickshaw, and the regime resumed killing
Protesters gather at Dhaka’s Central Shaheed Minar during the Droho Jatra on 2 August 2024, observed by demonstrators as 33 July. Photo: Rajib Dhar I was stuck in Uttara when the phone rang. The procession had come through after the Jummah prayer, and I was nearby. Armed Awami goons had come out to attack the protesters, and somewhere in the streets of Sector 11, the students had scattered into the alleys. I received a call from a girl whom I had known from the protests.
29 July 2024: The red flag of the movement is reborn
Students and journalists confront a police officer as demonstrations resume across the capital, defying mass arrests and baton charges on 29 July 2024. Photo: Syed Zakir Hossain The morning of 29 July broke with a heavy tension across Dhaka. Helicopters chopped through the humid air, sweeping low over rooftops, whilst army units maintained their patrols through the eerily quiet thoroughfares. But beneath the surface of this enforced calm, the streets were simmering.
22 July 2024: ‘Sheikh Hasina does not flee’
Mosammat Liza was 18. She had come to Dhaka six years earlier, sent by hardship and by her elder brother Rakib, to work as a domestic helper in a Shantinagar apartment. She studied Arabic at an all-female madrasa nearby to become a Hafiza. On the afternoon of 18 July, hearing the din of clashes below, Liza stepped onto the balcony to watch the chase and counter-chase in the street. A bullet found her head. She collapsed where she stood.
20 July 2024: Killings in the dark and light
As the internet blackout restricted communication within Bangladesh, members of the Bangladeshi diaspora became an important source of information and advocacy abroad. Photo: COURTESY “How many bullets does it take to kill a boy, sir?” Sub-Inspector Moynal Hossain of Rajarbagh Police Lines reportedly asked a superior officer after identifying the body of his 17-year-old son, Imam Hossain Taeem, at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.
July Uprising: The siege of BRAC University and the blackout that followed
Two years ago on this day, Dhaka was unrecognisable; its chaos replaced by an eerie stillness. Streets once clogged with traffic now lay empty, wrapped in the spectral quiet of curfew. The air itself seemed to tremble, as if anticipating violence. There was no internet, no WiFi, no television broadcasts to provide factual information. Security forces patrolled the city with heavy firearms. The smell of death and terror hung over it all.
The forever wars in Iran: The harder Washington pulls, the tighter it gets
Satellite imagery shows extensive damage to collapsed structures, debris fields, and visible scorch marks. Photo: Collected.
US-Iran peace deal: Epic Fury’s epic failure?
A ‘Hands off Iran’ placard is held as people attend an anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles, California. Photo: REUTERS The memorandum of understanding that the US and Iran reached on 14 June, brokered by Pakistan and due to be signed in Geneva this Friday, was greeted by President Donald Trump as an “absolute deal”. Read closely, it is something far more modest.
Trump goes to Beijing as Xi holds all the cards
Within Chinese official circles, the acronym TACO has taken hold — ‘Trump Always Chickens Out’. Photo: Reuters When US President Richard Nixon landed in Beijing on 21 February 1972, he carried with him the full weight of American supremacy. Nixon’s handshake with Mao Zedong, which shocked the world, was an act of supreme strategic confidence. America was not approaching a pariah state dangling recognition as a calculated weapon against the Soviet Union.
World War II at 81: The peace built after 1945 no longer feels permanent
On 8 May 1945, the guns fell silent across Europe as victory flags rose over the ruins of Berlin. Photo: Collected Manik Bandopadhyay started his famous novel Chinho with a harrowing tale. It depicted political unrest amid the macabre carnival of a peace built on the ruins of famine-stricken Bengal after the Second World War.
Bangladesh’s fatal lightning strikes are no longer just a ‘natural’ hazard
TBS There was a time when lightning came with storms, they were loud but rarely lethal. Death from lightning strikes was a less recurring phenomenon, but today, it routinely takes lives. In fact, Bangladesh declared it as a natural disaster in 2016 after more than 200 people died in the month of May alone, including 82 people on a single day. This year, Bangladesh has already reported at least 74 deaths, with 14 occurring on 26 April alone.
‘Gupto’: How a word became a potent political weapon
After the election, the word gupto spilled onto the streets. Photo: Collected On 21 April 2026, at Chittagong Government City College, a violent conflict was ignited when Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal (JCD) activists edited campus graffiti that originally read ‘Student Politics and BCL-free Campus’, erasing ‘Student’ and replacing it with ‘Gupto’, meaning covert. This sparked two rounds of clashes between JCD and Islami Chhatra Shibir, leaving at least 10 people injured.
Mob violence returns to the fore: A test of the BNP government’s early promises
A mob vandalises a shrine in Kushtia, where a pir was killed during the attack. Photo: COURTESY When Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed stood before reporters on his first working day in February and declared that “mob culture in Bangladesh ends,” it signalled a clear break from the turbulence of the interim period. Less than two months later, that promise is facing its first serious test.
US-Iran ceasefire: Who really won and what’s next?
“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” When Donald Trump issued this ominous warning the day before, the world paused. Markets froze, diplomats scrambled, and millions waited for what seemed like the brink of Armageddon. It was an unprecedented statement that crossed into the realm of annihilation, of targeting a 6000-year-old civilisation.
Why Bangladesh needs more time for LDC graduation
Eight years ago on 22 March, Dhaka erupted in celebration. A colourful procession rolled out from Doyel Chattar, festooned with banners and buoyed by orchestra music. Balloons were released at Dhaka University. Back then, LDC graduation was framed as a national triumph, a validation of governance, and, crucially, a legacy project of the now-ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Today, that narrative is unravelling.
Fuel rationing in a time of war: How Asia is managing scarcity
With the Strait of Hormuz blocked and the ripple effects of the Iran war disrupting global energy flows, countries across Asia are confronting a familiar but deeply complex challenge of managing limited fuel supplies without paralysing their economies. From informal demand suppression to tightly controlled quota systems, governments are adopting a range of strategies to ration access, stabilise markets, and maintain essential services.
What’s driving our hoarding instinct in the ongoing fuel crisis?
What matters now is how the state responds Amid a deepening nationwide fuel crisis, the lines in front of petrol pumps are growing longer. Pumps are showing ‘No more fuel’ signs. Yet, is the situation really that dire? Across districts from Pabna to Kurigram, Mymensingh to Netrokona, law enforcement agencies are discovering hoarded fuel in shops, private homes, paddy warehouses, underground tanks, and even cowsheds.
Are nukes the ultimate insurance policy for regime survival?
TBS A mushroom cloud from a nuclear weapons test. The strategic logic of nuclear deterrence continues to shape global security and geopolitical calculations. Photo: COLLECTED In the aftermath of the recent US–Israel military strikes on Iran, which killed thousands, and Iran’s retaliation on Middle Eastern countries, the question of nuclear deterrence has returned to the centre of global geopolitics.
From Caracas to Tehran, could Beijing be the strategic objective?
China is the anchor customer sustaining Iran’s sanctioned oil economy. Photo: Reuters Following the brazen January raid that captured Nicolás Maduro and the subsequent US-Israeli strikes that decapitated the Iranian leadership, the traditional map of global trade now stands incinerated. Beneath the usual rhetoric of regime changes, there may be another motive behind such drastic interventions — one that is targeted at Beijing.
Iran after Khameini: Victory, vacuum or forever war?
TBS Khamenei’s death closes one chapter. But it does not resolve the underlying contradictions of Iranian governance or the geopolitical contest that surrounds it “This turn of power has fallen to you—unworthy men; The turn of you unworthy men, too, shall pass.” Saif Farghani, a Persian poet from the 14th century, once wrote these lines.
Real wage crisis: Why higher pays don’t allow you to buy more
TBS For Humayun Kabir, the arithmetic of running a household no longer adds up. He supports a seven-member family, and what once felt manageable before 2022 has steadily slipped out of reach. As the prices of food and everyday essentials climbed, his monthly household expenses almost doubled, while income rose only marginally.
Human Rights Day and an unfinished revolution: Where July movement’s aspirations stand today
TBS The July Uprising had erupted from years of anger over enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, politicised policing, and a climate of fear. Photo: Rajib Dhar The fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024 was, for many Bangladeshis, more than a political turning point — it was meant to be a moral reset.
Hasina’s U-turn on ‘US involvement’: Why she now changes her position
TBS Hasina’s narratives have always been shaped less by truth and more by political need. In power, anti-US rhetoric was a tool of defiance. In exile, it became a story of martyrdom.
U-turn on music, sports education: Win for ‘pressure groups’, loss for our students
TBS Around the world, nations are investing in holistic education, emphasising arts, movement, and emotional intelligence, trying to produce students who are not only academically competent but also socially adaptable and mentally resilient.
Student union polls: Can denials alone erase allegations of mismanagement?
TBS On 9 September 2025, all eyes were on Dhaka University as its central students’ union (Ducsu) election took place for only the second time in 35 years. The festive event was soon followed by elections in other major public universities — Jahangirnagar University (Jucsu), Chittagong University (Cucsu), and Rajshahi University (Rucsu). Long deprived of voting rights, people expected the student union elections to mark the beginning of a democratic revival.
Why early pregnancy persists among Bangladesh’s garment workers
TBS Behind the glowing success stories of our ready-made garments industry and the tale of women empowerment lies a troubling truth in the narrow alleys of urban slums, where the limited access to healthcare, long working hours, and poor reproductive knowledge continue to push young female RMG workers into cycles of early pregnancy and unsafe abortion.
Telegram, Botim ban: A symbolic gesture that avoids the hard work of governance
TBS On 29 September, Lieutenant General (retd) Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, the home adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government, announced that the government is considering blocking the apps Telegram and Botim. The justification: these platforms are being used by the banned Awami League to communicate with their exiled leader, Sheikh Hasina, who is currently residing in India and orchestrating violence inside Bangladesh.
Containing mob violence: Tall talk, why less action
TBS Bangladesh stood witness to a gruesome incident in Goalanda, Rajbari district, on 5 September 2025, when a mob descended upon the shrine of Nurul Haque, known locally as Nural Pagla, a self-proclaimed spiritual leader who had passed away just weeks earlier. What unfolded was not mere vandalism but an act of grotesque barbarity: the crowd exhumed his body from the grave, dragged it to the Dhaka-Khulna highway, and burned it.
Savings shrinking to debt: The hidden toll of inequality and inflation
TBS Fariduddin is a compounder at a pharmacy in Mirpur. A father of three children, he is now facing the most basic yet difficult of all challenges — how to feed his family of five. “It is getting harder to make ends meet nowadays,” he said. “It feels like each day, my income is shrinking. Last month, I got a raise, yet it is not enough.” So what did he do?
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