Why is poverty not an urgent priority for the Bangladeshi elite? Naomi Hossain, author of Elite Perceptions of Poverty in Bangladesh (UPL 2005), offers three explanations. First, and most importantly, because poverty presents no imminent threat to elite well-being through, for example, crime, epidemic disease, revolt or insurrection. Second, lack of faith in the state […]
The South Asian current affairs magazine, Himal (edited by the redoubtable Kanak Dixit), has been banned in by the Emergency Government in Bangladesh following the publication of two articles in it’s May 2007 edition. The expunged articles can be found on Himal’s site:
The Dhaka regime’s […]
Bangladeshi journalist and blogger, Tasneem Khalil has been picked up from his Dhaka home and detained by military police. Tasneem has fearlessly, some would say recklessly, reported the spate of extra-judicial killings and detentions that have increased in frequency since the military-backed takeover of Bangladesh earlier this year.
Tasneem is a brilliant and uncompromising journalist (CNN, […]
A Golden Age, a novel by Tahmima Anam, is set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh Liberation War (Mukti Judhho) of 1971.
Tahmima stayed in Bangladesh between 2000 and 2002 to collate research material for her PhD from Harvard University, upon which she drew for the novel. She comes from an illustrious family in Bangladesh; […]
[Update 13Jan2008]
I have retained this post, but have excised the text I wrote about GMB Akash in view of the complaints made by GMB Akash himself in the comments. In fact I got the information from another blog which turned out to be factually incorrect. This is a bad thing. I have broken a blogging […]
The practice of giving tiny, unsecured loans in the developing world is being hailed as a breakthrough in the fight against global poverty. Adam Yamaguchi explores the concept of microcredit and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, in Bangladesh.
See the short film on CurrentTV.
Prior to the emergency declared last week, many doubts have been raised about the idea of democratic viability in Bangladesh. Knowing the deterioration of the political situation in Bangladesh since 1993, these doubts are valid:
There is the extreme and insurmountable polarisation between the ruling centre-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the opposition, centre-left Awami League […]
A state of emergency in Bangladesh, officially declared by interim President Iajuddin Ahmed in his resignation speech yesterday, ends months of political brinksmanship and a near-collapse of democracy the country has faced off since October 2006. What began as a dispute over the validity of the interim government, involved taking the entire country hostage in […]
Over the last 4 months, extreme violence between rival political activists spilt over into social unrest and mass strikes (hartal) has once again crippled Bangladesh. Public reaction is polarised in a country where few aspects of life have not become politicised.
Traditionally, Bangladesh has always seen social divisions based on deep political rivalries between the political […]
In this new paper [PDF], published under the aegis of the Hudson Institue (a right-wing think tank), Maneeza Hossain draws a very detailed picture of the radicalisation of political Islam in Bangladesh. She argues that Bangladesh could become the major front in the global confrontation with radical Islamism.
If democracy is preserved and enhanced, Bangladesh can […]