The more BNP talks about reforms, the less convincing it sounds
24 March 2025, 02:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Devils, heroes, or something in between?
14 February 2025, 02:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Opinion / No more concessions for India on border killing or fencing
14 January 2025, 02:10 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Opinion / BNP faces the weight of history and expectations
26 September 2024, 02:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Opinion / The new age demands a re-reading of Bangabandhu
15 August 2024, 02:30 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
The nine lives of a corrupt public servant
13 July 2024, 04:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Cow running amok in a shopping mall: It’s not a ‘moo’ point
14 June 2024, 10:30 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
The only budget I care about is one that reduces my bills
7 June 2024, 05:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Citizen data server? More like a data supermarket
27 May 2024, 06:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
Why does a six-day holiday feel too good to be true?
10 April 2024, 05:00 AM
OF MAGIC & MADNESS
We must confront organised violence with organised love
What does it mean to be nonviolent in a world full of horror and chaos, not to mention weapons and instruments of every kind created to inflict pain?
1 October 2020, 18:00 PM
A criminal bucket list: having fools as bosses
Stories of corruption no longer produce the same shock they once did.
23 September 2020, 18:00 PM
We must save the press before coronavirus sinks it
In April, British journalist and author Susie Boniface, in an article for Mirror Online, asked her readers to take a moment to imagine a world in which there is no journalism.
26 August 2020, 18:00 PM
Legacy of Covid-19: The good, the bad and the messy
No, the pandemic is not over—far from it, actually, despite what the ministers might tell you—although at times it does feel like we’ve reached the end.
19 August 2020, 18:00 PM
The Art of Being Tajuddin Ahmad
Nearly half a century after the 1971 War of Liberation, it is perhaps difficult to produce or come across startlingly original ideas about Tajuddin Ahmad.
22 July 2020, 18:00 PM
The ministry of utmost disappointment
The call for defunding police in the US, after the death of George Floyd in police brutality, is one of the most striking messages coming out of what is perhaps the largest civil movement in US history.
20 July 2020, 18:00 PM
My father was an undocumented migrant worker. People like him don’t deserve your scorn
Not long ago, I was watching a webinar on the plight of returning migrant workers streamed live on Facebook by The Daily Star.
10 July 2020, 18:00 PM
End of state-owned jute mills: why close when you can reform?
So it’s official now. The government is going to shut down all 25 state-owned jute mills operated by Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) and lay off about 25,000 workers involved with them.
3 July 2020, 18:00 PM
How about leaving some space for ordinary patients?
In 1883, the American poet Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet about the virtues of diversity and inclusion.
24 June 2020, 18:00 PM
100 DAYS OF COVID-19: How did we fail so miserably in handling it?
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” This comment by Vladimir Lenin, describing the Bolshevik revolution over 100 years ago, serves as an apt metaphor for the journey Bangladesh has had since March 8, when the country confirmed its first Covid-19 case.
16 June 2020, 18:00 PM
Blocking media access during Covid-19
Press freedom in Bangladesh has been in decline long before the coronavirus came to our shores.
2 May 2020, 18:00 PM
Hello from Humanity
Winter lasted a little longer than usual this year. Having grown used to shorter, barely cold seasons in recent years, it was something of a surprise to see a winter extending well into March.
18 March 2020, 18:00 PM
Opinion: BCS & Other Drugs
Every day, long before dawn, before insanity grips Dhaka and all manners of chaos start swirling around us, certain parts of the capital fall into a familiar routine: alarms go off and shoes go on. A group of students are on their way to the university library.
3 March 2020, 18:00 PM
The Accidental Truthteller
If Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) KM Nurul Huda is not your favourite go-to guy when you look for truths, he has only himself to blame.
25 February 2020, 18:00 PM
I’ve no idea who these candidates are, but they surely sell hard
If the heavens are kind this time and everything pans out as expected by the mayoral wannabes, a golden age for Dhaka is now within reach.
29 January 2020, 18:00 PM
An ode to my deleted sentences
My deleted sentences are like the children I never had.
29 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Time to change our anti-Hijra bias
You see them every day. Clad in sarees or some other cheap, gaudy outfits, walking in groups along busy thoroughfares, in less affluent neighbourhoods, and marketplaces.
19 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Time for a course correction in JU
It’s been 10 days since Jahangirnagar University went into lockdown after the activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League attacked protesters demanding the
13 November 2019, 18:00 PM
The ‘crazily courageous’ world of a Tagore devotee
A small, upmarket café housed in what may seem to be a refitted basement is the setting for my interview with Martin Kämpchen, the German author, Tagore translator and journalist.
7 November 2019, 18:00 PM
Why this murderous rage?
Mark Twain once famously said that truth is stranger than fiction. Truth’s ability to outperform fiction is limitless, not just in terms of strangeness, but also in the most outrageous, disgusting and horrifying way conceivable.
21 October 2019, 18:00 PM