This is the subtitle of a book by William Baumol, an American economist who died recently at age 95. The title of the book is The Cost Disease. In his book, Baumol made several interesting arguments that have significant implications for public welfare in Bangladesh.

Some East and Southeast Asian countries benefitted from investing heavily in human resource sectors such as education and health during this period. While there's no universal model for a country to develop, experts suggest the strategy taken by those countries may also help Bangladesh reap its demographic dividend.

The broader planning question here is: should we let Dhaka expand more or de-escalate its growth frenzy? Should we save Dhaka from over-development by investing in other cities of Bangladesh, thus encouraging decentralisation?

The EC is not constituted only for holding elections. It is a constitutional body created to perform a host of other functions round the year to ensure that the elections are free, fair and credible.

My current students' unfamiliarity with Major Ziauddin only shows that the unwillingness of our young people to know about the heroes of 1971 persists.

First, the daughter – a student – was kidnapped, and then raped. As if that was not enough, she and her mother were then tortured, mentally and physically, for hours, and their heads shaven in an attempt to humiliate and hush them up. In the end, they were asked to leave the town and never come back.

The regional integration and cooperation initiative in South Asia started with the formation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in 1985.

The Banani rape case that took place in March this year is yet another example of how our faulty system tends to work in favour of the criminal. The media's exposure of these crimes helped the protesters gain some ground. But one wonders why things have to move this way.

What if a political party starts collecting sensitive personal data from social media, buying personal information from private companies or hacking government servers, and then uses the data to spread propaganda and influence voters' opinion during the election?

Siddiqur Rahman, while protesting, was injured in his eyes by a tear gas canister in yet another case of police brutality. One eye will never see again, another one is damaged.

On July 16, 2017, the Election Commission (EC) arranged a news conference to announce its electoral roadmap.

It is time for the policy-makers in government, educationists, as well as the affluent members of society to take the situation seriously.

In the aftermath of someone's suicide it is inevitable that those left behind will comment.

Suppose a doctoral student at a US university is writing her dissertation on an economic issue of Bangladesh, and if the required data is available on a BBS website, she can conveniently access it. The net result is that Bangladesh can benefit from new scientific research financed by the US taxpayers' money.

These buildings also had a political history. They were the products of what the military regime of Muhammad Ayub Khan called the “Decade of Development” (1958-68), intertwined with West Pakistan's shrewd political strategy of placating East Pakistan's agitating Bengalis through architectural and infrastructure development.

A Facebook post shared by a man named Rushad Faridi caught my eye recently. He shared an article with an intriguing title, which he had written for Prothom Alo. But it wasn't the article that grabbed everyone's attention at first. It was the fact that Faridi, a professor in the economics department at Dhaka University, was placed on forced leave less than a week after the article was published on July 7.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman of good breeding must be in search of a life led in humble anonymity.

We have managed to turn a serene, rustic, romantic Dhaka into a dishevelled, messy concrete slum just within a century.

The Daily Star recently reported that at least 20 utilities “syndicates” are operating in Korail slum.

On August 21, 1835, an intriguing teaser appeared on the front page of the New York Sun announcing a series of articles revealing the supposed discovery of life and even civilisation on the moon.