Our social skills have somewhat blunted over time. Virtues that we had taken for granted in the past almost sound like pipe dreams today. Tolerance, live-and-let-live, mutual, professional respect between men and women, consideration for the elderly, civility, courtesy, compassion, and hospitality—once the markers of social behaviour—have turned utopian, unattainable!

Traffic congestion has become synonymous with dwindling livability and quality of life in Dhaka.

We have a shiny sheen of socio-economic indicators, compared to those of most other South Asian countries—Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen never ceases to mention this.

One would have thought that the much-heralded plans for regional, sub-regional and inter-regional connectivity projects should have added up rather than subtracted from each other.

There are quite a few things to be noted about the on-going cold wave. Of them, two are obvious. For one thing, it has been relentless in its pattern, and therefore, cumulative and gripping in its chilling effect.

THE Indian state of Assam is engaged in the process of creating a database of its citizens. It is going beyond the demographic details that were available in the national census report to make use of. No other state of the Indian Union is undertaking such an exercise, and that's where the catch is.

Contrasting speculations linger over the Rangpur mayoral election results. Was the poll “stage-managed” or was it a “calculated game”? Awami League and Jatiya Party, having been broadly on the same side of the political spectrum

Three human stories hogged news headlines last Monday and Tuesday touching the deeper chords of our sensibilities. Evocative of

As the impressions of Pope Francis' back-to-back visits to Myanmar and Bangladesh sink in, some self-evident truths glare through the mists of Naypyidaw, the new Burmese capital.

We need to emphasise the importance of reworking China-India-Myanmar trilateral equations to be energetically responsive to Bangladesh's concerns over a snowballing multidimensional Rohingya crisis.

We have been picking our brains hard to find a creative solution to the task of shoring up the stagnating tourism sector in Bangladesh. In spite of its location-centred magnetism, how long would Bangladesh languish on the side-line of a relatively peacetime globe-girdling tourism industry when comes its turn?

It is a supreme irony that victimhood and villainy sometimes get weighed on the same scale with material stake getting the better of the moral imperative.

When levers and counter-levers pull away in opposite directions the object of delivering change is stuck on the pulley, as it were. This is understandable as a scientific concept. But what is so eerily unethical is the oxygen of support Myanmar not only receives from a handful of countries, but is also pumped up by.

One can draw two significant messages from Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's just-concluded visit to Bangladesh: First, she has basically reiterated India's position that an incumbent government is obligated to hold...

As they say, in the hard world of competitive cricket, “You are as good or bad as your last performance”.

The traditions of Myanmar's hermitage, of which the Burmese military remains a purveyor, sometimes come to the fore in awkward ways.

Political ideologies ranging from populist and nationalist to far-right neo-fascist have been making inroads into the European political landscape. In fact, capitalising on a migration crisis, economic inequality, increasing disillusionment with the European Union and a sense of lost national identity, right-wing parties have made electoral gains in a growing number of European countries.

Aung San Suu Kyi's opting out of the UN General Assembly session is a reflection of the same hiding syndrome that made the Rakhine state out of bounds for UN staff, aid agencies and the media for a long while.

We think, the Indian prime minister has lost an opportunity to play an honest broker here. Given the prestige India enjoys with the Myanmar establishment—Suu Kyi saying “Myanmar looked up to India for (guidance) and support”—and Bangladesh's close ties with India, a process of engagement could be initiated by Modi.

Bangladesh has done well for itself and world cricket by winning against Australia. Well, how it is emerging as a force of good for world cricket keeps you mulling over!