I felt the first premonition on the night of “July 36.” In a post-rebellion Dhaka, festive streets, no certainty of what lay beyond that night—but hope permeated the air that perhaps we could finally recalibrate and aim for a dignified future.

Hopes are high for the rapidly approaching 13th parliamentary election and referendum on the July National Charter. A survey by Innovision last month found that 72 percent of Bangladeshis expect the interim government to administer the election impartially, and 82 percent feel they can safely cast their ballots.

When asked to comment on the recent trend of teacher harassment and forced resignation across university campuses, the University Grants Commission (UGC) chair and former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, Prof SMA Faiz, observed that rules alone could not ensure healthy teacher-student ties.

My mother, an economics student at Dhaka University (DU) in the 1990s, filled my childhood with stories about the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (Ducsu).

When the interim government announced a plan in August 2025 to procure 50,000 tonnes of potatoes, it signalled an apparent concern for farmers facing a devastating price crash.

As Bangladesh approaches the pivotal February 12 election, a singular, urgent demand resonates from tea stalls to boardrooms: the dismantling of a bureaucratic apparatus that has strangled national progress for decades.

Discard the mindset that ‘the election is only fair if I win’

Epstein’s is not only a story of individual depravity, but of institutional deference to wealth and status.

The response from the National Citizen Party’s (NCP’s) secretary of the manifesto subcommittee, Istiak Akib, to my analysis of their manifesto is a welcome development and a positive step towards fostering civilised dialogue—an essential element of democracy.

The column’s headline and concluding paragraph claim that NCP’s manifesto is silent on inclusion, which Ahmed identifies as “the most glaring disappointment.” He makes a particularly bold assertion: “None of the NCP’s 36 pledges address the concerns of religious minorities or ethnic communities, including Adivasis.” This claim is factually incorrect.

When Gita Gopinath, former deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recently stated at Davos that pollution kills millions of Indians annually and makes investors hesitant, she was accused of being unpatriotic.

“We dreamt of a country where all people, regardless of gender, race, religion, would have equal opportunity… We expected policy changes and reforms, but it is far away from what we dreamt of.”

Almost one-third of the women had no formal education and more than half lived in households with below-average income. For many, access to health information was constrained by literacy levels, geography, and digital exclusion.

While the government insists that this will be the cleanest election in the country’s history, it remains uncertain whether sufficient safeguards and scrutiny are in place—within the Election Commission, among observers, or in the media—to prevent rigging

The India-Pakistan rivalry, a relic of a 1947 divorce that never truly ended, continues to hold the aspirations of billions of people hostage. We’ve allowed a bilateral grudge to function as a regional veto.

The incoming government will have to make austerity a top priority at the leadership level for fiscal consolidation. Enhancing accountability mechanisms is essential to improving expenditure efficiency. Parliamentary oversight of public funds must be strengthened.

The people of Bangladesh are expecting a free and fair election after a long time.

Across centuries, people of the haor region lived by the cycle of water for generations, rather than by the calendar.

On Friday—just 13 days before the vote—the NCP, largely dominated by young activists of the uprising, announced the “Manifesto of Youth and Dignity.” The 36-point document’s most distinctive feature is its strong emphasis on young people’s political aspirations. Among its youth-centric pledges, the most striking is the proposal to lower the voting age to 16.

From the invention of the printing press to the rise of broadcast media, every major shift in communication technology has reshaped how news is produced, distributed, and consumed. Journalism has survived for centuries not because it resisted change, but because it adapted to it.