The recently held parliamentary election in Bangladesh was watched more closely than usual.

The social safety net or social protection programme enables the government to advance the well-being and security of citizens by protecting them from vulnerability and deprivation so they can pursue a better life.

In July 2024, a student-led movement demanding quota reform evolved into the mass uprising against authoritarianism, bringing an end to over fifteen years of increasingly centralised and coercive rule.

Now that the dust has settled and we have begun another hopeful journey under a new government, we can look back at the interim government’s 18-month tenure and say with confidence that the defence forces,

The recent return of a 32‑year‑old Bangladeshi domestic worker from Saudi Arabia—six months pregnant after alleged rape, torture, and imprisonment—is not an isolated tragedy.

In August 2025, I wrote in Prothom Alo about the arrest, 10 months earlier in October 2024, of Dr Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury—former power, energy, and mineral resources adviser to ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina—by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) on allegations of crimes against humanity.

There is something remarkable about how markets operate abroad during major festivals, especially in the final weeks preceding a holiday. Instead of hiking prices, retailers slash them significantly.

In a typical model of democracy, the electoral process is designed to perform two functions simultaneously: it acts as a filter to select leaders with the potential to serve public interest, and as a disciplinary tool to “purge” those with the potential to abuse power and betray public trust.

With a sex trafficking, flesh-peddling empire of favours, logistics and the good times to be had by the powerful, the gigantic scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network continues to disturb.

The most recent Sal forest restoration drive by the government was ceremonially launched on October 18 last year. Acacia saplings were felled at the social forestry plot of Md Aminul in the Dhorung Par Tilertal area of the Dokhla Range.

At 2am in a remote village in northern Bangladesh, a mother waits for a phone call from a hundi broker.

Ekushey February (February 21) is a date that reminds the Bangladeshi people of their culture as well as their originary moments.

If the government seeks a time-bound fast-track reform agenda, logistics offers one of the highest-impact starting points.

In layman’s terms, multispecies justice is a lens that enables us to see ourselves as part of the wider natural world and to realise that all networks of violence and destruction might have their roots in extraction-focused, profit-oriented ideas pushed by colonialism and capitalism.

The newly elected BNP representatives’ refusal to take the oath as members of the Constitution Reform Assembly (CRA) on February 17 prevented what might have been a more meaningful new beginning for both the party and the country.

Through the general election on February 12, Bangladesh has entered a new political reality.

A landslide victory often feels like a coronation. Streets erupt, social media lights up, and the mandate seems unassailable.

Bangladesh has just staged a rare democratic exercise: a parliamentary election and a referendum on constitutional reform on the same day.

What a new government chooses to fund, plan for, or ignore in its first months reveals its level of priority or seriousness about its commitments to the people.

The overwhelming support of voters received by the BNP thrusts upon the new government a special responsibility and a challenge to meet people’s expectations.