The proposed law aims to replace the University Grants Commission (UGC) with a new statutory regulatory body for overseeing universities and higher education governance in Bangladesh.

Unless education reform is placed centre stage, within a decade, Bangladesh will be locked in with a woefully undereducated workforce for years to come.

Perhaps the most striking, and largely unforeseen, consequence of the fall of the Hasina government has been the surge in support for Jamaat-e-Islami over the past 18 months.

But it also has a less discussed footprint: plastic flex, laminated posters, strings, tapes, and broken frames t

The interim government has entered a sensitive arena by approving a defence industrial zone in Chattogram’s Mirsarai.

Women’s cricket in Bangladesh has come too far to be pushed back by fear and silence.

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