If you have bought locally grown strawberries, or dragon fruit, or the out of season bottle gourd, and the luscious Thai guava all year round, you are already a beneficiary of the silent agri-revolution happening in Bangladesh.

The lockdown-days of the coronavirus outbreak gave many a second chance to rediscover their inner fortes. While some resorted to taking up the pen or the painting brush, others looked deep into their recipe books and some honed their baking skills. Quite a few took the next, not necessarily the obvious, step!

This year, Bangladesh celebrates its 50th anniversary, and chronicling half a century of progress is no mean feat! In the last 50 years, we have made noteworthy achievements in almost every field. The last year has been one of unprecedented difficulties, yet our progress has been steady.

We are grounded in reality. But sometimes, one needs to take a bird’s-eye view to gain perspective and see the bigger picture.

Farfetched as it may sound, this is the truth — this is history. Eventually with time, our grandeur subsided. Maybe there were forces acting against us or maybe it was our own short-sightedness that led to the demise of an incredible craft.

The history of this land is obviously not just 50 years old. It goes back much deeper than that; a long, complicated, and fascinating journey throughout several centuries,

“Yes, once upon a time, the handloom taant was at its peak. But then came the powerloom variant, parallel to any other sector in the textile industry. That’s when we had the hardest time to compete, because powerlooms have the capacity and capability to yield in greater quantity.

The pandemic brought travel to a halt. With flights grounded, restaurants shuttered, and popular tourist sites morphed into ghost towns,

History reminds us that this method worked in motivating the locals. Everyone wore khadi dhoti, sari and handloom cotton products to lead their daily lives and ultimately nationalistic attitude took over.

A snow-white, light quilt embroidered all over in neat miniscule run stiches is dotted with floral jasmine motifs in small intervals.

With advances in local manufacturing, nearly all aspects of a consumer’s needs are easily met, without compromising on quality or taste! A simple systematic approach could easily demonstrate the sheer development in variety of local manufacturing and its impact on citizen mindset.

To make the recognition easier to ‘identify with,’ we have tried to group the names in segments.

What GI enlistment or tag does is that it allows customers and producers to create trust and confidence on the product’s authenticity and quality in internal or external markets. It helps create a reputation of the product, facilitating fairer prices and access to lager markets for the producers.

I joined social networking platforms fresh out of university. In the mid-2000s it seemed like the most happening thing to do. Failing to reap the pleasures of poking, or keeping my pet puppy, Whiskey, healthy — I felt I was a miserable virtual socialite.

“A whole generation worked to raise empowered women, but forgot to teach men to live with empowered women.”

There are multiple aspects to the barriers women face when they decide to work out of the house, be it for need or simply to pursue passions. Despite those facts,

The long, arduous road from Raj to Partition to Liberation left our new-born country with an economy too small to accommodate many of its able-bodied men, let alone its women.

Once at an event, advocate Sultana Kamal expressed bitterly how the women of Bangladesh have to start their race from the very beginning, whereas their male counterparts, participating in the same race, have a starting point somewhere comfortably set in the middle.

Mujibor Rahman (not his real name), an expatriate living in the Middle East for the last 15 years, returned to his home-country in May last year due to the economic fallout in the country of his employmentand the subsequent termination of his job.