Weekly Bangladesh Policy Outlook: Analysis, Truth, Debate.
Dr. Sharmin Bhuiya’s report, published on September 3 under the headline “Is Health the Wealth of Bangladesh, or Is Wealth Health?”, was an excellent piece of reporting. She presented a clear and well organised picture of the current state of healthcare in Bangladesh. One section of her report focused on health insurance, an issue of…
Bangladesh’s gas crisis has become a recurring fixture of Jatiya Sangsad debates in 2026, and the numbers presented by the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources deserve a closer, technical look against what the opposition has offered in response. This article presents a technical brief on the accuracy of the proposals. The Government’s Figures…
Read More “Gas Numbers on the Floor of Parliament: How the Government and the Opposition Compare” »
Few global rankings stir as much domestic unease in Bangladesh as the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published by Transparency International and given local reach through Transparency International Bangladesh. The index sets out to estimate perceived levels of public sector corruption across 182 countries, relying on expert assessments and business surveys rather than any direct…
Read More “Measuring the Immeasurable: What the Corruption Perceptions Index Actually Tells Us” »
Every year on 16 August, Bangladesh pauses to honour a man whose guitar strings carried the restlessness, heartbreak, and hope of an entire generation. Ayub Bachchu, known simply as AB, was born in 1962 in Patiya, Chattogram, and passed away on 18 October 2018, yet he remains the country’s most enduring rock icon. He was…
Read More “The Guitarist Who Taught Bangladesh to Rock: Remembering Ayub Bachchu” »
The memorandum of understanding signed between Bangladesh and China on August 27 to establish a joint vocational education, training, and research centre carries both promise and peril in equal measure. The agreement, formalised at the China Bangladesh Education Exchange Conference in Jiangxi province, envisages cooperation across vocational training programmes, bilingual teaching materials, industry education integration,…
Read More “China-Bangladesh Vocational Training Collaboration: Prospects and Caveats” »
When Summit LNG Terminal ran dry on a Thursday afternoon in August 2026, the immediate story was a stalled cargo and a nation gasping for gas. The deeper story, largely absent from public discussion, is why that cargo was delayed in the first place. Bangladesh buys much of its liquefied natural gas on the volatile…
Bangladesh’s current sustainable agriculture roadmap, built around diversification away from rice monoculture, climate smart farming, land tenure reform, and stronger market infrastructure, arrives under a BNP led government. It is worth asking how this vision compares with the party’s own record the last time it held office, under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia between 2001 and…
The old adage declares that health is wealth, suggesting that wellbeing itself is the greatest asset a person can possess. In Bangladesh, the relationship inverts with brutal clarity: wealth is the prerequisite for health, and the absence of it is a slow sentence to inadequate treatment, delayed diagnosis, and preventable suffering. The question is not…
Read More “In Bangladesh, health is wealth or wealth is health?” »
Bangladesh’s legal position on pornography is unambiguous on paper. The Pornography Control Act of 2012 criminalizes the production, distribution, and possession of pornographic content, treating it as an offence against public morality and family values. The Information and Communication Technology Act and its successor cyber security legislation extend this prohibition into the digital domain, criminalizing…
Ask a young graduate in Dhaka why they entered journalism, and the answer rarely mentions salary security or career prestige. It is almost always framed as calling, a desire to speak truth to power, to give voice to the voiceless. That framing captures something real about Bangladeshi journalism, but it also conceals an uncomfortable truth:…
Read More “Journalism in Bangladesh: A Chosen Smart Profession or a Path Driven Only by Passion?” »
