Weekly Bangladesh Policy Outlook: Analysis, Truth, Debate.
Bangladesh has cut poverty, expanded schooling and reduced maternal deaths, yet half of its young women still marry as children. The 1993 to 94 demographic surveys found that 73 percent of women aged 20 to 24 had married before 18. By 2022 the figure was 51 percent, a fall of only 22 points in nearly…
Read More “The Law Says Eighteen. Why Do Half of Bangladesh’s Young Women Still Marry Earlier?” »
Without Pension Reform Alongside the Pay Scale, the Equation Remains Incomplete A government employee’s working life ends with retirement, but their expenses do not. In many cases, medical costs, medicines, dependent family members and the need for financial security increase with age. Therefore, pensions cannot be treated as a separate issue when discussing a new…
Read More “After the Ninth Pay Scale, Has the State Really Improved Job Security? Part: 2” »
Bangladesh’s private television sector has grown quickly, but as the preceding discussion makes clear, growth in reach has not been matched by growth in institutional safeguards for accuracy and independence. Fixing this gap is not primarily a matter of individual journalists trying harder. It is a matter of institutions, government and independent alike, building frameworks…
The verdict on Bangladesh’s Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment marks an important milestone in the country’s constitutional history. The issues raised through this judgment, including the caretaker government system, the restoration of the constitutional provision for referendums, and the future of Article 7B of the Constitution, extend far beyond legal interpretation. They are closely connected to democratic…
Bangladesh’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017 was designed to modernise a colonial era statute and curb one of the highest child marriage rates on earth. Instead, its controversial Section 19 special provision has become the focal point of sustained domestic and international criticism, raising questions about whether the reform moved the country forward or backward….
Read More “Bangladesh’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017: Did we pay attention?” »
Bangladesh’s Penal Code of 1860 retains a colonial-era provision on adultery that is increasingly difficult to reconcile with the country’s constitutional commitments to equality and non-discrimination. Section 497, as it currently stands, not only fails to protect the very individuals it claims to serve but actively perpetuates gender-based legal inequality with far-reaching social consequences. The…
The anti-quota movement of 2024 did not erupt from silence. It was the culmination of decades of accumulated frustration over a system that reserved more than half of all civil service positions for specific categories, leaving merit as an afterthought in the nation’s largest employer. What began as a student protest in June 2024 ultimately…
Read More “The Anti Quota Movement and the Unfinished Revolution” »
Between August 2024 and September 2025, a period of just thirteen months, at least 220 people were killed by mob violence across Bangladesh. That figure translates to approximately seventeen deaths every month at the hands of vigilante crowds. These are not statistics abstracted from human experience. They represent men beaten to death on university campuses,…
Read More “The Social Consequences of Mob Violence in the name of Justice in Bangladesh” »
Tanzina Fardoush Oniket Research Group Bangladesh has a crisis it does not discuss loudly enough. Rape and child sexual abuse are not rare aberrations in the social order. They are pervasive, systemic, and deeply rooted in the combined failures of law, culture, and governance. Despite legislative activity in recent years, the conviction rate for rape…
Read More “The Essential Legal and Social Reforms Bangladesh Needs to End Rape and Child Abuse” »
Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh and one of the most towering literary figures of the Bengali-speaking world, was never merely a craftsman of beautiful language. He was a conscience made verse. At the centre of his vast and passionate body of work lies an unrelenting love for equity, a conviction that no…
Read More “The Rebel Poet’s Creed: Equity at the Heart of Nazrul’s Verse” »
