Tanzina fardoush Archives - The Oniket Bulletin

Building Institutions of Trust: The Role of the Ministry of Information, the Press Council, and Independent Bodies in Strengthening News Quality in Bangladesh

August 13, 2026August 13, 2026 editor No Comments

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…

Politics, Democracy & Citizen Rights

The Verdict on the Fifteenth Constitutional Amendment: Public Interest, Constitutional Reform and Bangladesh’s Political Future

July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 editor No Comments

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…

Politics, Democracy & Citizen Rights

Bangladesh’s Child Marriage Restraint Act 2017: Did we pay attention?

July 23, 2026July 23, 2026 editor No Comments

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….

Law & Local Governance

Legal Reforms in Bangladesh on Adultery Cases

July 16, 2026July 16, 2026 editor No Comments

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…

Law & Local Governance

The Anti Quota Movement and the Unfinished Revolution

June 25, 2026June 25, 2026 editor No Comments

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…

Politics, Democracy & Citizen Rights

The Social Consequences of Mob Violence in the name of Justice in Bangladesh

June 18, 2026June 18, 2026 editor No Comments

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,…

Law & Local Governance

The Essential Legal and Social Reforms Bangladesh Needs to End Rape and Child Abuse

June 13, 2026June 13, 2026 editor No Comments

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…

Law & Local Governance

The Rebel Poet’s Creed: Equity at the Heart of Nazrul’s Verse

June 6, 2026June 6, 2026 editor 2 Comments

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…

Art, Literature, History & National Heritage

A Half-Century of Political Violence and Law

May 15, 2026May 15, 2026 editor No Comments

Since its independence in 1971, Bangladesh’s political history has been characterised by a continuous narrative of violence. In contemporary Bangladesh, military coups, political assassinations, electoral clashes, instances of arson and mass violence in the context of hartals and blockades, and bloody conflicts between party cadres have become a grim normality in the nation’s political culture….

Law & Local Governance

Tagore’s Philosophy of Love, Harmony and Peace

May 7, 2026May 8, 2026 editor No Comments

Rabindranath Tagore occupies a position in world literature that few writers have ever attained, not merely as a poet or storyteller, but as a philosopher whose every verse breathes a deeply felt vision of humanity. His conception of love, social harmony, and peace was not abstract theorising; it was lived, expressed, and ceaselessly refined through…

Art, Literature, History & National Heritage