From digital to smart: Bangladesh on the growth path
That Bangladesh is a growth superstar of Asia looms large in any global economic forum, be it the World Economic Forum or the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. This sustained growth has been largely fuelled by the government’s unapologetic push for digitising all government services to citizens, building an ecosystem for technology startups and incentivising the ICT services industry over the last decade and a half.
2m ago
The growth and evolution of our digital economy
In this digital lifestyle, the demarcation between the physical and the virtual has become fuzzy and transmutable.
1y ago
Why Bangladesh's export diversification has not improved in two decades
For other sectors to expand as much as RMG has, they must be given better policy support.
1y ago
How Bangladesh can boost digital entrepreneurship
It is disheartening to see that Bangladesh couldn’t find a place in the top third of the ranking in this very telling study.
1y ago
Pandemic induced accelerated adoption to stay, or revert?
The onset of the Coronavirus pandemic at the beginning of the year 2020 has affected human civilisation like no other since the Spanish Flu pandemic exactly a hundred years ago.
2y ago
Bangladesh and the ongoing technological revolution
In the last one year the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than a hundred million and killed more than two million people around the globe—the pandemic is not yet done.
3y ago
Do mothers ever leave us?
We are brought into this world by our mothers with whom we have an inseparable “biome” connection.
3y ago
November 18, 2018
What we can do to keep the train of democracy on track
Emocracy works only if people who have the right to vote can exercise that right without fear or favour.
October 29, 2018
Curse of the sedentary lifestyle
Since my wife bought me a Fitbit Versa smartwatch to help me monitor my physical activity (spoiler alert: I am a proverbial couch potato), I astonished even myself
October 22, 2018
Mysteries of the past that stupefy us
The world is full of wonders and some of these wonders are from a past that defies belief. Seven hundred years ago, the Incas of pre-Columbian South America formulated an elaborate knotted-string-based record-keeping system that accurately maintained the tax liabilities of distant taxpayers in their kingdom.
September 24, 2018
The pros and cons of EVMs
The recent decision by the Election Commission to introduce Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) has raised a lot of eyebrows. At the outset, it must be pointed out that EVMs are nothing new—they have been in use in many countries around the world for nearly two decades, and even in our country, EVMs have been used in local elections for several years now.
August 28, 2018
Lessons in unity from Europe
As we moved upriver on a ferry along Krems, a tributary of the Danube, small villages with surrounding hillsides and cornfields fall away like picturesque view-cards.
July 30, 2018
A case of moral decrepitude
The senseless murder of a young NSU student, Saidur Rahman Payel, at the hands of the operators of a private intercity bus has shocked the nation to its core. What have we become as a nation?
July 23, 2018
What does Putin have on Trump?
The whole world is afire since the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki on the 16th of this month. The joint press conference at the summit evidently put on display the peculiar obeisance of the “leader of the free world” towards the successor of “perestroika”—a post-Soviet strongman who wields absolute power in the largest country in the world in terms of geographical expanse spanning 11 time zones.
July 16, 2018
Challenges in bridging the digital divide
In this age of the internet and social media we are constantly deluged with free information coming from all directions. More than a billion people are frequently making status updates on Facebook, the most popular social media platform today, so much so that more eyeball time now is spent on social media advertising than the same on television, radio and newspaper combined.
July 9, 2018
China surging ahead at bullet speed
Cruising at a speed of 307 km/h, the bullet train ride from Shanghai to Beijing was smooth as silk—there was no klik klik sound typical of conventional trains as the wheels hit the short gaps between rails that we are all too familiar with on our all-too-typical trains. The only slight movement one feels on the Chinese version of the bullet train is when the turbulent wake of a passing bullet train makes the train squeeze against the air envelope of the opposing train.
July 2, 2018
Is VAT a regressive tax on the poor?
The share of value-added tax (VAT) in the national exchequer has continuously been creeping up ever since its introduction more than 27 years ago, and has increased in recent years to the point where it is the single biggest slice of revenue collections by the government.
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