-
Tariq Karim
Tariq Karim, a former career diplomat and academic, is currently Visiting Fellow at BRAC University.
-
Addressing the problem of trash and plastic waste
Our attitude to garbage disposal and plastic waste is flagrantly callous. What is particularly eye-soring is the mass of plastic waste of all types, ubiquitously filling up unending stretches of areas beside roads, railway lines, all conceivable nooks and crannies between buildings/shanties and, most egregious of all, as flotsam floating listlessly on all types of water bodies that have still managed to escape attention of insatiable land-developers. -
Whence comes our culture of impunity?
These days, I assail myself with questions triggered by the everyday acts of thoughtlessness that I witness committed by the multitude around me everywhere, young and old, male and female. -
Ghost of a colonial past
Practically all the institutions of our state are institutions that we have inherited from our about-200-years of British colonial rule. Pax Britannica was intentionally designed to be of everlasting nature. In imperial Britain's imagination, the sun would never set on the British Empire. -
Rising above the sea of "yes-men"
In Shakespeare's great tragedy King Lear, a powerful man comes to a tragic end because he surrounds himself with flatterers and banishes the friends “who will not varnish the truth to please him.” -
Bangladesh's travails: A relentless saga
Despite our numerous achievements in domestic and international spheres, the following refrain has refused to go away in the last several decades: “why is Bangladesh so bitterly divided as a polity? Why are Bangladesh's political leaders so totally consumed by their personal animosities towards each other that they neglect good governance of the state? Why does Bangladesh, having rejected political Islam as the...