Govt must provide more clarity regarding election, reform, and trial.
Urgent measures needed to prevent a deadly outbreak
The HSIA situation is clearly concerning, and must be addressed before a major accident occurs
Everybody believes in something, but the world is divided into two extremes. There are those who die for belief and others who kill for it. But a vast majority are innocent bystanders, people who believe in varying degrees, but are not ready to kill or die for what they believe. While everybody in the world believes in something, only the ideologue believes with extreme prejudice....
An era is a long and distinct phase of history; an age, although it sounds longer, represents a shorter period, "the length of tizme that person or thing has existed." The operative meaning of concepts changes with the shift of an age. Nationalism as a concept includes both identity as well as the ability to defend the national interest. The first is incomplete without the second. If we assume that modern Indian nationalism begins with the age of Mahatma Gandhi, then he expanded the identity to include the poor, the untouchable, the weak into the national struggle, and made mass mobilisation into his weapon to protect the national interest. Jawaharlal Nehru, who had to redefine its purposes in the context of a free nation and an effective state, upped the ante to create an...
The neurosurgery ward of Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the country's premier public sector healthcare provider, is limping with all sorts of constraints. This important ward has become an overcrowded and extremely unhygienic place, with some of the critically ill being placed, incredible though it may sound, for the type of patients they are, on the corridor between wards....
The mobile courts convened as a result of the recent top-notch in-depth investigative reporting on widespread food adulteration are to be congratulated for their efforts. There have already been a number of quite startling high-profile cases brought and there is no question that the courts are discharging their duties efficiently and effectively, and that for the first time in recent memory the adulterators are running for cover....
Mr Asghar Ali Engineer's article London bombings, violence and Islam (DS -21.07.05)is very shocking . His credential as chief of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, does not accord with his viewsà justifying London bombing overtly and covertly. Though he said, "Why do they resort to such operations in which, more often than not, they lose their lives in the prime of their youth? Is it because of their religious fanaticism? Can such operations be explained as mere acts of religious fanaticism? I think not. No psychologist will agree with such oversimplified explanation."...
We did not agitate and politically demand electricity during the British rule. Even in the early 1950s of the last century, punkha pullers had been at work in major offices, elitist government and private residences in which, these days, we see in use multi-patterned expensive electric fans, lights, televisions, various gadgets and air conditioners which consume electricity. Although we produce a meagre quantum of electricity, we see around electric lights of high voltage and variety in the premises of elitist residences and important public and private houses which are generally extravagantly illuminated on social and national occasions. Big hotels, restaurants, clubs, institutes, bhabans, community centres etc. where miscellaneous socio-economic and political functions including...
The Election Commission's dramatic move to invite 99 political parties to a dialogue on voter-list may be well intended but is clearly ill-conceived and failure-prone....
Notwithstanding far too many disappointments to permit anything other than a cynical view of the peace process now underway between the subcontinent's two arch rivals, the joint statement issued in New Delhi last month on the conclusion of President Musharraf's cricket diplomacy promoted a measure of optimism not only about the success of composite dialogue but also for the prospects for an early resolution of such disputes as Siachen glacier or Sir Creek issue leading ultimately to the resolution even of a tricky Kashmir dispute in the light of freshly defined parameters. At least the spirits prevailing on either side reflected that. Echoing the buoyant mood of the peaceniks when President Musharraf called the current peace process 'irreversible' it carried with it a degree of...
The recent arrest of four policemen including an assistant sub-inspector with charges of extortion and snatching ornaments from employees of a jewellery house has sent shock waves across the society. At least four other cases of police criminality and subsequent arrests had been reported earlier this year....
The series of deadly attacks at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik, killing at least 60 and injuring over 100, has come on the heels of a second round of bombings in London, thankfully causing far less damage. While there is no evidence as yet that the attacks are linked in any way, it seems indisputable that we are now in the middle of a concerted terror offensive....
