Healthcare gaps, poor awareness putting lives at risk
Low GDP growth demands political stability so as to boost investor confidence
Govt must provide more clarity regarding election, reform, and trial.
A survey conducted by the Bangladesh chapter of the Transparency International has stated the obvious but with a renewed force: police and tax officials have jointly emerged at the top of the corruption list prepared on the basis of selected newspaper reports. After all, they are the ones on the frontline of public dealings, and to that extent, are perhaps most susceptible to wrong-doing....
It is a measure of the crisis of India's justice delivery system that it has failed to charge, leave alone punish, the demolishers of the Babri mosque for 11 years....
Since its invention in early 20th Century, electronic media has been playing a vital role, particularly in the Western countries, in leading the respective nations towards new heights of development through a competitive edge. With its effective and target oriented operations, they are spreading their markets, selling their culture and even indoctrinating their political ideology in other parts of the world....
The rally staged by indigenous people at Dinajpur on Monday brought to the fore some specific grievances they have concerning land-use rights. Around 3000 members of Santal, Orao, Mahali, Malo, Rajbangshi, Turi, Munda and Vuinmuli communities voiced their protests against 'denial' of benefits they were promised earlier on. They complained of being deprived of their rightful share of accruals from a social forestry project undertaken by the forest authorities in 6,792 acres of land acquired from them in six upazilas of Dinajpur. The indigenous people were given to understand -- one wonders whether it was documented that they would get 60 per cent of the profit while the department got 40 per cent after the trees planted in early 1990s were sold. But the forest department is said to...
I don't know if there is an English equivalent to the Bangla proverb "porboter mushik prosob", but all native Bangla speakers must be familiar with its purport. Well, that's what the frantic four-month search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction or WMD has finally produced -- just a mouse, and a still-born one at that. The 1,400-strong team of scientists, weapons experts and support staff that made up the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group (ISG), has failed to discover even "minute amounts" of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material, according to reports circulating in Washington and London. ISG will now instead focus on Saddam Hussein's capacity and intention to manufacture banned weapons. Only a few weeks ago, the British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was confident that...
Most of the colleges across the country are grappling with an acute shortage of admission seekers at the HSC level. Reports say only a handful of reputable colleges have found an adequate number of students, while the rest are still trying to rope in the remaining ones, going beyond normal practices in some cases....
In a recent seminar organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) at the BRAC Centre, eminent economists and agricultural scientists dwelt, albeit indecisively, on the sensitive issue of biotechnology. The topic, admittedly, is of top most importance in the wake of ongoing realities related to rice production, particularly in developing countries like Bangladesh. Here the green revolution, allegedly, tends to gradually groan under a regime of declining yield rates, complex problem of insect and disease pressure and other problems. Thanks to the organisers, especially CPD and IRRI/ PETRRA, for floating a debate that warrants best available empirical evidence relevant for poor people in developing countries. Such debates should help identify the most appropriate ways that...
The mismatch between what came upon Rome last Sunday and what had been ebulliently slated, but couldn't be pulled off, explained it all. On the cards was the White Night of round-the-clock cultural festivities -- an extravaganza of art events in the capital city. But all the buoyancy about the gala night illumined to whiteness was paid put as the event turned into a black night for millions following the worst power blackout in most of Italy since 1918....
We are aghast at the atrocious handling of women pickets and processionists during Saturday's hartal in the city. It has set another example of politics being vitiated by excesses and disallowance of space to the opposition....
Misled by a cabal of neo-cons bent up on recasting the world in its own image the US President George W Bush raised false alarm and cried wolf early this year ostensibly to build up a case for his preplanned preemptive war in Iraq. He already conjured up a doomsday scenario from Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, now he warned his nation of yet another danger saying that Iraq was a breeding ground of terror, an incubator for Al-Qaeda and thus a clear and present threat to "the civilised world." George Bush made this argument "the heart of the case" for waging what was essentially a nineteenth century colonial war in twenty first century battle dress....
