Author: Md. Shamiul Alim Shawon

Picture a senior citizen or a low-income family provider standing at a pharmacy counter early in the month, with a prescription in hand. The slight tremble in their hands is not just financial anxiety. It marks a breaking point in the unwritten social contract between the state and its citizens. When the price of rice, lentils, or fuel goes up, public outrage follows immediately. This is needed, as many are impacted. But when life-saving medicine prices climb silently, people have no choice but to pay up in silence. Recently, Bangladesh has witnessed a troubling reversal in pharmaceutical policy. The updated…

Across the Global South, highways are often hailed as symbols of economic modernization — veins of commerce connecting rural hinterlands to booming urban capitals. Yet, for millions of commuters in developing nations, these expressways turn out to be sites of routine but preventable tragedy, with thousands of deaths and disabilities every day due to road accidents. In Bangladesh, where the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates between 25,000 and 32,000 people perish in traffic collisions annually — costing the nation approximately 3 percent of its GDP — road carnage is not merely a transport crisis that Bangladesh has been encountering; it…

Every four years, Bangladesh turns out to be somewhat peculiar. Walk through any neighborhood — Dhaka, Rajshahi, and a village you have never heard of — and what you will see draped from rooftops and balconies is not red and green. It is sky blue and white, gold and green, and red, black, and gold. There is no exception in the World Cup Football 2026, hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada. The flags of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, and France are hoisted, though the countries of most of these supporters have never visited and probably never will. From a…