Mark Dummett

There is a simple enough way of judging how serious Bangladesh’s food crisis has become this year - it is to count the changing number of people queuing up to buy government-subsidised rice each day.
As the weeks have passed and the sun above Dhaka has become stronger, so the queues are now forming earlier, and more and more people are joining them.

Rakhal Das wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago

Subir Bhaumik in Calcutta

Rakhal Das, 54, wants to be on the first train to Dhaka, the way he was on the last train from there to India more than 42 years ago.

High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation. That is why a somewhat reluctant electorate was apprehensive about what democracy might bring, Chris Morris

The day after its first parliamentary election, the world’s newest democracy is already learning that politics can spring a surprise. High in the Himalayas, Bhutan has always revelled in its isolation.

Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis, asks Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
Is India, the world’s second most populous nation, facing a food crisis?

This question is vexing policy makers and analysts alike even as creeping inflation - around 7% now - is sending jitters through the Congress party-led ruling coalition.

Jonathan Power

FIRST it was Mitt Romney who wrote in Foreign Affairs that “radical Islam’s threat is just as real as that posed before by the Nazis and the Soviet Union” And now, last week, it was John McCain saying the US needed a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.

M Abdul Kabir

Not long ago, the idea of an objective and worthwhile anti-corruption drive was frowned upon given the impotence of the previous Bureau of Anti Corruption and the absence of good intentions of the earlier governments. Now such a crusade is going on, thanks to the present CTG’s laudable and moving initiatives. When the whole nation is eagerly waiting to see the outcome, however little promising it may be, of this daring drive, some influential quarters continue to insist on the administration to stop the campaign and release those captured. Clearly, this would be suicidal for the country should the government yield to their demand.

S. Haroon Ahmed and Saleem Asmi

PRIME Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s welcome move to revive student unions takes one back to the first all-Pakistan students’ body, the Democratic Students Federation.

This paved the way for the progressive outlook of the National Students Federation (NSF) and also the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA). The DSF is either ignored or misrepresented in most accounts of the students’ movement in Pakistan. At this critical juncture of Pakistan’s history, there is a need to set the record straight vis-à-vis the DSF.

Irfan Husain

WHAT happens to a man who has run a flourishing bank into bankruptcy, costing taxpayers billions, wiping out further billions in equity, and causing thousands of employees to lose their jobs? Well, in the case of Adam Applegarth, former chairman of Northern Rock, he is set to walk away with a 760,000-pound severance package.

By: Dr. Sultan Ahmad

Riazat Butt

The Quran was revealed over a period of more than 20 years, with the Prophet Muhammad receiving the first revelation in AD 610 in the Cave of Hira, near Mecca. He was told: “Read in the name of your Lord who created, created man from a clot. Read, for your Lord is most Generous, Who teaches by means of the pen, teaches man what he does not know.”
Muslim scholars therefore see the pursuit of knowledge as a duty, with the Quran containing several references to the rewards of learning.

Prof A F Salahuddin Ahmed

Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Foreign adviser

The ancient Greeks used to say, with a modicum of logic, as that they were wont to do in an intellectual discourse, that prior to placing your arguments, you must define your terms. A statement on 'foreign policy' should, therefore, must contain what the subject connotes: Tonight I shall, for the purpose of this discussion, take the foreign policy of a country to be the sum-total of its external interactions flowing from a conscious decision to advance the country's perceived national self-interest.

Not long ago, at least 10,000 Bangladeshi students studied in Darjeeling, Shiliguri and Kurseong schools alone: Guardians used to blame poor academic atmosphere at home, Mizan Rahman

Once there was a time when Bangladeshis used to choose Darjeeling and other places of India for sending their children for school studies in English. Not long ago, at least 10,000 Bangladeshi students studied in Darjeeling, Shiliguri and Kurseong schools alone: Guardians used to blame poor academic atmosphere at home.

Even if the Maoists do not emerge victorious, the forthcoming Constituent Assembly elections will cement their role as both a key driver and a stakeholder of a new Nepal, Siddharth Varadarajan

On April 10, the Nepal peace process which formally began in 2005 with a 12-point understanding between seven parliamentary parties and the Maoists will enter a decisive stage with the holding of elections for the Constituent Assembly (CA).

William Baumol, Robert E Litan & Carl Schramm

Many people assumed that when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, “capitalism” had won the ideological cold war and that “communism” had lost. But, while “capitalism” — defined as an economic system built on private ownership of property — clearly has prevailed, there are many differences among the nearly 200 countries that now practice it in some form.
We find it useful to divide the capitalist economies into four broad categories. While many economies straddle several of these, most economies fall primarily into one of them. The following typology helps explain why some economies grow more rapidly than others.

Mizan Rahman

Climate change

While the least developed countries suffer the worst effects of climate change, brought about by the actions of the rich, they have no voice in global warming talks

Mahmud Hasan

THE caretaker government has repeatedly confirmed its commitment to holding the upcoming parliamentary election in December this year. The election date may be moved to an earlier time depending on how fast voters' identity cards are available. A reformed independent Election Commission or EC, has vowed to provide the nation with a free, fair and transparent election in a peaceful environment. Our national army has been given the most difficult task to make the voters' identity card. Eighty million voters are expected to be issued identity cards.

Syed Fattahul Alim

GLOBALLY, price of food grains have been forced up due to a complex mix of factors. These include frequent droughts, downpours, floods and various other kinds of natural calamities as well as shift in the use of food grains for uses other than human consumption. Last year, Bangladesh was severely battered by these factors of natural origin. As it has to feed a huge population with the crops grown on a limited area of land, which, too, is gradually shrinking to accommodate growing population, the food grains its fields produce are no more adequate to meet the ever growing demand.

Eric Margolis