Given all this budget slashing, all that bail-outing, leaders of the European Union have promised Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that funds pledged to Bangladesh for the European Union Climate Change Adaptation Fund would be delivered. Bangladesh is something of a case study for devising policy and infrastructure to combat the consequences of global cliamte change; […]
Whilst Khaleda Zia has been trying to gin up support for her country-wide protest movement to ring out against the sitting Awami League government, ostensibly for leading the country toward ruin, she has been chucked out of her house. In her stead, the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina has used any availing opportunity to shame her near-life […]
“The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.” Bertrand Russell A careful examination of contemporary Pakistan presents a bleak picture and objective analysts have been sounding alarms about Pakistan’s overall economic, social and political health for a while, but now, it seems that the […]
The recent news that India’s microcredit industry is in dire straits should trouble Bangladeshi policy makers. Through a combination of credit-overreach and political demagoguery, Indian banks are facing the prospect of a wave of microcredit loan defaults. Given the nearly $4 billion risk exposure that banks have undertaken in entering into the recently booming microcredit […]
The past few days have brought mixed news regarding India’s economic future.
There are grounds on which we accept moral doctrines that vary from those we profess. We might say that we have not experienced the history that other people in other places have experienced; we might say that there mores that have not entered our lexicon, for our social arrangements are different. We might call all […]
Hat Tip to Vincent Wade… Lately, there has been much attention paid to China’s growing control over precious finite resources, with the focus being on China’s punitive export embargo on “rare earth” minerals against Japan as outlined here: Without naming China, 37 leading companies and business groups from the U.S., the European Union, Japan, South […]
The timing could not have been more perfect. A new report by Global Financial Integrity about Illicit Financial Flows from India comes as the perfect topping on the 2G spectrum scam, the Adarsh Housing Scam and the Commonwealth Games. According to the report, India lost approximately $213 billion in illicit financial flows from the country […]
We all know Pakistan is facing serious challenges and regretfully, there are no simple solutions for these problems. So far, repeated experiments with democracy and dictatorships in the country have yielded nothing, but more failures and even more misery. When Benazir returned to Pakistan to help steer the country in the right direction, she was […]
The fight over forced homelessness of one by the other has gone beyond personal and political rivalry between Sheikh Hasina and Begum Zia. BNP supporters have called a strike this weekend and took to the streets to protest Khaleda Zia’s eviction from her cantonment home; police have beat back party activists, and failing to do […]
The 2010 UNDP Human Development Report offers some muted good news for those concerned with the reach of socially structured human welfare and development in Pakistan. However, given the way the good news is structured, recent events in Pakistan suggest that the prospects of Pakistan’s human development look strikingly bleak for the coming few years. […]
India’s reputation has quickly rebounded from the Commonwealth Games fiasco.
The 2010 Human Development Index is out. It offers some good news for Bangladesh. Though Bangladesh ranked 129 among 169 UN members states (out of a possible 192 states in the world), it ranked 3rd in terms of improvement since 1980 in its assessed Human Development Index, itself a weighted average of education, wealth and […]
It had to come sometime. The major international financial organizations, like the World Bank and the IMF, have long lauded the successful moves of the stewards of Bangladesh’s economy. Now Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has taken credit for that stewardship. She made the claim during Governor of Oregon Ted Kulongoski’s visit to Bangladesh. I suppose […]
At least eighteen people are dead in Karachi, many more wounded, victims of a car bomb and subsequent armed attack that targeted a police compound set up to investigate and counter militant activity in that southern port city. Karachi, the commercial hub and a major political constituency in Pakistan is now increasingly becoming home to the […]
