Food for Thought

Culture is the unique identity of a nation. Globalization denotes to the borderless world where all the nations of the world will stand under a single umbrella. It doesn’t mean that the nations will forget their own identity as an effect of globalization. It’s our common phenomenon that we always take all the negative aspects of a buzzword and never try to adopt the positive ones. The same thing is happening in case of our golden culture due to the effect of globalization. We are almost going to forget our own culture, the Bangali culture. But we are very much alert about it when Pohela Boishak, Nobanno Utshob comes. Is culture only for those days? Or is it to represent us every where in every circumstance? On my eid vacation I was trying to enjoy some TV programs on our indigenous channels. That day a channel caught my eyes where to my utter surprise I saw all the performers wearing some western cloths. If u mute the TV set, no one can ever guess that they are the Bangali. It...

Recently published world’s best universities ranking shows no Bangladeshi universities have been able to position among the 500 best universities. Doesn’t this news make us be worried? University is the place of pilgrimage for higher education. Along with providing quality education and degree, university is to discover and organize new knowledge through research work, produce newer and newer theory. These are the significant criteria to be enlisted as a best university. What is the plight of our higher education and our universities? Our universities are busy with providing multifarious and colourful degrees. Their efforts are confined to fitting their products (students) for the job market. We are experiencing poor research work, in some cases no research work. Our universities are far-away from using latest and ultra modern technology let alone gigantic contribution to science and technology. Why are our universities out of the list if these are not true? I have some...

No country can develop without honoring the talents or the scholars. We do not have any scarcity of talents but we lack the mentality of honoring our talents. And this is the core cause of our being behind schedule. The culture of merit hunting is not practiced in our country. We can neither nurture our flourishing talents nor retain the existing talents. Every year many meritorious students are passing over abroad with an eye to attaining better and quality education. And most of them have the intention of being settled in that country and not to return his/her poor motherland. Consequently we are missing some talents who could serve the country. Why should this happen? As we are not capable of providing high quality education and research facilities. Applied Physics or Microbiology or other research-able disciplines like that have a great demand in abroad but students of these disciplines of our country remain unemployed because of the lack of mentionable research institu...

To get rid of great oppression of the then Pakistani ruler, our valiant sons fought for nine months long and snatched our long cherished freedom in 1971. At that time, we dreamt of a self-dependent and developed country where there would be no fear of suppression and poverty. Political harmony would exist in the country. Economic, societal, cultural, and educational development would lead the country towards enrichment. If all these phenomena existed, we could claim our freedom. We had dreamt rightly but all of our dreams went under water. Our independence is in black and white only not in reality. We got a free land only, nothing more than that of. We are yet to flavour the real taste of our independence. The country will be truly free when we experience the economic emancipation, self-dependency, social harmony, political stability, cultural independence and education for all. In a word, as like as what we dreamt in 1971. What is our present scenario? Poverty is eati...

No efforts will facilitate the enrichment of the country unless the leaders of the country ensure a developed, up-to-date, and effective education system that is indispensable for proper education. In spite of passing 36 years of our independence, we have not enjoyed the real flavour of independence yet. To me, the cause is the lack of proper education and the root cause is our leaders who led us last 36 years. Our leaders should take the responsibility for not developing an effective education system. In the last years, we saw that they discontinuously changed a part of the system without consulting with the concerned and experienced scholars and it caused huge national financial loss as well as created discrimination among the students. Moreover, there were no consistency in the change and no coordination in the whole system. Leaders should have taken long term and coordinated plan for education. They failed to do it as they lacked far-seeing power, which is the most significant qual...

Recently I have visited the Kingdom of Thailand to take part in a short business course. During my staying there I was trying to find out how Thailand has developed its economy within a short period of time after the Thai originated Asian financial crisis known as “Tom Yam Gung” crisis in 1997. It was His Majesty the King Bhumibol’s Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy originated from the idea of middle path of Buddhism helped the Thai Economy boost up again. This philosophy is very much similar to non-extravagance philosophy of Islam. Let’s see Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) and Bangladesh context. Sufficiency Economy is a philosophy that guides the livelihood and behavior of people at all levels, from the family to the community to the country, on matters concerning national development and administration. This philosophy emphasizes moderation, reasonable consumption, and resilience to external and internal shocks. This self-sufficiency does not mean that every family must grow fo...