• Who Really Benefits from Bangladesh’s Assassinations?

    The assassination of Bangladeshi student leader Sharif Osman Hadi in Dhaka, followed days later by the attempted killing of Motaleb Shikder in Khulna, has intensified speculation over responsibility and motive. In politically charged environments, the search for a culprit often precedes careful analysis. Yet in strategy, attribution is rarely the starting point. Incentives are. A…

  • From Moral Authority to Legal Accountability: Why the Yunus Welfare Fund Case Matters Beyond the Courtroom

    For decades, Muhammad Yunus has occupied a rare position in global public life — celebrated as a pioneer of microfinance and a moral voice for poverty alleviation. His institutions have often been discussed less as corporate entities and more as embodiments of ethical purpose. It is precisely this reputation that makes the Tk 252 crore…

  • Microcredit and Social Stress: How Debt Pressure Reshaped Rural Bangladesh

    For decades, microcredit was promoted as a quiet revolution in poverty reduction. Small loans, delivered largely to rural women, were meant to unlock entrepreneurship, self-reliance and dignity. In international forums, the model was celebrated as a humane alternative to exploitative moneylending. Yet across large parts of rural Bangladesh, the lived experience of microcredit has unfolded…

  • After Shanghai: How China’s Urban Crackdowns Echo Across Xinjiang And Tibet

    When Shanghai swiftly shut down a brief moment of public frustration in late 2022, the incident was treated by many outside China as another episode in the country’s increasingly controlled urban life. Inside China’s minority regions, however, the response carried a deeper message. If small, peaceful gatherings in the country’s most international city could be…

  • The Erasure Machine: How Beijing Deletes Protests From Public Memory

    China’s response to civic unrest has evolved far beyond the heavy-handed crackdowns of previous decades. Today, the state’s most effective tool is not force but disappearance — the ability to remove moments of dissent so completely that they fade from public consciousness. Shanghai, with its rapid digital clean-up after the brief gatherings in late 2022,…

  • Criminalising Assembly: Inside China’s Legal Architecture For Suppressing Peaceful Dissent

    China’s ability to suppress civic expression is often attributed to policing, censorship or surveillance. But the foundation of its control lies deeper: an extensive legal and administrative structure that transforms peaceful assembly into a matter of public order, and at times, national security. Shanghai — a city governed with precision and international visibility — illustrates…

  • How Pakistan’s Occupation of Gilgit-Baltistan Is Unravelling, Strengthening India’s Legal and Moral Position

    Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) is no longer the quiet frontier Pakistan once assumed it would remain. Decades of political exclusion, economic exploitation, and coercive rule have pushed the region into sustained unrest. Each new protest exposes the fragility of Pakistan’s hold over a territory it administers without constitutional authority and claims without historical legitimacy. And in the…

  • Exploitation Of Resource-Rich Gilgit-Baltistan Has Left Its People Impoverished

    Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), positioned at the crossroads of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush, possesses some of the richest natural endowments in South Asia. Its mountains are filled with valuable minerals, its rivers offer enormous hydropower potential, and its valleys yield herbs and gemstones that command high commercial value. Yet despite this abundance, GB’s people remain…

  • The Algorithm Will See You Now: How China’s Digital State Neutralises Dissent Before It Begins

    When public frustration surfaced briefly in Shanghai during late 2022, the world saw only fragments of video before the digital trail vanished. The incident was small, local and largely uncoordinated, yet its rapid disappearance reflected something larger: China’s maturing ability to manage civic sentiment not through visible force, but through the algorithmic architecture that governs…

  • China’s “Unity” Project: The Disguise of Uyghur Erasure

    Behind Beijing’s carefully crafted façade of “ethnic unity” and “social stability” lies a campaign of control masquerading as harmony. In Xinjiang, home to over 13 million Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, China’s leadership has built an Orwellian system designed not to integrate a people, but to erase their very identity. Slogans promising prosperity and inclusion…