There’s another protest strike in the works for this Monday. This time, the opposition BNP has promised a massive hartal that will make good use of the grievances of the four rightist parties with which it was in coalition. Global food prices have skyrocketed with attendant increases in the price of cereal grains. Moreover, the […]
The Times has published a good piece on Grameen Bank founder Md. Yunus growing troubles. Columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece some weeks ago on Grameen and, perhaps, due to his own work on women’s capabilities, he might have spread the word that this is a good story to follow. The Times piece does a […]
I had written quite critically on the charges that Grameen Bank founder Dr. Md. Yunus had engaged in accounting impropriety with development aid funds. Grameen Bank recently faced down allegations and was cleared of any wrong-doing. At the time I had written that this mishap provided an opportunity for stakeholders in the micro-finance industry to […]
The Year So Far. Happy New Year to all. By the time this gets posted and read, Bangladesh will have been swept into the parade of countries switching alendars to a new year, 2011, and one sincerely hopes her people will turn to a new way of viewing the world. Bangladesh, its government and its […]
Eight days ago, on December 16th, the Awami League government of Bangladesh arrested, detained and allegedly began to torture BNP leader Salauddin Qader Chowdhury. This is abhorrent news, no matter the turns of fortune in a man’s life, no matter the moral worth of a cause, no matter the government’s writ on the matter. That […]
This might have passed you by; certainly it did me. There’s no surprise here, nothing really worth accounting for; but I’ll go ahead and account for it anyway. Jamaat has come out to say that during the troubles in 1971, the people who constituted both the party, Jamaat-e-Islami and the paramilitary killer brigade, were all […]
Pomp and ceremony will come and go and there’s yet plenty of time to crow about vainglorious victory; but before the day passes irretrievably I’d like to wish my fellow native Bangladeshis a happy Victory Day. May all our days, yours and mine, be driven toward a better future, with more than a passing glance […]
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has come to help Bangladesh’s economy grow in the short to medium term, even as donor countries have begun to the belt on their fiscal and monetary policy. In consultation with the Finance Minster, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisor, Bangladesh Bank and other major institutional stake-holders, the IMF has proposed […]
At least 22 people have died, with over a 100 injured in a garments factory gone ablaze. The Daily Star reports that many other factory workers remained trapped in the factory located in the outskirts of Dhaka. This news comes at the heels of new deadly protests and street fights over the implementation of the […]
Earlier today the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) cleared Grameen Bank’s moves to supply its private arm with development funds targeted for its non-profit works. The Minister of the Environment and International Development, Erik Solheim, the official who commisioned a Norad report on this affair offered this assessment: “There is no indication that Norwegian funds […]
If it weren’t already enough that the Norwegian government is trying to investigate Grameen Bank’s books from some fifteen years ago, now the local government, just down the street, sitting in Parliament is out for some explanations from Grameen Bank’s founder Dr. Mohammad Yunus. Sheikh Hasina has chastised Dr. Yunus for the micro-credit business model […]
There’s a new brew simmering in Bangladesh. It’s made of allegations, recriminations and excuses. This brew has to do with acts committed by the venerable founder Dr. Mohammad Yunus some fifteen years ago. This brew threatens to irreparably mar microcredit institutions, the poverty alleviation regime that over the last several years has gone private, virally, […]
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