The Bangladesh Assistant High Commission in Tripura's capital Agartala on Tuesday announced the suspension of all visa and consular services with immediate effect until further notice because of 'security reasons', a day after the mission's premises was breached by a group of people protesting against the arrest of Hindu monk Chinmoy Krishna Das in Dhaka.
'I will be researching the successful business models that have emerged from the rapid industrialisation of India's economy and its effects within Indian society. In addition, I will be examining the entrepreneurship process within India and future opportunities for entrepreneurs in India.'
Grameen Bank managing director Muhammad Yunus has asserted that India is well positioned to tap the huge potential for growth of social business within its existing legal and regulatory framework.
Stating that an investigation team will work under the full supervision of the United Nations to ensure complete transparency and impartiality, he said, "None of the outgoing government involved in the murder will be exempted."
Muhammad Yunus is the 66-year-old Bangladeshi behind the Grameen Movement micro-banking system.
Sections of our media and elites take Western reports/judgements at face value and are ready to condemn the targets without understanding the deeper power linkages behind such actions, asserts Colonel Anil A Athale (Retd).
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ruffled a couple of sensitive feathers while on her otherwise successful South Asian tour.
'We should be mindful that the religious minority community in one country is the majority in another (and) so treatment of the minority community in our respective countries will be an important variable in our relationship'
Arsonists torched a house belonging to a Hindu family with no political affiliation in northwest Bangladesh, a media report said on Wednesday, in the latest incident of targeted attacks on the minority community after the fall of the Sheikh Hasina-led government.
The Group of Elders include world leaders like -- Desmond Tutu, former UN Secretary Kofi Annan, Former US President Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, Graca Machel, Gro Harlem Brundtland et al.
The company has started a pilot project on micro-finance in partnership with Grameen Bank of Bangladesh.
Truck movements across the India-Bangladesh border are on the rise, with increasing rentals signalling a trade recovery between the two South Asian nations. Yet, geopolitical tension looms large, with Bangladesh now under an interim government for nearly two months.
Most studies suggest that microcredit is beneficial but only to a limited extent and the reality is less attractive than the promise.
A senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader has blamed an 'ecosystem of former diplomats, bureaucrats, politicians, and think tanks' for creating a 'bogeyman' to mislead the Indian establishment into believing that Indo-Bangla relations would deteriorate without the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League.
Doctors said it was due to dehydration.
MFIs, with their eye on the present, often do not consider that once the claims start and the insurance company realises that it is not making money, the future of the products themselves may be in jeopardy.
"Everything may look normal in Kashmir. Everything may look normal here. We may be celebrating the victory, although of course some people believe that that victory or that success of 2024 was perhaps only marginal, perhaps a lot more needs to be done," he said.
Even a whiff of an incident like the violent 1989 shirt-ripping attack on Krishnamachari Srikkanth by a Karachi spectator would be ruinous. It would set back the ties further, derail an ongoing tournament, and harden Indian attitudes on playing Pakistan anywhere at all, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'New Delhi has to make up its mind whether it wants to be a friend of the Bangladeshi people or they want to be a friend of a section of people, or one party or one leader'
Nearly 650 people have been killed in the recent unrest in Bangladesh between July 16 and August 11, the United Nations Human Rights Office has said in a preliminary report, suggesting a thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detentions.
'The present generation, either due to historical amnesia or political propaganda, has been fed a narrative that paints India as an adversary rather than an ally.'
It's intriguing that the prime minister now wants his American partner to help protect the Hindu minority in Bangladesh. That's conceding to the Americans a pre-eminence India has always contested, resented and feared, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
When I asked Krishna Gopal Sengupta, who had travelled through Bangladesh from Chittagong to Petrapole if the interim government had made any impact at ground level, he said, "it's been only a couple of days. They will need some time." Shyam G Menon reports from Petrapole, India's entry point with Bangladesh.
A Bangladeshi commission has proposed the government takeover or split the Nobel-award-winning Grameen Bank into 19 parts, sparking criticism with several analysts fearing it to be a systematic move to destroy the pioneering micro lending agency.
The event, which was slated to have been held at Rajghat to commemorate the Buddhist monk's 60th year in exile in India, was later moved to Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, and will now be held at the end of the month.
Faadu: A Love Story looks like one of those old movies with a socialist bent that glorified honest poverty and looked down upon ambition and enterprise, notes Deepa Gahlot.
Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus asked the Indian industry on Tuesday to get into micro-finance activities and the government to enable a legal framework for promotion of 'social business' in the country.
Race for Asia's No. 1 MFI spot: Bandhan now closes in on Grameen Bank
Even Charlton Heston intervened on his behalf.
'The bhadralok would have earlier baulked at the very idea of wearing a coloured dhoti; now, with Dr Banerjee wearing, it is quite likely to be the hot fashion item during Durga Puja next year,' says Uttaran Das Gupta.
'The lockdown has been a great excuse to delay payments.'
A stampede at a soccer stadium in Indonesia has killed at least 125 people and injured 180 after police sought to quell violence on the pitch, authorities said on Sunday, in one of the world's worst stadium disasters.
'...then Bangladesh would have been the world champions a long time ago!'
Sunshine Schools are looking to attract interest from members of the urban 'aspirational' class -- vegetable vendors, security guards, drivers, etc -- who cannot afford the fees charged by budget private schools.
Here's a glimpse of all that happened around the world last week in images.
Tamal Bandyopadhyay discusses his latest book Bandhan: The Making of a Bank at Bandhan headquarters in Kolkata.
'They are not affected by ISIS' sentiment of avenging the suffering of the global ummah.' 'They have a huge ummah of their own in India, a huge Muslim population.' 'And because of that, they have to take into consideration the political and social conditions of Muslims in India.' 'They have to express themselves in a more political way and not through terrorism.'