adhunika blog

Recently the buzz on the media is the two-year celebration of 400 Years of Capital City Dhaka, Bangladesh, we wanted to post a thought provoking article from our readers, Enjoy!

>>>

By now many of us have watched Al Gore starred movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘; many of us have known about the danger of global warming. We know how quickly the glaciers in the North Pole are melting raising the sea level, that if the sea level rises, Bangladesh will be one of the most vulnerable areas on earth that can be submerged under water by year 2025.

However, in the context of Bangladesh, environmental pollution is already so severe that the bigger picture of global warming scenario may seem far away. For Bangladesh, it is not just global warming; we are polluting our own environment everyday. Especially for Dhaka, our Capital - the City that we are so proud of, we are polluting its air, water, soil/land; not to mention noise pollution and light pollution- all due to our lack of proper planning, and due to our lack of sensitivity towards saving the environment. There are so many aspects of this issue that here with this discussion we can try to focus only on what we can do at our end to protect our own environment.

(more…)

This article is written by our guest blogger Fariha Sarwat. This has been published earlier in Unheard Voices Blog.-Admin

The Newage front-page reports that among other things in Bangladesh, the state of gender-based violence at the work place is also deteriorating. Big surprise! The news comes as a result of a survey conducted by the Social Science Research Council of the Planning Commission, under Ministry of Finance and Planning. The news report by BSS states that -˜92.3 per cent working women of urban areas and 88.3 per cent of rural areas have been badly treated by various types of violence by their male counterparts”. Therefore, on an average, 90% of all women suffer from gender violence at their workplaces. I honestly can’t say that I am surprised.

The study reports that - ˜huge number of adolescent girls and women were being sexually abused in their workplace but it was the most hidden and underreported from violence as there is a tendency to deny the incident.” Almost all the women I know, including self and FnF and those I have worked with, have complained about facing gender-violence of some form or other at their workplace. It’s a malice we are all equally aware of, but powerless against. Even this report”for all it’s gravity and accuracy”is going to be well received, but after being discussed, debated and dissected, will be forgotten and our fates will remain the same. Perhaps, women who are violated every day have already lost faith in our institutions, laws and elders and their ability to protect us. Perhaps, it’s because most people still don’t even understand what constitutes gender-violence/sexual harassment, not even the victims themselves. Perhaps, it’s because we’ve all somehow contributed in making things worse for us by encouraging violence in our silences. Perhaps because we’ve become complacent about this and now choose to take it in our stride”after all, independent, successful women who’re trying to make it in a man’s world should just learn to ˜deal with it” and not complain (because men tell us they don’t).

(more…)

By Farzana Chowdhury, Bindu, member of Adhunika.

It seems like nowadays everyone wants to emigrate somewhere else from Bangladesh. Like me a lot of Bangladeshis are immigrating to Canada. When I go back home to Bangladesh, my friends and family tell me that I am far better off living in Canada than I would be living in Bangladesh. When I ask my friends or family members why they want to emigrate to Canada or North America, the answer is usually, to provide a better life for their children, to give them a secure environment and also for themselves. When I ask myself this question, why I moved to the States and subsequently to Canada, my answer is different. I got married and moved to the States where my husband was a student. Truly, North America never attracted me in the way it attracts many people back home, I loved living in Bangladesh, and I had a wonderful career. (more…)