Khushi Kabir

The people have to be more alert, assertive, and vocal.

If a single party comes to power repeatedly, without any competition, then how meaningful are elections?

Has any political party ever displayed responsible behaviour?

How can a development organisation in Bangladesh truly reach the grassroots?

Mob frenzy, communal attacks, attacks on people with different views, positions and beliefs are created deliberately.

I do not usually write very easily. As someone working mostly with people with little or no literacy, my forte, as I would like to call it, is the oral tradition.

The year 1971, a year that is firmly entrenched in everyone's mind as being a momentous time in history. Those were tumultuous times, insecure times, distressing, perturbing, worrying times.

December 14 visits us every year with a deep pain. A pain of great loss. And made even more painful by the fact that these golden daughters and sons of the soil were taken away from us when the nation was in the cusp of attaining independence.

As a woman, a feminist, and a rationalist, who believes in democracy, freedom of speech and thought, equality in all fields, freedom and security of one's movement and the right to our basic needs, including that of sharpening our intellect through knowledge and culture, I will speak out, I will fight, I will sing, I will dance, I will write. My mind is my own, it belongs only to me.