Why I'm Writing Here
A short note on what this corner of the internet is for, and the kind of writing you'll find on it.
For two decades my writing on Bangladesh’s ICT and telecom policy has lived inside the constraint of the op-ed page — 800 words, a single argument, an editor’s headline. That format has its discipline. But it leaves a lot on the cutting-room floor.
This space exists for the longer form. The half-formed argument that needs to be tested in the open. The technical detail that an op-ed page won’t carry. The follow-up to a piece in The Daily Star or The Financial Express that I’ve been wanting to write for a year. And the occasional cross-disciplinary essay that reaches outside telecom into energy, capital markets, or industrial policy — because none of these fields actually live in isolation.
The conviction that runs through everything here is the one I have been arguing in print since 2013: ICT and IT-enabled services can be the next RMG for Bangladesh. Garments built the country’s last forty years. Software, services, and the digital economy will build the next forty — if our regulation and our skilling and our capital architecture catch up to the ambition.
This is where I’ll work some of that argument out in public. Comments are off; the email at the bottom of every page is on.