South Asian University
The first Convocation of the South Asian University (SAU) was held in New Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan on Saturday. Presided over by Mr. Kamal Thapa, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Nepal, India’s State Minister of External Affairs General (Retd) Dr. V K Singh was the Chief Guest and delivered the Convocation Speech. The welcome address was given by Dr. Kavita A Sharma, the President (VC) of SAU. The concept of SAU was adopted in the 13 th . SAARC Summit held in Dhaka with the objective of equipping the young minds of South Asian region with world-class cutting edge knowledge and nurturing Regional Consciousness. The SAU is a joint initiative of the eight-member nations of SAARC. The government of India has gifted hundred acres of land for the permanent campus of SAU in Maidan Garhi, on the outskirts of the India’s capital. The construction of academic and administrative building is going on in full swing. All capital investment will also beborne by the Government of India and each of the SAARC nations will have a satellite campus. Currently about three hundred Bangladeshi students are studying in SAU’s seven Departments in Master’s, M.Phil and PhD level. Bangladesh’s students comprise the second largest student population in SAU, after India. There are also three Bangladeshi Faculty members teaching at SAU. Thapa and General (R) V K Singh both in their speech emphasised that as the countries comprising SAARC shares common history, heritage, tradition, religious beliefs and has common problems there is no alternative other than to build a common understanding and fraternity of the people in the region. Some 656 graduates were conferred their degrees in the Convocation of which 348 attended in person. Of these 71 were from Bangladesh, one receiving his M.Phil degree. Amongst others, Md. Ashrafuddin of the Department of Computer Science was awarded Gold Medal was represented in the Convocation by the Chairman of the UGC and member of the Board of Governors Prof Abdul Mannan and High Commissioner of Bangladesh in India Syed Muazzem Ali, says a press release.
Equity and Justice Working Group
Equity and Justice Working Group Bangladesh (EquityBD), a network of right- based civil societies, farmers, labourers and NGOs has organised a press conference at National Press Club in the city on ” Budget 2016-17. At the press conference speakers criticised the proposed national budget as a budget of inequality and injustice and they urge for free and fair growth of democratic intuitions and also demand immediate steps to arrest growing nature of capital flights from the country. The press conference was moderated by Rezaul Karim Chowdhury , Chief Moderator of EquityBD while position paper was read out by Ahsanul Karim Babor . Other speakers of the press conference were – Sayed Aminul Haque EquityBD, Mostafa Kamal Akhanda of COAST and Zayed Iqbal Khan of Bangladesh Krishok Federation.Mr Ahsanul Karim read out from the position paper, there are 26 % increase of interest to bank and other sources in this proposed budget for taking loan compared to last year. Non -development expenditure is 55 % including interest it is total 67 % of the budget, rest 33 % is only for development expenditure. The capital flight of 2013 was 12 time higher than the foreign grant and 141 per cent more of foreign loan of the year 2015-16. Bangladeshi people’s deposit in different banks of Switzerland was increased by 43 per cent during 2014 compare to previous year while deposit rate of other countries especially of India has reduced drastically. Sayed Aminul said that while India has shown several effective measures to stop capital flight, our government has shown hardly any effective measures in this regard. On the other hand in this proposed budget there are proposal of enhancing VAT and other taxes, which is injustice, says a press release.
