The year 2021 has seen a welcome profusion of events and anthologies to mark the 50th year of Bangladesh's Liberation. Naturally, on most of these occasions the country's history took centre stage. While fresh debates about our pasts are necessary and inevitable, we at Himal Southasian felt a need for more conversations on Bangladesh's present, as well as on the forces shaping its future. This is what we have attempted to do in our special series of articles, titled Rethinking Bangladesh, which brings together over a dozen writers and artists, many of them based in Bangladesh, and all of them with expertise and informed insights on the country.
In editing this special issue, our interests were guided by three concerns: economics, ecology and technology, and their intersections with Bangladeshi society and state. As we looked for stories, reached out to writers and solicited submissions, our hope was to add to the ongoing conversations on democratic decline and economic transformations that Bangladesh today faces. And throughout the articles in the series, we have tried to go beyond, and when necessary challenged, the conventional coverage that Bangladesh often receives from international outlets.