Reaz Ahmed
Sumon

On the morning of April 24, 2013, a nine-story building named Rana Plaza collapsed in Savar, just outside Dhaka. More than 1,100 people were killed, the vast majority of them young women sewing clothes for Western brands. Another 2,500 were injured.

The building was constructed on the site of a filled-in pond and was never structurally sound. The owner illegally added upper floors without the mandatory approval from the capital's development authority. Large diesel generators, necessary because of regular power failures, were placed on these upper floors. When switched on, they shook the poorly constructed building.

The day before the collapse, deep cracks opened in the walls and the structure shook. An engineer who inspected the building warned that it was unsafe. The bank and shops on the lower floors evacuated immediately. But the owners of the five garment factories inside told their workers to return the next morning. Some threatened to withhold a month's pay. The workers went back because they had no choice. The next morning, a generator was switched on. The building buckled and came down on them.

A government investigation later found widespread fault, recommending charges against the building owner, the factory owners, and local officials who had granted approvals. The disaster exposed the human cost of an industry built on the lowest wages in the world.

On July 11, 2024, thousands of student protesters marched on Shahbagh intersection in Dhaka and broke through a line of riot police. For the first eleven days of the movement, the marches had been peaceful. That morning, the government deployed riot police, armored vehicles, and water cannons to lock down the city's main roads. The students walked forward anyway.

The protest had begun in June over a quota system reserving 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of 1971 war veterans. Students and job seekers argued the system favored political loyalists over merit in a job market that was already failing them. The demonstration grew into a nationwide uprising. The government shut down mobile internet, imposed a curfew, and issued a shoot-on-sight order. By August 5, the prime minister had resigned and left the country.

The photograph captures a fierce territorial boundary battle between two pairs of common mynas. Known for their highly protective nature, these birds frequently engage in high-stakes aerial and ground duels to secure nesting sites and establish dominance. The frame locks in the raw chaos of wings, claws, and intense focus, a split-second moment where survival instinct overrides everything else. It isolates four individuals mid-conflict, documenting the intense physical engagement used to establish boundary lines during the breeding season. Violent battles like this often erupt between occupants of a nesting site and a pair attempting to evict them, with each bird grappling its opposite number, sometimes dropping to the ground locked in each other's claws.

The image captures the quiet beauty of the sprawling green estates, a landscape that has been cultivated for generations. But behind the tranquil scenery lies a stark human rights crisis: a workforce facing severe malnutrition, high rates of psychological distress, and unaddressed health challenges, all while sustaining a multi-million dollar global industry.

The workers who tend these gardens face systemic poverty, earning a daily wage of roughly Tk 187, a sum that falls far short of basic living costs. They are subjected to exhausting quotas, required to pluck 23 kilograms of leaves or prune 250 bushes just to be marked present for the day.

Despite living and working on these estates for generations, they remain landless, facing eviction if their families lack an active registered worker. Roughly 75 percent of this workforce is female, and studies show that 64 percent of women workers are underweight, with many suffering from anaemia and other health issues linked to malnutrition. This system is not an accident. It is rooted in British colonial rule, when indentured labourers were brought from famine-prone regions of India under coercive conditions. That legacy of exploitation persists today, as workers continue to fight for a living wage of Tk 500, a struggle that echoes the historic "Muluk Chalo" uprising of 1921.

Biswa Ijtema, the second-largest Muslim gathering after the Hajj, draws millions of devotees to the Turag river in Tongi every year. Tablighi Jamaat has organised the event since 1946, and in 2011, organisers split the congregation into phases to manage the overwhelming crowds. The image captures a fraction of the faithful, a sea of people united in prayer that stretches far beyond the frame. Rows of prayer mats cover the road, and buses sit abandoned at the edge of the crowd, swallowed by the sheer number of worshippers.

Bullock carts carry harvested straw across a paddy field after the winter harvest in rural Bangladesh. White oxen pull the heavy loads under a hazy sky, a familiar sight in the country's agricultural heartland. The scene preserves ancient farming traditions in a modernizing world, a quiet reminder of the rhythms that have sustained rural life for generations.