Dhaka still bears the imprint of Sheikh Hasina.
Joy Bangla! Joy Bangabandhu!
These immortal slogans still thunder through the soul of Bangladesh with undying patriotic fire.
The indomitable spirit of Sheikh Hasina continues to inspire millions with hope, progress, and national pride. When she returns, Bangladesh shall once again smile with renewed strength, dignity, and glorious aspiration.
A few days ago, in the fading glow of the afternoon, I traversed the heart of Dhaka seated behind a friend on his motorbike, gliding through a city curiously relieved of its habitual frenzy and relentless tumult.
The roaring congestion had momentarily receded. The relentless cacophony of horns, buses, and human desperation seemed suspended in silence. And in that rare stillness, Dhaka revealed itself with startling clarity.
As we crossed one flyover after another, passed through broad avenues, illuminated intersections, landscaped medians, and newly sculpted urban arteries, one name returned to my mind repeatedly and with undeniable force: Sheikh Hasina.
No matter which road we travelled, her imprint appeared everywhere.
This city—once synonymous with unbearable gridlock, decaying infrastructure, unmanaged chaos, and urban despair—was transformed under her stewardship into a capital that dared to dream beyond its limitations.
Dhaka today, despite all its imperfections, carries the visible architecture of ambition.
The elevated expressways, modern flyovers, widened roads, metro rail corridors, aesthetic beautification projects, bridges, tunnels, and carefully redesigned urban spaces did not emerge from thin air.
They were the result of political vision, administrative persistence, and a long-term developmental philosophy rarely witnessed in our national history.
One may disagree with policies. One may oppose political decisions. That is the natural rhythm of democracy. But to deny visible transformation is not criticism—it is intellectual dishonesty.
As I travelled through the city today, I could not help but feel a deep sense of bewilderment at the sheer ingratitude that has infected sections of our public discourse.
There exists today a culture of relentless vilification where accusations are manufactured casually, rumours are amplified recklessly, and achievements are dismissed with astonishing cruelty.
Facts are no longer weighed with sobriety; they are drowned beneath waves of emotional propaganda and performative outrage.
A dangerous tendency has emerged in our society: the refusal to acknowledge accomplishment simply because one dislikes the individual behind it. This is neither rational politics nor mature citizenship. It is the corrosion of civic fairness.
The modernisation of Dhaka was not accidental.
It required years of planning, enormous administrative coordination, foreign negotiations, infrastructural financing, bureaucratic discipline, and political courage.
Mega-projects are easy to criticise from the comfort of social media cynicism, but history teaches us those nations rise only when leaders possess the audacity to build beyond their own political lifespan.
Under Sheikh Hasina’s leadership, Bangladesh projected itself not merely as a surviving nation, but as an aspiring one. The skyline changed. Connectivity improved.
Public infrastructure expanded. Economic confidence deepened. International observers who once viewed Bangladesh through the singular lens of poverty and disaster were compelled to revise their perceptions.
A nation long trapped in pessimism began cautiously embracing the vocabulary of progress.
Today, when one rides through the cleaner roads, the modern flyovers, the carefully illuminated corridors of the capital, one witnesses not abstract rhetoric but concrete reality. Development becomes physically visible. It acquires steel, asphalt, light, and movement.
And yet, paradoxically, the louder the achievements became, the louder grew the hostility of those determined to erase them from public memory.
But cities remember.
Concrete remembers.
Bridges remember.
Roads remember.
History remembers.
Political storms may come and go. Governments may rise and collapse.
Slogans may intoxicate the crowd for a season. But enduring infrastructure possesses a stubborn permanence that rhetoric cannot erase.
Every functioning flyover, every expanded highway, every modernised corridor silently testifies to an era of determined state-building.
As dusk settled over Dhaka this evening, the city lights flickered alive like constellations upon asphalt. I looked around and realised that leadership is not measured merely by speeches or popularity; it is measured by what remains standing long after the noise subsides.
And throughout this vast capital, the visible remnants of transformative ambition continue to speak with quiet eloquence.
One may debate Sheikh Hasina.
One may criticise her.
One may politically oppose her.
But one cannot honestly traverse the roads of modern Dhaka and pretend that nothing changed under her hands.
The city itself refuses to participate in that falsehood.
