At the Secretariat in Dhaka, yesterday’s cabinet meeting began with the usual paperwork and procedural formalities, but the atmosphere was anything but routine. Prime Minister Tarique Rahman looked around the room at his cabinet colleagues and delivered a message that had been building for days: the government was losing the battle for public opinion online, and it was time to fight back. Social media, he told them, could no longer be treated as an afterthought or a platform for ordinary citizens to say whatever they pleased while ministers stayed silent. It had become the central arena where the government’s reputation was being shaped, attacked, and occasionally distorted. Against the backdrop of several recent incidents in Dhaka that had exploded into public debate, the prime minister instructed every cabinet member to become more active online, to highlight the administration’s initiatives, and to respond directly to the misinformation and negative campaigns that were spreading like wildfire. According to insiders who were present, the discussion was candid and at times uncomfortable. Cabinet members acknowledged among themselves that their response had been weak, perhaps even absent, while critics and rumour-mongers controlled the narrative. The Daily Star has learned from people with knowledge of the discussions that the meeting carried a sense of urgency, not just about correcting falsehoods but about fundamentally changing the way the government communicates with a country that is young, digital, and increasingly skeptical.
The sense of urgency did not emerge from nowhere. Over the past few days, Dhaka had witnessed two incidents that seemed tailor-made to test the government’s public relations machinery. The Radda MCH-FP Centre in Mirpur-1, a health facility that served vulnerable families, was attacked, looted, and demolished. In a separate incident, the Brownfish Studio in the ECB Chattar area, belonging to content creator Salman Muqtadir, was vandalised. Both events triggered immediate and intense reactions on social media. But instead of calm, rational discussion, the platforms were flooded with unverified claims, inflammatory assumptions, and outright falsehoods. Cabinet members watched as these narratives began to harden into public opinion. What troubled them most, according to meeting insiders, was the speed with which lies travelled. Fact-checkers had recently identified fabricated political content, including an AI-generated image that appeared to show Prime Minister Tarique Rahman shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The image was fake, but the damage had already been done. Thousands had seen it, many had believed it, and no amount of quiet denial could undo the initial impression. For the cabinet, this was the moment it became clear that the government’s traditional approach or rather the lack of a visible approach was no longer sustainable. They were not dealing with ordinary political criticism; they were dealing with organised disinformation, and they had been caught off guard.
What the prime minister proposed was not merely a defensive strategy of putting out fires, although that was certainly part of it. Tarique Rahman stressed the need to put factual information before the public quickly and to communicate the government’s activities more effectively through social media. But his message went deeper. He wanted cabinet members to understand that in the digital age, silence is often interpreted as guilt, and absence is mistaken for indifference. If the government did not tell its own story, he argued, someone else would tell a distorted version of it. One cabinet member admitted as much after the meeting, noting that there was a great deal of negative campaigning and misinformation online but very little visible effort from either the government or the party to counter it. The response, the minister said, had been weak. That word seemed to linger in the air. It was not an accusation directed at any single individual, but rather a collective confession that the political establishment had been too slow to recognize social media as a serious front in governance. The prime minister’s instruction was therefore unambiguous: every ministry, every spokesperson, every elected representative should see themselves as communicators. They were to promote positive initiatives, highlight development work, and engage with the public in a language that felt human and accessible. This was not about propaganda, Tarique insisted. It was about presence, transparency, and the willingness to answer for one’s actions.
Law and order, interestingly, had not been the principal item on the cabinet’s agenda. But the recent incidents in the capital, particularly the attack on the Radda health centre, inevitably found their way into the discussion. Meeting insiders said that the attacks were considered not just as law-and-order problems but as warning signs of a broader erosion of social trust. When a health facility is demolished and a creator’s studio is vandalised, the immediate shock fades, but the underlying message remains: anger, division, and suspicion are being allowed to fester in the public sphere. The cabinet’s response, at least in the short term, was not to call in security forces or issue threats, but to confront the news ecosystem that amplified such tensions. This is why social media became the centre of attention. The prime minister and his colleagues recognised that the next crisis might not start with a political speech or a policy debate, but with a rumour spreading through WhatsApp, a viral clip taken out of context, or an old photograph resurfacing to create fresh chaos. By instructing cabinet members to be more active online, Tarique was effectively saying that the government needed to meet the public where they already were, not where it wished they would be. It was a recognition that in modern Bangladesh, perception is part of governance, and facts cannot be allowed to be drowned out by noise.
In a separate but equally significant decision, the cabinet approved a move to restore monthly VAT returns, effectively reversing the quarterly filing system that had been introduced just months earlier in July. This was no small administrative tweak. The quarterly system had been introduced with the aim of reducing the compliance burden on businesses, but it quickly became clear that it created a new set of problems. Field officials from the National Board of Revenue complained about monitoring difficulties. Supervising thousands of businesses spread across the country, they argued, was far more challenging when returns were only filed every three months. Operational problems multiplied, and there were real concerns that the quarterly system was putting revenue collection at risk. The Internal Resources Division placed a proposal before the cabinet to amend section 64 of the Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Act, 2012, with the stated goal of improving the pace of revenue collection at the grass-roots level. The cabinet gave both in-principle and final approval to the draft Value Added Tax and Supplementary Duty Amendment Ordinance, 2026, subject to legal vetting by the Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division. Once the amendment takes effect, taxpayers will once again have to submit a return for each tax period, effectively restoring the monthly system. The message was clear: practical experience had overturned theoretical elegance.
The details of the restored system reflect the careful balancing act between oversight and flexibility. Under the new arrangement, returns will generally have to be filed within fifteen days of the end of each tax period. If that fifteenth day happens to fall on a government holiday, the deadline will move to the next working day, a small accommodation that recognises the realities of life in Bangladesh. For government bodies, semi-government agencies, autonomous institutions, banks, insurance companies, and taxpayers filing zero returns, the deadline is more generous: twenty days after the end of the tax period. These distinctions are not arbitrary. They reflect the fact that larger organisations often have more complex accounting systems, while government entities can be slowed by bureaucratic procedures. But the underlying principle is that revenue information should be fresh, frequent, and reliable. The decline in VAT collections during July and August, which fell by about twenty-one percent compared to the same period the previous year, was not necessarily caused solely by the quarterly filing system. NBR officials themselves cautioned that it was too early to draw such a direct connection. Yet the trend was worrying enough to prompt a course correction. The decision to abandon quarterly filing is also a reminder that policy, no matter how well-intentioned, must survive contact with reality. A system that looks good on paper but cannot be enforced, monitored, or trusted is not a reform; it is a liability. By restoring monthly returns, the government has signalled that it is willing to admit when something is not working and adjust accordingly.
The cabinet also adopted a resolution congratulating the prime minister and the Bangladesh delegation on their participation in the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. On the surface, this was a routine gesture, a way of acknowledging the country’s presence on the world stage. But in the context of everything else discussed that day, it carried a deeper meaning. Bangladesh is a country that increasingly matters internationally, and the prime minister’s voice on global issues is part of a larger narrative that needs to be shared and understood at home. Too often, the government’s achievements are overshadowed by domestic controversies, many of them amplified by the very social media platforms it is now learning to embrace. The cabinet meeting ended with a sense that the government was at an inflection point. The decisions around social media and VAT were not connected on the surface, but they were linked by a common thread: the need for responsiveness, honesty, and a willingness to change course when necessary. Humanising governance means speaking directly to the public, admitting mistakes, and showing that behind every policy there are people trying to make life better. It means owning the story before someone else writes it for you. The conversation that took place at the Secretariat yesterday was not just about circulating circulars or approving ordinances. It was about a government realising that in the age of information, trust is the most precious currency, and trust must be earned every single day, online and offline, in the cabinet room and on the streets of Dhaka. Whether the social media push will succeed remains to be seen, but for the first time in a long while, the direction feels clear.