The population of Bangladesh is 156,186,882. Bangla, also known as Bengali, is the official language of Bangladesh, with 98.8% of people who speak it. Another 1.2% speak other languages. 89.1% of people who live in the country are Muslim, 10% are Hindu and the other 0.9% includes Buddhists and Christians.
Bangladesh’s government is parliamentary republic and has a mixed legal system of mostly English common law and Islamic law. Bangladesh’s economy has grown roughly 6% per year since 1996 despite political instability, poor infrastructure, corruption, insufficient power supplies, slow implementation of economic reforms, and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recession. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the services sector, almost half of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. The labor force consists of people in agriculture (47%), industry work (13%) and service work (40%). The unemployment rate sits at 4.9% but it is important to note that about 40% of the population is underemployed with many people who were counted as “employed” work only a few hours a week at low wages.
The Daily Prothom Alo, in terms of circulation, is the largest newspaper in Bangladesh. It is published in Bengali and read by half a million people every day. It was established in 1998, headquartered in the capital city of Dhaka. The paper has taken to the local culture and is a favorite of locals. The print media is private and consists of hundreds of weekly publications that present many viewpoints, though some outspoken papers have faced pressure in the past. Television is the biggest medium for news in Bangladesh. Radio is also important in the country. The prime role of community radio is to give voice to the voiceless people who do not have access to the mainstream media to express their ideas and views regarding community development. Promoting the right to communicate, speed up the process of informing the community, assist the free flow of information and therefore act as a catalyst of change are few major tasks are to be done by community radio.
There are an estimated 11.4 million internet users in Bangladesh. The use of internet is unrestricted by the government however; some journalist’s emails have been monitored in the past. There are huge online newspaper and news portals in Bangladesh. But all the news portals are not listed by Bangladesh government.