The November 2020 issue of Thinking Aloud focuses on “COVID-19 and Development Challenges”. The first-page article titled “COVID-19 and the road to recovery in Bangladesh” emphasizes that the current discussion on the recovery needs to change its focus from the narrow GDP growth rate to broader development issues, i.e. poverty, employment and inequality. The economic and social recovery of the country will be weak and fragile if the recovery process doesn’t effectively address these three critical development challenges. The third and fourth pages of this issue narrate the synopsis of the SANEM International Development Conference (SIDC) 2020 on “COVID-19 and the Development Challenges”, held online on October 1-3, 2020. The convener of the conference was Dr Selim Raihan. Researchers and academicians from five continents presented twenty-four papers at the conference on themes of macroeconomic challenges, international trade, public health, and health care services, education, labour market, employment, remittances, migration, poverty, inequality, and social protection concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Around five hundred noted academicians, researchers, development practitioners, and policy-makers from home and abroad attended various sessions of the conference. The first http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/cialis/ session discussed the impact of COVID-19 on labour markets of various countries. Professor Dani Rodrik delivered the keynote speech of the conference in the second session. He stressed the necessity of a shift towards alternative models for globalization and development in the context of the pandemic. The third session focused on the macroeconomic impacts of COVID-19 in different regions. The fourth session addressed the institutional challenges exposed or induced by the pandemic. The fifth session again looked into the macroeconomic trends and fluctuations against the backdrop of the pandemic. The sixth session discussed pandemic’s implications on poverty and human development. Session seven brought to light different country experiences of the pandemic and the policies undertaken to tackle it. Session eight featured a panel discussion on the country-specific, regional, and global development challenges that emerged due to the pandemic. Professor Francois Bourguignon, Professor Kunal Sen, and Professor Wahiduddin Mahmud graced the session as distinguished panellists. The fourth page depicts the snapshots from the sessions of SIDC 2020.
