The social and political ambience of the country is in some turmoil at present. One of the factors contributing to this unwanted situation is the decline of our ethical and moral standards in society. The effects of such an unprecedented decline are everywhere from the economic sector to the political field. The violent, tragic and mournful incidents occurring nowadays are becoming a matter of grave concern. This demands a soul searching and a thorough reevaluation of our social and moral perspectives. Serious discussion of ethics and morality, therefore, has to be started at all levels of society. With this urgency in mind some youths have got together in Dhaka to publish a little mag entitled NEE aiming to open up a social space for this.

The first issue of the NEE contains an interview of Prof. Abul Kashem Fazlul Haq, President of Bangla Academy, and essays by Raahman Chowdhury, a playwright and historian, Fatihul Quadir Samrat, Chief Editor of NCTB, Ashraf Ahmed, a US-based scientist and writer, Arshad Siddiqui, a poet and journalist, Emran Mahfuz, a poet and litterateur, and other young and senior writers.

They have discussed various ethics related issues in our current society. The relation of ethics with religion and politics, the moral stand of Socrates in his life in Greece, role of the state in shaping up people's moral lives, how knowledge of space science can form a strong ethical sense in readers' minds, the ethical philosophy manifested in the stories of sufi saints, lack of cultural courage during the past oppressive regime that ended through the student and youth uprising, and many other serious and important things have been discussed in this issue.

A roundtable discussion, chaired by Mofidul Hasan Shahin and moderated by Md. Mahbub Hossain, on the contents of the NEE was arranged in the library room of Proyas at Kashinathpur in Pabna on 19 December. It was jointly organized by Shikkhalok and Proyas and supported by CDIP, a national level NGO. Teachers, writers, journalists, social workers and college students were present in the program. They expressed their grave concern about and disappointment at the present condition of society in terms of ethical perception.

Discussants agreed that ethical awareness building should be done among children and youth. And so, a campaign for promoting ethical and moral sense should be started at school level. Building a generation with a strong moral sense as well as insight of the philosophy of ethics is an urgent necessity at present in society all over the country, said discussants in that program. NEE may show the light in that direction, they said.

The writer is Editor, Biggan O Sangskriti (a little magazine)