‘Dialogue’ is a collective way of opening up judgments and assumptions – which allows people to understand others’ viewpoints. It is a platform to frame a problem and look for options collectively to solve it. Dialogue is also a process that weaves threads of understanding between groups that naturally helps to reduce misunderstandings, conflict, and tension and therefore to dissolve problems.

Today, dialogues have become commonplace as it created a public sphere in the society. People nowadays actively engage themselves in dialogues and in this process new ideas and collective wisdom arise. In Bangladesh, the practice of holding dialogues has become far more widespread and not a single day goes by without a TV talk-show, which is also a form of dialogue, being held on one topic or another. The governments, NGOs, mass media and think tanks in the region now follow the dialogic culture.

However, the situation was not the same in the 90s that witnessed a dramatic escalation in the globalisation trend, particularly for the emerging market economies. Only a few civil society members and orgnisations in Bangladesh used to organise seminars in that time and that too was done only on an occasional basis. In the era of growing economic reformation, they felt the urgency for a common platform to understand the rapid changes happening around the world as well as in Bangladesh, and to contribute to the change to establish a participatory development process. Professor Rehman Sobhan, in particular, felt the need to establish a platform where multi-stakeholder engagement could be ensured in the process of policy appreciation as well as influencing. Therefore, the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) was founded by the eminent economist in 1993 to advance the cause of a participatory, inclusive and accountable development process in Bangladesh.

Over the last two decades, CPD has institutionalised the dialogue process in Bangladesh and across the region as holding dialogues is the organisation’s core activity and primary mission. The think tank has broken the conventional practice and established its credibility as one of the leading platforms – where politicians in the form of ministers, opposition leaders, and parliamentarians, civil society members drawn from the business, professional and academic community, activists from grassroots organisations and the NGO community, are agreeable to sit in dialogues, and conduct informed discussions about key issues of developmental concern and interest.

CPD brought another breakthrough by blending it research outputs with the dialogue process to make it more effective. It has shaped a tradition of preparing reports and publishing the outcome of these dialogues. In the process, the organisation has created an institutional memory of discussions on a variety of policy issues, which is available to both policymakers, academics and concerned stakeholders.

Since its inception, CPD has organised numerous national level and international, regional, and bilateral dialogues. The dialogic culture introduced by CPD played a catalytic role in terms of generating and disseminating knowledge, promoting the culture of inclusion and most importantly highlighting the voice of the marginalised groups in the development process.