Sheikh Hasina Wajed, re-elected to her fourth consecutive term as Prime Minister of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in January 2024, abruptly resigned and fled to India on 5 August 2024. Jubilant protesters lost no time in ransacking Ganabhaban, her official residence in the capital city of Dhaka, and her ancestral home-turned-museum, while others publicly rejoiced in the departure of an increasingly authoritarian Hasina, whose fall from grace was the direct result of student-led protests which began on 1 July 2024. The Students Against Discrimination movement sought replacement of the quota system, first introduced in 1972, which reserves 30 per cent of Bangladesh Civil service jobs for the children and grandchildren of freedom fighters (Mukti joddhas) in the War of Liberation (25 March 1971 to 16 December 1971) and thus favours members of the ruling Awami League (AL), with additional quotas for various marginalised groups, in place of an exclusively merit-based system. Far too late in the day, the Bangladesh Supreme Court scaled back most of the quotas on 21 July, leaving 93 per cent of jobs to be decided on merit, but the damage had already been done. At least 187 people were killed in the ensuing nationwide crackdown between 10 and 20 July 2024 on what were initially peaceful protests, including 67 deaths on 19 July alone. On 4 August, as almost a hundred people, including 13 police officers, lost their lives, an indefinite nationwide curfew was declared and internet access disabled. The violence was mostly blamed on the police, the paramilitary Rapid Action Battalion, and the Bangladesh Chhatra League- the pro-government student wing of the Awami League.
In keeping with the wishes of the student protesters, Professor Muhammad Yunus was sworn in on 8 August 2024 as chief adviser to the interim caretaker government, to serve as acting Prime Minister. Yunus, an economist by training, founded Grameen Bank in 1983 and pioneered the concept of microfinance, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. In recent years, he has incurred the wrath of Sheikh Hasina and has been victimised by the courts, most recently in January 2024 for violating the country’s labour laws. It is expected that the new caretaker government will prepare for parliamentary elections to the Jatiya Sangsad, Bangladesh’s unicameral legislature, in the near future.
Bangladesh is a predominantly low-lying riverine state, prone to flooding and other natural climatic disasters. Almost 175 million people are tightly packed into an area of 56, 997 square miles, making it the most densely populated larger country in the world, apart from some city-states, and eighth most populated country on the planet. Bangladesh has a 2,545-mile-long, mostly porous, border with India and a 360-mile-long coastline along the Bay of Bengal, both of which help define its identity as a nation-state.
The 52-year-old nation gained independence on 16 December 1971, when it was freed from the political domination of West Pakistan to become a sovereign and secular state under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as first prime minister. Mujib’s AL party won a landslide victory in the March 1973 parliamentary elections. The post-independence euphoria was short-lived, as both the founding figures of Bangladesh eventually lost their lives to assassin’s bullets. The Fourth Amendment to the constitution heralded a drift towards authoritarianism in January 1975, with the establishment of a presidential system, and of a single national party, the Bangladesh Sramik Awami League (BAKSAL). Mujib was assassinated by army officers, along with his wife, sons, and fifteen others, in the “midnight murders” of 15 August 1975. His two daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana (the mother of UK Labour MP Tulip Siddiq) escaped as they happened to be in West Germany at the time. Hasina spent six years in exile in New Delhi before returning to Bangladesh in May 1981. General Ziaur Rahman, who had declared independence on Mujib’s behalf in March 1971, took charge following Bangladesh’s first military coup, and went on to found the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in 1978. He, too, was assassinated in May 1981, following which General Hussain Muhammad Ershad seized power in yet another coup in 1982, which was followed by a long period of military rule. The BNP formed a coalition government with the Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, following the 1991 parliamentary elections, which can be considered the first truly democratic elections in the country. The AL and BNP alternated in power between 1991 and 2009, interrupted by a military-backed caretaker government in 2007. General Zia’s widow, Begum Khaleda Zia, became prime minister from 1991 to 1996, regaining power in 2001. Hasina served as prime minister between 1996 and 2001, and again from 2009 to 2024. Khaleda Zia was sentenced to 17 years in prison on corruption charges in 2018, only to be released in March 2020, and freed from house arrest on 6 August 2024, after the Hasina’s downfall.
Under Hasina’s stewardship, Bangladesh’s economy grew at a prodigious rate, accelerating a process that was initiated by the New Industrial Policy for the promotion of export-oriented manufacturing in 1982, which led to the growth of the ready-made garment industry. With the help of various NGOs and generous funding from the World Bank-Bangladesh’s largest external lender-progress was made in empowerment of women (access to education, financial inclusion, job opportunities), investment in critical infrastructure (including digitalisation), universal access to electricity, and building resilience to climate shocks. Once described, back in 1971, as a ‘basket case’ by a US State Department official, Bangladesh’s per capita GDP increased more than twenty-fold from 1971 to 2022, although wealth became concentrated in the hands of rich elites, including members of the government and senior figures in the AL. Hasina demonstrated her humanitarian side as Bangladesh welcomed over a million Rohingya Muslim refugees from neighbouring Myanmar in 2017. But there was a darker side to her prime ministership, as Hasina’s government was accused of complicity in the forced disappearances of journalists and political opponents, extrajudicial killings of inconvenient people, and other forms of repression of the opposition.
Sheikh Hasina’s secular and India-friendly policies are likely to be re-evaluated in the aftermath of her departure, notwithstanding the impressive economic growth in Bangladesh under her rule. The electorate will help decide on the future path of the nation as it wrangles with the challenges of youth unemployment, wealth inequality, inflation, a balance-of-payments deficit, power shortages, and spreading Islamism, among many others. Sheikh Hasina’s final destination remains uncertain, but it seems unlikely that she will regain power in her homeland over the remaining years of her life.
Ashis Banerjee