After Bangladesh’s uprising, we must seize the moment for real change
By: Sushovan Dhar
Date: 4 November 2024
Campaigns: General
Mass protests this summer sparked the resignation of Bangladesh’s prime minister, and a change of government. But this is only the beginning, says SUSHOVAN DHAR.
This August, a month-long student protest saw Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina Wazed, forced to resign and flee the country.
The protests started with the demand to end the quota system which allocates 30% of government jobs to the descendants of freedom fighters. However, they escalated into a broader rebellion against Hasina’s despotic regime and her party, the Awami League.
In the end, the students earned a hard-fought victory which saw the overthrow of Hasina’s regime – but one that also witnessed over 1,000 deaths and thousands more injured at the hands of the authorities.
The fall of the Awami League
The end of the Hasina regime marks a full circle of the Awami League’s hegemony in the nation’s politics. The party’s latest consolidation began with her electoral triumph in the 2008 elections, in which her alliance achieved a sweeping victory, winning 263 out of 300 seats.
While the party had previously been in power twice from 1971-75 and 1996-2001, this victory was qualitatively different, heralding an era of total domination of Bangladesh’s politics.
The birth of the country and its history since 1971 have been chequered with successive waves of rebellion for authentic democracy, only to be overturned by the political actors who took power riding on popular waves of mass upheavals.
The two biggest movements of independent Bangladesh – the movement for the restoration of democracy in 1990, demanding an end to General H.M. Ershad’s military rule, and the Shahbag movement of 2013, which started with a call for the execution of war criminals but evolved into a larger movement for societal democratisation and an end to socio-economic inequality – also met similar fates.
The history of lost opportunities for democratisation and the inability to address social injustices compels us to contemplate the future of the current triumph. With Hasina’s ousting, the dark clouds of fear have moved out, but apprehensions persist about what’s next.
Yunus: hero or neoliberal?
Three days after the fall of the previous regime, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as head of the interim government, currently leading a 21-member team consisting of retired bureaucrats and military officers, NGO personalities, advocates, academics, and others.
The government also accommodated a couple of student leaders who spearheaded the protests. The diversity of this group, including the inclusion of members from minority religious and ethnic communities, looks commendable, even though it fails to include any representatives of the workers or the peasants.
Muhammad Yunus was considered the most appropriate personality to lead the country out of crisis, given the collapsed administration and widespread lawlessness. The people, sick of authoritarianism, nepotism, corruption, and powerhungry political parties, preferred ‘apolitical’ figures over professional politicians. Secondly, his stature was seen to not only instil confidence in the masses but also benefit the country internationally. The public’s perception of him was and remains warm following his harassment at the hands of the previous regime, which attracted public sympathy and made him a hero.
However, as progressives, we must keep a critical eye and look beyond these easy narratives. Yunus’s microcredit model, despite being advertised as a panacea for poverty, has actually resulted in massive debt among the poor in Bangladesh and around the world. His strong advocacy for neoliberalism has also made him the darling of the World Bank and Western elites.
What’s next?
Bangladesh’s economy, a poster child of neoliberal reforms, has been shaky since the outbreak of Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our GDP growth rates are steadily falling, and the local currency has depreciated considerably. We also face a debt crisis, with the banking sector experiencing serious liquidity problems and burgeoning unsecured loans.
To tide over the foreign exchange crisis, Yunus is looking to the International Monetary Fund, despite having full knowledge that IMF conditionalities, including strict austerity measures, will reduce public spending, making people’s lives difficult. This is bound to rekindle similar protests to those that brought him to power. The quota system may have initiated the rebellion, but deeper rage about socio-economic conditions – such as deteriorating living conditions, corruption, and political authoritarianism – sustained it.
The right wing and religious fundamentalists are also actively looking to lay their hands on power, as evidenced by increased mobilisations and attacks on religious and ethnic minorities in recent weeks. So as the progressive international movement, where can we go from here?
It is clear that Bangladesh needs to make a clear break with the existing socioeconomic model and overcome the political convergence of the elites if it is to improve the lives of millions of people living in abject poverty and misery. Ordinary people have the power to change things when we get organised. Students started the movement, but now other sections of society must join hands to keep the momentum going.
We, as progressives, must unite in our vigilance to harness this momentum towards a progressive, democratic Bangladesh, and prevent reactionary forces from diverting it.
Sushovan Dhar is a political activist and trade unionist based in Kolkata, India.
This article is from the November 2024 issue of Ninety-Nine, the magazine for Global Justice Now members.
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Photo: Students launched the ‘Bangla Blockade’ initially to demand the scrapping of quotas in public service jobs. Credit: Rayhan Ahmed/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
