Last straw breaking Bangladesh's back

With the Sheikh Hasina government cracking down on students-led demonstrations – more than 100 people have been killed in clashes with the police – Bangladesh is in chaos. On Sunday, the Supreme Court ordered the government to scale back a controversial job quota proposal. The quota system, scrapped in 2018 but restored by a high court last month, reserved 30% of gov jobs for descendants of those who fought for independence in 1971. Even as the government moved the top court, protests intensified after the PM raked up the matter of ‘razakars’, a term negatively associated with those in then East Pakistan who opposed Bangladesh’s creation. The new order reduces the quota for veterans’ descendants to 5%, with 93% of jobs allocated on merit. The remaining 2% will be reserved for ethnic minorities, transgender and disabled people.

The quota controversy, however, is only the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. Tension had been building up for some time for many reasons: Hasina’s autocratic rule over the past decade, her mindset that she and her party were sole ‘owners’ of the legacy of the 1971 freedom struggle, and, most importantly, large-scale corruption involving those within and close to the ruling party, conjoined with post-Covid economic hard days. Rising energy costs following the Ukraine war, weak employment prospects and spike in the cost of living has only exacerbated this tough economic situation where seeking jobs, especially government jobs, has become a mad scramble.

As in any protest movement, the government sees the protest as a showdown that is ‘anti-national’ in nature. The real issue remains Hasina’s inability to restart the economy and unwillingness to control corruption within her party and government.