Sheikh Hasina survived the carnage of August 15, 1975 by sheer chance. Ms. Hasina, who was then 28, happened to be abroad when almost all members of her family, including her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh, were killed at their residence in Dhaka by a group of Army personnel. She then spent six years in exile in India. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she remobilised the Awami League (AL), Mujib’s party, which played a crucial role in bringing down the military dictatorship of Muhammad Ershad in 1990. Six years later, the AL, under her leadership, defeated the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia, and Ms. Hasina became the Prime Minister for the first time. She returned to power after an interregnum in 2009.
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In the subsequent 15 years, Ms. Hasina oversaw economic progress in Bangladesh. The country of 170 million people saw millions being lifted out of poverty. Her government won international praise for hosting millions of Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar. She set up a war crimes tribunal to hold those who aided the genocide of the 1970s accountable. She won back-to-back elections, the latest victory being in January. Still everything she built came crashing like a castle in the sand on August 5. The ‘iron lady’ of Bangladesh had to resign and leave the country. She is now in India and is reportedly seeking asylum in a third country. What went wrong for the most powerful Prime Minister Bangladesh had had in a generation?
Also read: How Sheikh Hasina’s best advisers in Bangladesh deserted her during the student agitation
Lack of political legitimacy
The trigger of the set of events that led to Ms. Hasina’s downfall was an unpopular quota system for government jobs that was originally introduced by Mujib after the liberation of Bangladesh. More than 50% of government jobs in Bangladesh were reserved for different sections, of which 30% were for the descendants of freedom fighters. Ms. Hasina had done away with this system in 2018 after protests. In June 2024, the old system was reinstated by the Bangladesh high court. This triggered student protests, first on university campuses.
But Ms. Hasina had another problem — lack of political legitimacy for her government. In Bangladesh the opposition and the government have historically had a hostile relationship. Ahead of the 2018 elections, Ms. Zia, the former Prime Minister and BNP chairperson, was sentenced to a five-year jail term, which was later extended to 10 years. Leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the radical Islamist party, were convicted and hanged by the War Crimes Tribunal. The BNP, the main opposition, had boycotted back-to-back elections. And independent analysts had flagged irregularities in the election process. Opposition leaders were routinely harassed. Legal challenges were mounted against the Prime Minister’s rivals. The space for opposition politics shrank over the years.
But for large sections of Bangladesh’s population, Ms. Hasina was a force of stability, who turned around Bangladesh’s economy. The country witnessed sustained economic growth, a jump in GDP per capita and substantial improvement in social indicators. Poverty declined from 11.8% in 2010 to 5.0 percent in 2022, based on the international poverty line of $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank. But the economic story faced challenges in recent years, first after the strike of COVID-19 and then the Russia-Ukraine war. Economic growth slowed down. GDP growth plunged to 3.4% in 2020, from 7.9% the previous year, according to the IMF. And the economy is still in a recovery mode. The Ukraine war led to a spike in oil and food prices. Inflation went up to 10%, and the country has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in South Asia — at about 20%. As the economy slowed, employment opportunities in the private sector shrank. And when the high court ordered the reinstatement of the quota system, it angered the already frustrated students. This anger lit the fuse. And the opposition, which has been living under Ms. Hasina’s tight grip for over 15 years, joined in.
Hasina’s mistakes
Ms. Hasina erred in understanding the depth of the students’ anger. She also miscalculated the strength of her political opponents. She called the protesters ‘razakars’, a derogatory term which was used to refer to those who helped Pakistani troops during the Liberation War. This inflamed passions. And Ms. Hasina made the mistake which authoritarian rulers always make — bank on excessive force to quell an uprising. She unleashed both police personnel and Awami League activists on the protesters, who were also violent. In July, some 200 people were killed, mostly protesters, in clashes. The government said hundreds of police personnel were wounded.
After the first round of protests, the Bangladesh Supreme Court scaled back the quota system, setting the reservation cap for the descendants of freedom fighters at 5%. The students had won a major victory. But they were not ready to call off the protests. On August 4, they called for another round of protests with a new demand — Sheikh Hasina should go. They also demanded accountability for the deaths of over 200 of their comrades. The Awami League called for counter-mobilisation of its members.
Dhaka, a megacity of 10 million people, was set for a major showdown with student protesters, who were backed by the BNP and Jamaat, and the security personnel and Awami League activists. More than 100 people were killed in the ensuing violence on a single day. The government curbed access to communication networks and ordered a curfew. Students urged for more protests for Monday (August 5).
By that time it was evident that Ms. Hasina’s position had been substantially weakened. The military said it would guard its constitutional obligations but won’t use force against protesters. According to a Reuters report, Army chief Waker-uz-Zaman, after holding a meeting with senior Generals, informed the Prime Minister the night before she quit that his soldiers would not be able to enforce the curfew she had called for. Ms. Hasina’s fate was sealed.
In the afternoon on August 5, after holding talks with the security establishment, Ms. Hasina resigned and left the country for India.
Chaos or order?
Ms. Hasina was the second leader in South Asia who was forced out of power by mass protests. In July 2022, Sri Lanka’s elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to resign and leave the country amid massive protests triggered by an economic meltdown. The island country, however, saw an orderly political transition. The country’s political class backed Ranil Wickremesinghe, a seasoned politician and former Prime Minister, as the new President. Sri Lanka is now preparing for a Presidential election later this year, even though the country is yet to recover from the economic crisis.
But the situation in Bangladesh looks gloomier. The Army chief has announced an interim government, which is to be headed by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, a key demand from the students. The President has dissolved parliament. The BNP has demanded elections in three months.
However, it is not clear what role the Army, which had in the past directly ruled the country, would play during the transition. The interim administration would also find it difficult to bring in order after the chaos of the past month. There are already reports of widespread violence against Bangladesh’s minority communities, Ahmedia Muslims and Awami League functionaries. Bangladesh’s polity stands broken. Ms. Hasina may be out of Bangladesh, but the Awami League would stay a force in the country. And moreover, the economic woes are looming large over the next government. Tough days are ahead for Bangladesh.
