Lessons From Bangladesh Meltdown
The swift fall of the seemingly impregnable Sheikh Hasina government in neighbouring Bangladesh, and her dramatic flight to New Delhi to escape rampaging mobs in Dhaka, offers several important lessons for India. Perhaps for all developing countries where constitutional checks and balances are not as well developed as in older democracies. First it’s important to note that by all metrics Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government serving its fifth consecutive term in office was stable, having engineered unprecedented annual rates of GDP growth. On Sheikh Hasina’s watch, Bangladesh transformed into a fast-track economy and one of the world’s premier textiles and garments manufacturing nations. The first lesson of the lightning-fast fall of Sheikh Hasina is that there’s temptation for popular and successful governments to slip into autocratic rule. Convinced that her own steady hands were needed at the helm to record high rates of economic growth, Hasina weaponized national security laws and jailed Begum Khaleda, a former prime minister and leader of the major opposition party, and also interfered with the electoral process to ensure the victory of the Awami League in the General Election of 2023, in effect attempting to impose one-party rule over the country. Moreover scant attention was paid to upgrading the public education system — a blindspot of all South Asian governments. As a result the Bangladesh economy was flooded with millions of youth unable to find employment commensurate with recklessly issued academic certification. Moreover instead of liberalising the economy and inviting foreign investment to establish factories and businesses to generate employment, the Hasina government passed a law reserving 30 percent of jobs in government to children of freedom fighters who had fought in the anti-Pakistan liberation war of 1971 which (with assistance from the Indian Army) resulted in the emergence of a free and independent Bangladesh. Curiously Sheikh Hasina had no awareness that youth desperately seeking employment in the country and sweeping out overseas, have no memory of Bangladesh’s freedom struggle led by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. Unfortunately leaders of political parties in South Asian countries tend to be history agnostic and often interpret ephemeral political popularity as licence to practice autocracy. Soon after she swept General Election 1971, Mrs. Indira Gandhi imposed free India’s first internal Emergency in 1975 and jailed opposition party leaders leading to her humiliating defeat in General Election 1977. Now after sweeping three General Elections since 2014, the BJP/NDA government and three-term prime minister Narendra Modi who have also neglected public education reform, are confronted with a massive youth unemployment/unemployability problem. Simultaneously they are weaponising provisions of the law to target opposition leaders and the Muslim minority. The auguries are not good. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp
