Do we hear change next door?

It took more than 300 dead bodies in less than three weeks to see the ignominious exit of a despot, making it the bloodiest period in the history of Bangladesh. A nearly 30 per cent quota in government jobs for the privileged ones - families close to and loyalists of Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League - provided the trigger to ignite the students' rebellion. Their demand was to end the discrimination through the quota reserved for the scions and relatives of the already privileged bureaucrats, party zealots and the military. No more, said the students who see around themselves tens of millions of educated and skilled graduates and postgraduates groping for jobs.

The euphoria following Hasina's flight to Agartala in India matched that of the 1971 tumultuous morphing of East Pakistan into Bangladesh. The war of liberation - as touted by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his followers - brought with it a new sense of Bengali nationalism. But it also heralded a typical era of personality cults and parochial politics, marked by the emasculation of nearly all institutions across Bangladesh - judiciary, media, academia and civil society stuffed with loyalists and the Bangladesh National Party pushed to the wall.

No surprise that Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus exclaimed with his iconic sentence "we are liberated. We are a free country now", immediately after Hasina left the country.

The interim government that Yunus leads has a plethora of issues to deal with. The task ahead for them all is to rebuild "democracy in Bangladesh, which has been so badly eroded in recent years", commented ICG Senior Consultant Thomas Kean.

Just like the 1960s socialist movements led by students in different parts of the globe, the Bengali students have rewritten history and are likely to determine the course of events in their country.

The way ahead is fraught with multiple roadblocks, with the foremost challenge is to purge state machinery of the people who thrived on their association with the "war of liberation" and hence owed their existence and promotion to the Awami League. These people - across various segments of the society - emerged as the privileged ones on the back of a 30 per cent quota that the ruling party exploited to the hilt, thereby parking "like-minded" people all over. Even the majority of diplomats owed their postings and promotions to Awami League cadres.

For the new generation - the dominant majority of whom sit jobless with degrees in hand just because they may not necessarily belong to the Awami League or have no roots in the armed forces - this architecture of privileges is not acceptable any more.

Secondly, rationalisation of the architecture of the privileges - that the Awami League and its cadres within government created for themselves - both in the army and the government - represents a bigger socio-political challenge.

Such privileges are typical for the civil-military bureaucracies of almost all South Asian countries, but they became more pronounced under Shaikh Hasina. Undoing these elitist privileges - which have been in vogue in several South American countries as well as in Indonesia - would require considerable grit.

Thirdly, purging the government and military ranks of Hasina loyalists will be another daunting challenge. Within hours of Hasina's departure, President Mohammad Shahabuddin dismissed Major General Zia Ul Hassan who was accused of collaborating with Hasina in abducting, torturing and killing opposition members.

In fact, the Supreme Court Bar Association called on India to "arrest Sheikh Hasina and send her back to Bangladesh because she killed many people in Bangladesh".

Fourth, the new government will need to rebalance its foreign policy. With brute repression and literally unconditional allegiance to New Delhi, Sheikh Hasina had symbolised the Indian interests in Bangladesh. For over two decades, she acted as the facilitator - a surrogate of India - evident from her visit to India in June, when she embraced an agreement with New Delhi for the management of River Teetsa waters. This she did despite a Chinese commitment of over a billion dollars in funding for the project.

This way Hasina literally dumped China in favour of India, thereby signalled her readiness to play as a pawn for the Indo-US geopolitical contest against China. It was probably this move - the Teesta River agreement and the transit facility to India through Bangladesh - that put off the Chinese leadership, and Hasina got no fresh financial commitment from Beijing.

Sounds familiar or? The removal of Imran Khan in April 2022 also stemmed from his repeated assertions that Pakistan's economic future was tied to that of China. It caused consternation in the US. Hasina, too, was apparently getting too close to China and that is why India roped Hasina into the Teesta River project out of nowhere during her latest visit to New Delhi.

Fifth, by playing second fiddle to India, Hasina literally blocked several Pakistani attempts to normalise relations with Bangladesh. Her Awami League consciously built and vigorously promoted a narrative that was steeped in rejection and contempt of Pakistan. This way India kept Bangladesh under its thumb.

We, at CRSS, tried many a time to connect with Bangladesh think tanks but they were generally reluctant in initiating something with Pakistan, primarily because of the pressures they faced from the government, which was overflowing with Awami League loyalists.

Fear of reprisal by the ruling party had turned many into silent or willing conformists - something that India has also experienced since Narendra Modi's rise to power.

Lastly, the new political set-up has a change at hand to try to rebalance relations with Pakistan and China after decades of procrastination in Dhaka under the Awami League.