Bangladesh is currently witnessing one of the biggest uprisings in the last decade. Thousands of students have been taking to the streets to demand merit-based access to government jobs. This economic demand rapidly turned into a serious political challenge for Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been in power since 2009 and has become increasingly autocratic in her rule.
In Bangladesh, 30% of public sector jobs were reserved for descendants of freedom fighters, 26% for women and ethnic minorities, leaving only 44% of jobs available to the rest of the students. Because of the ruling government’s corrupt nature, the freedom fighter quota had also become a channel to reward party cadres and those who had won the favour of the ruling party, Awami League.
Organizing a historic student-led movement for public sector jobs
The Quota Reform movement has been going on for a long time, leading up to a major flashpoint in 2018 when students demanded removal of the freedom fighter quota while keeping the minimum enquiry-based quota for the minority population. In response to a growing movement that could not be repressed, the Bangladesh government decided to dissolve the quota system altogether—including the spots reserved for minorities. This was not the movement’s demand, since the students had a clear understanding of the need for an equity-based quota for minorities.
Earlier in the year, Bangladesh’s High Court called this decision illegal and allowed the government to overturn its own move.
Students immediately responded, in a more organized force than before, under the banner, “Anti-discrimination student movement”. Uniting behind this demand allowed for mass student participation regardless of party affiliation, and as a result the movement spread from Dhaka University in the country’s capital to most major public universities across the country. The movement has formed a committee with multiple organizers who liaise with each public university campus and resident halls to hold general assemblies, distribute anti-quota materials (posters, placards and flyers) to students and also create small funds to address needs of the movement.
Nationalist jingoism
The protests took a serious turn when the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called anti-quota students “Razakars (anti-nationals/traitors)”.
Like nationalist regimes in India, Israel, and elsewhere, Sheikh Hasina’s party has utilized the sentiment around Bangladesh’s Liberation War as a justification for the regime’s unconditional and undisputable state authority. Anybody in disagreement with the regime, be it a student or a journalist, is being branded as “Razakar”—a word slowly losing its meaning in this new political context.
The Awami League goverment’s exploitation of the Liberation War and national identity to advance the exclusive interests of the ruling class is a classic move from the fascist playbook.
Neo-liberal policies and crony capitalism
This new wave of student-led protest has managed to build popular support across class lines and give an expression to long-brewing frustration with the current regime and its neo-liberal policies.
After protests erupted in public universities on July 15, 2024, the movement coordinators were successful in involving broader layers of people into the struggle—especially women, private university students, local neighbours, and urban workers.
While the Awami League had working class roots during Bangladesh’s founding, Sheikh Hasina government’s policies are increasingly out of touch with what working people need and want. Bangladesh undertook several international loans, including from the IMF, to fund mega infrastructure projects such as the Metro Rail while Bangladesh’s youth continue to experience high unemployment at a record-high cost-of-living crisis.
During Sheikh Hasina’s tenure, Bangladesh has seen rapid inequality between the poor and the wealthy. The party-affiliated capitalist class amassed unprecedented wealth through back-door infrastructure deals, financialization schemes, capital theft, and weak labour laws that fail to protect workers.
The growing disappointment with the ruling party’s policies can be easily charted with the trend in worker strikes just in the past year—tea workers’ strike in August 2023, garment workers’ strike for a national minimum wage in November 2023, and most recently, university faculty strike for pensions just last month.
Years of authoritarian rule
The current government has put in place draconian laws, such as the Digital Security Act (now called the Cyber Security Act) that clamps down on free speech. More than 800 people have been arrested in just two years under this Act, simply for expressing dissent in online space. Laws like this have made the possibility of organizing online dangerous and narrow and constantly puts people at the risk of arrest for expressing even the most neutral political opinion.
Sheikh Hasina’s regime is marred with a series of forced disappearances and murders of opposition party leaders, activists, and trade unionists. The regime is known for using military-grade spy and surveillance technology (some bought from Israel, who Bangladesh supposedly refuses to have diplomatic relationships with) to police protest movements. The regime has also created a deepening police-military-paramilitary complex that has empowered the centralized state to exercise excess violence on its own people.
When the anti-discrimination students took to the streets, they were met with the ruling party’s student-wing–turned-paramilitary forces, armed police, and even border guards. The state-sanctioned violence has murdered 187 people so far, the majority of whom are university students. Thousands more have been injured and around 500 protestors were arrested.
Global politics
Bangladesh is currently under an indefinite curfew and was under complete internet blackout for more than 80 hours. This has created a serious challenge for student organizers communicating between themselves, while the general public is being swarmed with a misinformation campaign that aims to undermine the uprising. People in the diaspora are unable to get in touch with their families back home, and unable to assess the situation on the ground. The government has been phasing in internet connection in patches since Tuesday, July 23, but access to social media is still uncertain.
After a week of deadly protests, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh has ruled the quota for freedom fighters to be cut to 5% and the quota for ethnic minorities to be at 2%, leaving 93% of public sector jobs available for merit-based applications.
But by now, the movement has passed well beyond just an economic reform. The student movement has exposed the regime for what it is—a crony capitalist, fascist state that exploits and oppresses.
At this point, the diaspora remains an urgent vehicle to amplify the students’ demands on the ground and build support for a permanent revolution in Bangladesh. The diaspora is also a critical space to connect our struggles—especially with workers from neighbouring countries such as India who have propped up the Hasina regime with unconditional support in exchange for extractive deals for its own capitalist class.
Weakness of the left
The presence of left parties and left organizing has been on a decline since the late 70s as Bangladesh experienced a series of military coups and counter-coups. Most left parties are either in support of neoliberal policies, directly in coalition with the ruling government, or still searching for political opportunities in the wings of the opposition party coalition. The absence of a strong left has created a power vacuum in the working class that is hungry for reform to their material conditions.
What is remarkable about the non-aligned student movement is that it created a vehicle for the general public to organize a resistance to the current regime without siding with the political opposition. The current struggle comes at the heels of the years of compound inequality that Bangladesh is witnessing under Sheikh Hasina’s regime. But in the absence of strong left organizing, it leaves the movement open to political opportunism and spontaneity that can go many directions.
It is uncertain what the next few days will look like. But one cannot deny that with each flashpoint in this long struggle, the movement is becoming bigger and stronger. New layers of people are getting involved and their faith in the possibility of a revolution is getting all the more stronger.
Here’s to the beginning of the end.
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