MAGAZINE Voices Anand Neelakantan Utkarsh Amitabh Ravi Shankar Neha Sinha Anuja Chandramouli Gaurav Yadav Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI AUGUST 18 2024 SUNDAY PAGES 12 There Goes the Neighbourhood The Bangladesh crisis is a challenge for India to foil the China-Pakistan Axis game of dominating the Indian Ocean, and an opportunity to defuse Islamic resurgence with an inclusive regional policy A By Sudeep Chakravarti in dhaka microfinance whiz is in charge of running a politically and emotionally devastated Bangladesh until it picks itself up well enough to hold elections. Until August 5, a micro-management whiz was in charge of running Bangladesh—and nearly ran it to the ground. Now the challenge of shepherding renewal faces Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize-winning economist and now “chief advisor” of that country’s interim government. It came about because Sheikh Hasina Wazed, Bangladesh’s four-term prime minister and a long-time bête noire of Yunus, destroyed her fifth term with a students’ protests that she and her coterie fuelled. It ultimately served to eject her from the country she had for the past 15 years and more run as her own. This change, which many in Bangladesh are calling the Monsoon Revolution, has major ramifications for Bangladesh. Political, with the interim government a bridge between an openly tyrannical Awami League and an intended resumption of true multi-party democracy Social, . with a country of 170 million in collective PTSD. And economic, with massive disruptions since mid-July the bill for which the president of , Bangladesh’s Foreign Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industries estimates as being $10 billion and counting; he wasn’t counting livelihood losses, just business losses. And there are ramifications for India, on account of its presumptuous and often-arrogant foreign policy and security play in a country with which it shares a 4,096 km border, longer than India’s borders with either China or Pakistan. Indeed, since the ouster of Sheikh Hasina, there has been a visible scramble to rewire India’s relationship with South Asia in general and Bangladesh in particular. Bangladesh is the bulwark to socio-economically and with better , defence, internal security and civic infrastructure, , shore up India’s east and northeast. It’s as much “Neighbourhood First” as “China Foremost”. It’s quite a story . As we know—despite largely shrill and misinformation-led coverage by Indian media—a protest against restrictive government quotas for jobs, mostly by students of public universities in Dhaka and across Bangladesh, had taken root in the first week of July This happened on account of the . quota, kept judicially in abeyance since 2018, being revived by a High Court order. The quota favoured families of freedom fighters from 1971—even their grandchildren—by providing 30 per cent reservations. After providing for those from underdeveloped districts and women, ethnic minorities, and the disabled, it left 44 per cent of government jobs, ever more attractive in a country where ‘jobless growth’ had become a reality in a flattening private sector, to those who might earn it purely on merit. A Reuters report this July placed by joblessness among youth at 32 million. The High Court’s revival of the quota was also widely interpreted as a prop effected by a subservient judiciary for the ruling Awami League to further cement its political base. When students protested, instead of dialogue the government offered domination. The League and its notorious youth and students’ wings, Jubo League and Chhatro League, armed with big sticks, iron rods, and sharp weapons, began to push back violently targeting students who protested against , the quota. On July 14, Sheikh Hasina indirectly referred to the protesting students as “razakars”, pro-Pakistan collaborators during 1971. Deeply insulted, the students went ballistic. They found solidarity among students of private universities as well. On July 15, this writer’s conflict studies class at University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), a private university was truly ‘live’. We discussed , governance and misgovernance, corruption, political rot, the future of Bangladesh, and the region. The South Asian literature class later that day was about protest literature, and, ironically , literature and art that evolved from “1971”, when Bangladesh was born amidst genocide and enduring trauma. The following day police shot dead the first visibly unarmed student protester in northern Rangpur. In his death Abu Sayed became a rallying cry . Classes haven’t been held since that day The . University Grants Commission first banned in-person classes, and then online classes. It was aimed at stanching protests. The government didn’t factor in the protesters’ resolve. By July 18—and since that day up until Sheikh Hasina left—Bangladesh became a war zone. Police joined the League goons in attacking students across Dhaka and Bangladesh, including inside campuses. More students began to be killed. Passersby joined the list, even a youngster who was handing out bottles of water to protesters. Video and audio clips of his selfless “Paani lagbe, paani?”—Would you like some water?—became viral memes of protest and remembrance. Several children were killed, including a four-year-old girl who was shot in the head on a roof top. It’s not clear whether it was a stray bullet, or one aimed from one of several government choppers flying over Dhaka’s airspace. Now enraged teachers, parents and civil society folk joined the protests, defying an internet ban, defying curfew, defying police and its SWAT teams, the cross-force Rapid Action Battalion, the paramilitary Border Guards Bangladesh. They even defied the army that was deployed from July 20; their ubiquitous eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers weren’t at that time seen as bastions of public protection. When Hasina’s government finally pressured a court to rescind the quota on July 21 and opened up 93 per cent jobs to merit-based applicants, it expected protests to die down. Obtusely it discount, ed the hundreds of students and other citizens killed by its orders, several thousand injured, students and other citizens arrested in the thousands—including high-school students. The protests remained alive. The notorious Detective Branch of Dhaka Metropolitan Police began to pick up protesters, including protest coordinators—six of whom were made to issue a sham statement of withdrawal under duress, as has subsequently been proven. (Two of these students are now advisors to the interim government.) There were no apologies. The protesters switched their agenda from getting rid of the quota to demanding justice for mass killings to getting rid of Hasina. The more Hasina persisted, the more the death toll climbed, the more her government spun the entire episode as being manufactured by Bangladesh’s seething underbelly of Islamist extremism, the more India was perceived to assist her. Now to the foreseeable future. In a Bangladesh on the remake, several memories will endure. Two of them are of particular relevance to India. One is of Sheikh Hasina leaving her official residence in the early afternoon of August 5. The second is of her arriving in a few hours at Hindon Air Force Base, where she was received by India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. It merely reinforced the belief in Bangladesh of India’s heavy hand. To many India had ensured , the survival of Hasina’s government, most recently in the riotously controversial general elections in early January 2024. Despite being boycotted by opposition parties such as the conservative Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and hardline Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, it witnessed violence and ballot-stuffing. (An acquaintance told this writer of a League cadre who had gone from Dhaka, a major job-magnet, to his village in southern Bangladesh to vote. “Did you vote?” he asked. “Oh yes,” the reply came. “I voted seven-eight times.”) In the Bangladeshi mind’s eye, India supported a deeply corrupt government and associated apparatus. Awami League had, since coming back to power in 2008, and subsequently through consecutive terms in 2014, 2018 and January 2024, continued to visibly suborn the judiciary the , bureaucracy policing, and the economic process. , Corruption was rampant. The Centre for Policy Dialogue, a major Dhaka-based think-tank, estimates that between 2008 and 2023, Taka 92,261 crore (about INR 66,000 crore) was embezzled by government cronies in 24 major banking scams. A prominent accused is Hasina’s key investment advisor and chair of a major business house who made a habit of taking vast loans from public banks; they were subsequently written off. Estimates of squirreling money outside the country are as high as $92 billion over the same period. Through late 2023 and 2024, a few resolute media exposes highlighted how top bureaucrats and police officials had built multi-million dollar—and some, billion-dollar—fortunes. They were either let off with resignations, or transferred. On July 14, the same day she made her obtuse “razakar” remark, Hasina—in her estimation, trying to prove to citizenry that her governance was above-board— announced that she had prosecuted a “peon” in her household who had amassed a fortune of Taka 400 crore. So, it was a bit rich for students and citizens to be lectured about doing the right thing in an atmosphere of mind-numbing cronyism and corruption. More so, when such lectures were widely televised after students had been killed, beaten, maimed, and arrested in distressing numbers. It was by now evident to all but Hasina, who had undeniably boosted infrastructure and macroeconomic growth but discounted comprehensive The more Hasina persisted, the more the death toll climbed, the more her government spun the entire episode as being manufactured by Bangladesh’s seething underbelly of Islamist extremism, the more India was perceived to assist her An AI illustration of Sheikh Hasina and Narendra Modi Turn to page 2