The student-led movement that led to the final fall of the dictatorial Sheikh Hasina regime on August 5, 2024, led the country to uncertainty, which was felt quite obviously domestically and throughout the South Asian region. By August 8, 2024, Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel laureate and the originator of the concept of microcredit, took the oath as the Chief Advisor of the Interim Government of Bangladesh.
Many refer to what Bangladesh experienced post-Hasina regime as a “crisis.” This is a misconception of the ground realities. Considering that Bangladesh had lived through almost 16 years of a brutal dictatorship in which all civic space and civil rights had been banned under Sheikh Hasina and her draconian Awami League Party, Bangladesh did not fall into complete economic or societal chaos. Nor did it become prey to a military coup. In fact, the real “crisis” was over the day Sheikh Hasina fled to India.
What Bangladesh faces now is challenging and a great deal of hard work, but it is in no way a crisis. The most noteworthy element of why this is so is its current leadership. According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Bangladesh is well-positioned to build a new political area. The good news is that Bangladesh is better positioned for stability than many other post-regime change cases. A state structure is in place”…
To fully appreciate what is going right in Bangladesh, we must first examine some of the challenges. For the purposes of this article, six challenges will be addressed.
Law enforcement:
One of the most significant challenges facing the country is the vacvacuum in the police force. Due to law enforcement becoming entirely politicized and heavily corrupted morally and financially during the Hasina regime, many police officers who indiscriminately killed innocent student protesters went into hiding. One of the 5 most important points on the Interim Government’s agenda has been normalizing the country’s law and order situation.
The martyred, injured, and their families:
Over 1,000 people (mostly youth) were savagely killed by Sheikh Hasina’s brutal forces during the July-August protests in Bangladesh, and several thousand were injured. Rather than depending on international aid to tackle the financial costs of this tragedy, Dr. Yunus formed a foundation to collect funds. Not only was this a financial success, but it created a societal bond full of empathy in which Bangladeshis came together to help those in need.
The press:
A second challenging point would be the media, another point of the Interim Government’s agenda. During the Hasina regime’s dictatorship, most, if not all, press and media outlets were obligated to be politicized, publishing only state-sponsored pro-Awami League propaganda. The government has changed, but from all evidence, the tendencies of the media outlets have not. The old practices of not challenging the former dictatorship seem to remain. This is on the road to be addressed by the Interim Government.
Education:
The most important factor in recreating a successful democratic society lies in education. Ideally, this is key from the primary school age when children are taught the importance of critical thinking. A prosperous, democratic society can only be established with a continuation of future generations trained to question all forms of injustice. Furthermore, critical thinking-based education offers tools to make Bangladeshi students competitive in a 21st-century global environment.
Chief Advisor Dr. Yunus clearly understands that. He has recently stated that foreign languages should be taught to primary school students. This is a form of education that, in recent years, has been adopted in the People’s Republic of China. The government has taken steps to ensure that English is taught to all children from primary school to ensure that future generations are competitive in the job market with global trends. Bangladesh can and should follow suit to do the same for future generations. It appears that Bangladesh is on the right track to make positive changes in education.
Indian hegemony:
Under Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh was well on its way to becoming a vassal state of India. It is no secret that Hasina’s allegiance had never been with Bangladesh or its people, leading to all elements of Bangladeshi society geared to benefit India. The India-centric Bangladeshi governance ceased on August 5 with the fall of Sheikh Hasina. Professor Yunus has stated openly that no so-called Indian-propagated instability would spill over to neighboring countries unless India stopped interfering in Bangladesh’s domestic affairs. Furthermore, the Chief Advisor and his government have adopted the astute policy of not investigating any animosity with India but responding strongly as a sovereign nation to any of India’s falsely based allegations and propaganda.
This sharp, necessary turn of political events has undoubtedly left Bangladesh’s neighbor baffled, but it is of utmost importance for the Interim Government to send the right signals to a neighbor who had wrongly taken for granted that it had Bangladesh under its thumb.
The economy and international acknowledgement:
The economy and international acknowledgment are being discussed because one of the factors most worthy of attention is how Dr. Yunus has been steering Bangladesh and how it will likely be steered in the future.
When Sheikh Hasina was unleashing her personal vengeance on Dr. Yunus, hundreds of world leaders, entertainment celebrities and Nobel laureates joined together to issue statements of support for him, making it known that they understood that none of the allegations Sheikh Hasina concocted against him had even the slightest bit of truth.
We have witnessed the same respect and recognition for Dr. Yunus during his first international foreign visit as the head of the Bangladesh government at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September by foreign leaders in the global political and financial arenas. Several billions of dollars of aid and grants have been pledged to Bangladesh, with the international community eager to partner with Bangladesh on an array of economic projects because it sees stability and respect for human rights in the leadership now, which will lead to boosting the economy.
After having pioneered the idea of microcredit, in which tiny loans are given to impoverished women to lift them out of poverty and make them self-sufficient, Dr. Yunus has pioneered two more novel economic ideas that can only be extremely favorable for Bangladesh. These theories are the theory of three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions and social business, a concept which was the subject of the 2024 Summer Olympics in France.
What makes Bangladesh unique in its current challenges is clear: no matter what critics say and how much they claim things could be better, one fact is undeniable. There really is no other Bangladeshi to carry the country forward in a 21st-century democratic space after the trauma it has faced for nearly two decades other than Dr. Yunus.
*The writer is an academic, author, the Editor-in-Chief of Aequitas Review a human rights activist.
November 23, 2024
