How a Young Generation in Bangladesh Ousted the Leader Who Ruled Most of Their Lives
Jannatul Prome hopes to leave Bangladesh to study further or perhaps find a job after finishing university, frustrated by a system that she says does not reward merit and offers few opportunities to young people.
“We have very limited options here,” said the 21-year-old, who would have left sooner if her family had had enough money to pay for her and her older brother’s college tuition abroad at the same time.
But recent events have given her hope that she may one day return to a transformed Bangladesh: After 15 years in power, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country last week, driven out by young protesters, including Prome, who say they are fed up with the way her increasingly autocratic rule has stifled dissent, favored elites and widened inequality.
Students first took to the streets of Bangladesh in June, demanding an end to rules that reserved up to 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of veterans who fought in the country’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Protesters said it favored supporters of Hasina’s Awami League, which led that struggle, who were already part of the elite. The quota and others for marginalized groups meant that only 44 percent of civil service jobs were filled on merit.
That such jobs were at the heart of the movement is no coincidence: They are among the most stable and best-paid in a country where the economy has grown in recent years but not enough solid, professional jobs have been created for its educated middle class.
And it’s no surprise that Generation Z has led this revolt: young people like Prome are among the most frustrated and affected by the lack of opportunity in Bangladesh, and yet they are not bound by the old taboos and narratives that the quota system reflected.
Their willingness to break with the past was clear when Hasina downplayed their demands in mid-July, asking who but freedom fighters should get government posts.
“Who will do it? The grandchildren of the Razakars?” Hasina shot back, using a deeply offensive word referring to those who collaborated with Pakistan to quell Bangladesh’s struggle for independence.
But student protesters wore the word like a badge of honor. They marched on the campus of Dhaka University, chanting: “Who are you? Who am I? Razakar. Who said this? The dictator.”
The following day, several protesters were killed during clashes with security forces, which only galvanized the demonstrations, which turned into a broader uprising against Hasina's government.
Sabrina Karim, a professor at Cornell University who studies political violence and Bangladesh’s military history, said many of the protesters are so young they can’t remember a time before Hasina was prime minister.
They grew up, like generations before them, with stories of the independence struggle, with Hasina’s family at the center. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the first leader of independent Bangladesh and was later assassinated in a military coup. But Karim said that narrative meant far less to the young protesters than it did to their grandparents.
“It doesn't resonate with them as much as it did (before). And they want something new,” he said.
For Nourin Sultana Toma, a 22-year-old student at Dhaka University, Hasina’s equating of student protesters with traitors made her realize the gap between what young people wanted and what the government could offer.
He said he saw Bangladesh slowly becoming immune to inequality and people losing hope that things could ever improve.
The country’s longest-serving prime minister boasted of increasing per capita income and transforming Bangladesh’s economy into a global competitor, as fields became garment factories and bumpy roads became winding highways. But Toma said he saw the daily struggle of people trying to buy essential goods or find work, and his demand for basic rights was met with insults and violence.
“It could no longer be tolerated,” Toma said.
This economic crisis has been felt deeply by Bangladesh’s youth. Eighteen million young people in a country of 170 million are neither working nor going to school, according to Chietigj Bajpaee, a South Asia researcher at Chatham House think tank. And since the pandemic, private-sector jobs have become even scarcer.
Many young people seek to study abroad or move abroad after graduation in hopes of finding decent work, decimating the middle class and causing a brain drain.
“Class differences have widened,” said Jannatun Nahar Ankan, a 28-year-old who works for a nonprofit organization in Dhaka and joined the protests.
Despite these problems, none of the protesters seemed to truly believe that their movement would be able to oust Hasina.
Rafij Khan, 24, was on the street ready to join a protest when he heard that Hasina had resigned and fled the country. He called home repeatedly to see if he could verify the news.
He said that in the last few days of the demonstrations, people of all classes, religions and professions had joined the students on the streets. They were now hugging each other, while others simply sat on the ground in disbelief.
“I can’t describe the joy people felt that day,” he said.
Some of that euphoria is now fading as the enormity of the task ahead sinks in. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus became interim leader on Thursday, and he, along with a cabinet that includes two student protest leaders, will be tasked with restoring peace, building institutions and preparing the country for new elections.
Most students hope that the interim government will have time to repair Bangladesh's institutions while a new political party, not led by the old political dynasties, is formed.
“If you asked me to vote in an election right now, I don't know who I would vote for,” Khan said. “We don't want to replace one dictatorship with another.”
The young people who took to the streets have often been described as the generation “that hates politics”.
But Azaher Uddin Anik, a 26-year-old digital security specialist and recent graduate of Dhaka University, says this is a misnomer.
They don't hate all politics, just the divisive politics of Bangladesh.
And while he admits that the structural reforms the country now needs may be harder to implement than removing the prime minister, for the first time in a long time he is optimistic.
“My latest experience is telling me that the impossible can happen,” he said. “And maybe it's not too late.”
