How Bangladesh's young generation overthrew the leader who ruled for life
After completing her university degree, Janatul Prome left Bangladesh to pursue further studies or find a job. She says she is frustrated with a system that does not reward merit and offers few opportunities for young people.
“There’s very little we can do here,” said the 21-year-old, who said she would have left earlier if her family had enough money to pay for her and her brother’s tuition at a foreign university.
But recent events have given her hope that she will one day return to a transformed Bangladesh. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who ruled for 15 years, resigned last week and fled the country. Those who were driven out by young protesters, including Prome, say they are tired of her increasingly authoritarian rule, which stifles dissent, favors elites and deepens inequality.
Students took to the streets of Bangladesh in June to demand an end to a rule that reserves up to 30 percent of government jobs for descendants of soldiers who fought in the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. The protesters said the rule benefited supporters of Hasina’s Awami League, which led the protest, and who were already part of the elite. Because of quotas and other rules for the disadvantaged, only 44 percent of government jobs were awarded on merit.
It’s no coincidence that these jobs are at the center of the movement. They are the most stable and well-paying in a country where economic growth has been explosive in recent years but steady, skilled jobs for the educated middle class have not been created enough.
And it’s no surprise that Generation Z is leading this uprising. Young people like Prome are among those most frustrated and affected by Bangladesh’s lack of opportunity. But they aren’t bound by the old taboos and narratives that the quota system reflects.
Their willingness to break with the past became clear when Hasina dismissed their demands in mid-July, asking who else but freedom fighters should be given government posts.
“Who would do that? The grandchildren of the Razakars?” Hasina retorted, using a highly derogatory term referring to those who collaborated with Pakistan to suppress Bangladesh's struggle for independence.
But student protesters took the word as a badge of honor. They marched to the Dhaka University campus, chanting, “Who are you? Who am I? Razakar. Who said that? Dictator.”
The next day, protests escalated when clashes with security forces left a protester dead, escalating into a larger uprising against Hasina's rule.
Sabrina Karim, a professor at Cornell University who studies political violence and Bangladesh's military history, said many protesters are too young to remember the days before Hasina became prime minister.
They grew up, like previous generations, on stories of the struggle for independence, centered around Hasina’s family. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the first leader of independent Bangladesh and was later assassinated in a military coup. But Karim says the story means far less to the young protesters than it did to their grandparents.
“It doesn't resonate with them as much anymore, and they want something new,” she said.
For Noorina Sultana Toma, a 22-year-old student at Dhaka University, seeing Hasina liken student protesters to traitors made her realize there was a big gap between what young people wanted and what the government could provide.
She said she had seen Bangladesh become increasingly immune to inequality and people had lost hope that things would get better.
The country's longest-serving prime minister boasted of raising per capita income and transforming Bangladesh's economy into a global competitor. Fields were turned into garment factories, bumpy roads became winding highways. But Toma saw people's daily struggles to buy basic necessities or find work, and her demands for basic rights were met with insults and violence.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Thomas said.
The economic hardship has been keenly felt by Bangladesh’s youth. According to Chietiji Vajpayee, who studies South Asia at the Chatham House think tank, 18 million young people are not working or attending school in a country of 170 million people. And since the pandemic, private-sector jobs have become even scarcer.
Many young people seek to study abroad or emigrate after graduation in the hope of finding decent jobs, which leads to a collapse of the middle class and brain drain.
“The caste gap has widened,” said Janatun Nahar Ankan, 28, who works for a non-profit in Dhaka and participated in the protests.
Despite these problems, none of the protesters seem to genuinely believe that their movement can oust Hasina.
Rafeez Khan, 24, was on the streets to join the protests when he heard Hasina had resigned and fled the country. He called home repeatedly to see if he could confirm the news.
He said that on the last day of the protests, people from all walks of life, religions and professions joined the students in the streets. Now they were hugging each other, while others sat on the ground in disbelief.
“I can't express in words the joy people felt that day,” he said.
Some of that euphoria is now fading as the enormity of the task ahead is felt. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus became interim leader on Thursday, and he will have to work with a cabinet that includes two student protest leaders to restore peace, build institutions and prepare the country for new elections.
Most students hope that the interim government will have time to restore Bangladesh's institutions and that a new political party will be formed rather than one led by an old political dynasty.
“If you were to vote in an election 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 are often referred to as the “I hate politics” generation.
But Azaher Uddin Anik, a 26-year-old digital security expert and recent graduate from Dhaka University, says it is a misnomer.
They don't hate all politics, they just hate the divisive politics in Bangladesh.
He acknowledges that the structural reforms the country needs now could be more difficult than sacking the prime minister, but for the first time in a while he is hopeful.
“My last experience tells me that the impossible can happen,” he said. “And maybe it’s not too late.”
