Hasina Wajed stepped down as Prime Minister of Bangladesh on Monday and fled to neighboring India after a student-led uprising forced the military to step in to restore calm.
The daughter of the country’s founder, her ouster is a radical turn in the political history of Bangladesh. It is also being perceived as karmic retribution because she was hardly sparing of her rivals while in office, jailing Bangladesh National Party leader Khaleda Zia on charges of embezzlement and graft and banning her and much of her party from contesting polls. This, coupled with Wajed’s controversial steps to ban religio-political parties and restore a quota system for jobs, boosted her unpopularity and bolstered the protests.
The simmering popular dissatisfaction erupted in July 2024 through student-led protests that demanded a reduced share for veterans in governmental quotas. After several weeks of unrest, the Supreme Court rolled back the unpopular “quota system” but it was too little, too late. The protests continued with accusations of corruption and a high rate of unemployment, devolving into a mass civil disobedience movement. Ironically, despite the unrest, Sheikh Hasina’s 15 years of uninterrupted rule saw Bangladesh transformed into one of Asia’s emerging economies. This was all dashed with the anti-people policies of her government.
Key to sustaining the protests was the approximately 300 people who were killed during the protests. This fueled the fires of protests, which were entirely led by civilians as the country’s political opposition remained in disarray, while the country’s elite appeared to have accepted Hasina long-term rule for good or ill. An indirect consequence of Hasina’s ouster is the people of Bangladesh making clear their resentment against India’s support for her government, a troubling prospect for the South Asian giant, as it now faces the potential of another restive border.