The ‘Monsoon Revolution’ of August 5, 2024, was not about Bangladesh’s relations with India but about the relationship of Bangladesh with Bangladeshis. Understanding this fundamental distinction will not only help us put issues arising out of the toppling of Sheikh Hasina in perspective but also learn important lessons from these dramatic developments.
Hasina’s 16 years in power were marked by rapid economic growth that belied Henry Kissinger’s description of the country at birth as a “basket case”. Per capita GDP rose to equal that of India’s. The garments sector saw Bangladesh, as a Least Developed Country (LDC), taking full advantage of duty-free access to become a major global player in the sector. It also ensured massive women’s participation in the work force. Remittances from overseas workers spiralled to dizzy levels. At the same time, the strong emphasis on education, health and women’s empowerment, raised Bangladesh on the Human Development Index to a point that overtook India.
Meanwhile, micro-finance, especially through the Grameen Bank, based on the twin perception that poor women are prudent savers and investors, as well as culturally and economically to be trusted to service and return small loans to continue accessing such finance, promoted participatory grassroots development. The private sector flourished, albeit in an atmosphere of oligarchs and “endemic corruption”. Nevertheless, the economic miracle appeared to guarantee political stability.
Illustration: Deni Lal
Since literally the minute that Generals Arora and Niazi signed the surrender documents on December 16, 1971, I have been involved with Bangladesh. So, the Kolkata Telegraph sent me on a week-long visit to Bangladesh in December 2021 to take a close look at the country on the 50th anniversary of its liberation. My friends arranged for me to meet a wide range of people, among whom was one of Sheikh Hasina’s closest advisers. He bluntly admitted, in confidence, that in sharp contrast to the “free and fair elections” that had brought her to power in 2009, there followed an uncontested “walkover” in 2014, and blatant, if unnecessary, rigging in 2019 (“unnecessary” because she would have won anyway). There was a two-fold consequence of this: first, a complete absence of “legitimacy in the eyes of the people” for her government and, second, “some 70 per cent of MPs being businessmen and the cabinet packed with tycoons”. Authoritarianism had spawned, said others, “sham elections, arbitrary government and a corrupt, overweening bureaucracy”.
There was massive popular dissatisfaction, said some, with electoral authoritarianism that had led to a “climate of fear” and the “weakening of institutions”, particularly, the “completely politicised judiciary” which resulted in “gross abuses of human rights going un-investigated” and even “judicial financial corruption at the highest level”. Another said, “We are barely a democracy,” pointing to “forced disappearances” of political opponents, secret prisons, and “extra-judicial killings”. There was muzzling of the media through the denial of government ads to critical newspapers and TV outlets, the Digital Security Act that sounded the “death knell of investigative journalism”, and the “sedition law which hangs like a sword of Damocles over our citizens”. As the “denial of democracy leads to the denial of justice”, the only answer lies, said the key Hasina adviser, in free and fair elections in 2024. That did not happen. Hence, the ‘Monsoon Revolution’.
The BJP says they have nothing to learn from all this. But almost every sentence of what I wrote about Bangladesh three years ago can be transposed to Narendra Modi’s India. The elections of 2024, which cut him down to size, were the consequence of his government being as flawed as Hasina’s and for much the same reasons. Although his agenda remains unchanged, his survival depends on his alliance partners. Should they get miffed, as they are already indicating, Modi, like Hasina, could become history.
Aiyar is a former Union minister and social commentator.