Why is Bangladesh on the boil?

Bangladesh is on the boil following a High Court order reinstating quota in 30 per cent of civil services posts for the descendants of the 1971 war fighters.

- Suvojit Bagchi

Another 26 per cent are reserved altogether for women, indigenous communities and other underprivileged groups and categories. Following a previous protest, the Bangladesh government scrapped quotas in most of government jobs in 2018 which was reinstated by the Court on June 5 this year. The renewed protests assume significance because government jobs are in high demand as they pay well.

The students’ movement took off after a month of the Court order and all this while the government failed to assess the impact of the verdict in a country which has a deep history of uprisings. Rather, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina chose to ignore intelligence reports which, according to sources, had practically predicted severe unrest. Hasina refused to meet the students and stepped up her offensive calling the protesters ‘Razakars’ or volunteers in Arabic, which in Bangladesh's context is a deeply reviled word that means collaborators or volunteers of Pakistan. That proved to be exceptionally expensive and the army had to be deployed, curfew was imposed and communication was snapped, severing Bangladesh from the rest of the world.