Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

No bullets or batons could deter the students who simply marched on, ready to take any challenge. When Sheikh Hasina called the army to her aid, the latter didn’t dare to stand against the people. And Hasina’s house of cards came tumbling down. The people’s anger and the manner in which this ire was manifest went even beyond Sheikh Hasina, Awami League, and her sycophants, and fell upon Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding figure of Bangladesh. His statute and house in Dhaka, which had been made into a museum, were vandalised.

Rise and Fall of Awami League
With Hasina’s ouster, AL politics have come full circle. In 2008, the AL-led alliance won a commanding majority marking the beginning of the present AL consolidation. Even though it was twice in power earlier (1971-1975 and 1996-2001), this victory was significant following months of political turmoil under a military-backed caretaker government. In its first 20 years of existence, Bangladesh was directly or indirectly under army rule for over 16 years.

The victory also marked AL’s protracted consolidation of power. Seen as a secular force for its historic roots and the leadership of the liberation war, the party rode to power, evoking nostalgia. Since 2007, a renewed people’s movement, backed by AL, intensified demands for the trial of war criminals. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which ruled between 2001 and 2006, participated in the elections in alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamic group. The elections were also seen as a public rejection of radical Islamic ideals and a repudiation of religious politics.

Two turning points
The first significant turning point in the history of independent Bangladesh was the movement for democracy in 1990 against the military dictatorship. Between 1982 and 1990, while under the leadership of Army Chief H. M. Ershad, the nation saw military gangsters take control, leading to millions of people taking to the streets to demand the return of civilian rule. A government characterized by killings and attacks, random imprisonments and captures, bribery, and looting, along with a destruction of democracy and democratic principles. A popular uprising removed him from power and allowed for the establishment of parliamentary democracy. The movement contributed to the development of a fresh progressive consciousness, particularly among young people, and led to specific changes in the constitution. The movement delegitimised military rule and the army’s control of politics. Political parties agreed on the nation’s democratic direction, but this was ultimately disregarded as events progressed. Both AL and BNP were prominent in these conflicts and greatly profited from them.

The 2013 movement, also called the Shahbag movement, is the second significant turning point, as it called for the execution of war criminals. At first, AL backed the movement because it served their larger political interests, however, it later encountered challenges when the movement called for greater societal democratization and an end to socioeconomic inequality. It attempted to regulate the dynamics but was unsuccessful. It then withdrew party members, intimidated the leaders, promoted discord among them, and dismantled the protest. The left continued the protests, but their small size and minimal influence in national politics caused the movement to lose momentum by 2014, resulting in a missed opportunity for democratization and addressing socioeconomic injustices from below. The movement was crushed in the final moments.

After crushing the Shahbag movement, AL moved forward to dismantle its political rival, the BNP. For AL, Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamic organizations were factors as well, however, the BNP was its primary opponent in elections, and AL leaders were starting to see that discontent and disagreement with their poor governance could help the BNP at the polls.

The crackdown on the opposition
Random arrests of BNP leaders, leading to charges being filed against them, caused discomfort within the party. Two other factors also contributed to this. The BNP was born in the cantonment and consistently received significant backing from the military. As the military’s grip on political power waned, the party’s inherent power weakened. Additionally, during its tenure in power from 2001 to 2006, it was involved in corruption scandals and attacked the opposition, even making an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Sheikh Hasina in 2004. This discrediting factor, combined with continual decline, was exacerbated by harsh attacks from the AL utilizing government resources, the administration, law enforcement, and diverse state and non-state entities. By the way, in 2006, the BNP tried and failed to manipulate the elections to stay in power, but eventually, the Awami League seemed to have a better grasp on the trade.

It is also paradoxical that the events of 2007-2008 that led to a further democratization of society and politics also influenced the decimation of the major parliamentary opposition. To make matters worse, the BNP withdrew from the 2014 elections, citing unfair conditions. It demanded Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation to make way for a “non-party” and “impartial" chief executive to oversee the polls. This handed power to AL on a platter, with 153 candidates out of 300 being elected uncontested. This election and its aftermath marked the beginning of a profound democratic deficit with a negative turn, setting the way for the current degeneration.

Since then, a conscious and consistent dismantling of the BNP went on by blocking its political activities across the country, and thousands of court cases were filed against the leaders and active members of the party, ranging from corruption to murder charges. The party has never been able to recover in the face of these multi-pronged attacks. The BNP resorted to violence after 2014, giving AL a golden chance to target them. Khaleda Zia, the two-time Prime Minister, was sent to jail in February 2018 on charges of corruption. BNP’s fortunes were doomed further.

On the other hand, the left, which was engaged in popular movements, was also harassed and repressed. The leadership of the Rampal movement was charged with false cases and physically intimated. Worker’s movements also met a similar fate.

AL largely depended on extra-political forces like the police, administration, and its goons to decimate the BNP. This was possible by an ever-increasing hold on the administration, with AL strictly controlling the appointment processes. The media and the intellectuals were successfully captured using both allure and coercion. By the end of 2018, the AL was in perfect control of the bureaucracy, judiciary, and even the army, traditionally seen as a big backer of the BNP, was bought over.

The results of the 2018 elections surpassed even its most optimistic expectations. The party won 288 of the 299 seats in the country’s parliament. The period between 2018 and 2023 established AL as the ultimate arbiter of Bangladesh’s politics and society. The January 2024 elections were the ultimate sham, with the entire opposition absent from the electoral arena. This diminished all hopes for a due parliamentary process and pushed the resistance into the extra-parliamentary arena. With Hasina’s exit, her party will find it almost impossible to maintain its hegemony over the country’s politics .

Awami League’s rightward march
Between 1987 and 1990, AL largely reestablished itself through a massive movement against the military dictatorship of H.M. Ershad, who had taken power through a bloodless coup in 1982. As discussed earlier, the movement was an important milestone in Bangladesh politics as it paved the way for elected civilian rule and also took the nation towards a certain degree of stabilization. Later however, Ershad and his Jatiya Party (Nationalist Party) were a trusted ally of AL for quite some time.

The Islamists, mainly a social force, used to lend support to the BNP in the electoral arena. However, with the BNP’s gradual fading away from the political scene, these groups have gained electoral ascendance. With the BNP’s decline, Islamic forces actively participated in the electoral arena.

AL also compromised with its historic secular credentials to corner the BNP. It built a tacit alliance with Hefazat-e-Islam, a radical Islamic outfit that was responsible for the attacks and murder of secular bloggers. The AL regime also granted certain concessions to Islamic forces, like the recognition of Qawmi madrasas, unregulated religious schools with a conservative curriculum that focused solely on religious teachings entrapping students from poorer sections in the mystical religious dogmas, far away and against modern education.

Earlier, several conservative Islamist parties were on the AL-led front. While the BNP has been politically dismantled, its politics are reinforced by a right-leaning AL.

Bangladesh’s struggle with democracy has been tragic since the birth of the nation. Popular movements have time and again contested autocratic structures only to find the fruits of labor devoured by a new autocrat, the latest incarnation being Sheikh Hasina and her entourage, but is she going to be the last one?

The interim government
After three days of no government, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus was sworn in as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government. Officially called the chief advisor, Yunus leads a 17-member team consisting of retired bureaucrats and military officers, NGO personalities, advocates, academics, and others. It also includes a couple of student leaders who led the rebellion. The diversity, including the multi-religious and multi-ethnic, looks impressive even though it doesn’t include any representatives of the workers and masses. Can it break the current impasse and pave the way for the democratization of the country? Can it fulfill popular aspirations? Only time will tell!

For Yunus, this is his first success in politics after earlier unsuccessful attempts. While there are huge expectations around him, his role as the apex financial predator and, far from being a panacea for fighting rural poverty, how his ill-famed micro-credit imposed additional burdens on the rural poor, including severe indebtedness, should be kept in mind. Yunus’ advocacy of extreme forms of neoliberalism made him a darling of the western governments and the World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

. It’s no surprise that a section of analysts, both within and outside Bangladesh, who earlier complained of an American conspiracy to oust Sheikh Hasina, will have their ideas vindicated with Yunus at the helm of the affair.

The composition of the interim government explains how a steady erosion of democratic institutions in Bangladesh has created a deep hatred for existing political parties. The same goes for the army. They looked for a personality, apparently perceived as someone rising above partisan politics, able to lead the nation toward development. Yunus, with his Nobel Prize prestige, fits the bill. What’s more, he was harassed by Hasina and almost forced to leave the country. Owing to a strong reaction against Sheikh Hasina and her party, Yunus attracts sympathy.

Bangladesh, a poster-boy of neo-liberal reforms, has recently experienced difficulties. The country was severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as were Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Bangladesh’s GDP GDP
Gross Domestic Product Gross Domestic Product is an aggregate measure of total production within a given territory equal to the sum of the gross values added. The measure is notoriously incomplete; for example it does not take into account any activity that does not enter into a commercial exchange. The GDP takes into account both the production of goods and the production of services. Economic growth is defined as the variation of the GDP from one period to another. growth is now forecast to fall below 6% this year and next. Previously, the country had enjoyed steady growth of 6-8% between the end of the global financial crisis and the start of the epidemic. The value of the currency, the taka has plummeted against the US dollar, foreign debt repayment is rising due to loans for Bangladesh’s many iconic megaprojects, and some sectors of the banking sector look unstable.

How will Mohammad Yunus resolve this crisis? A fervent supporter of market fundamentalism and neoliberal capitalism, he will resort to the bailout, with the full knowledge that the latter will impose severe austerity measures in return. While many commentaries on the current political unrest in Bangladesh have focused on the tyranny and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina’s government, they have either completely ignored or largely downplayed, the deterioration of the key economic indicators leading to crisis in the society.

Reeling under a severe shortage of foreign exchange, the Yunus-led administration is already seeking a US$ 3 billion bailout from the IMF IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org , US$ 1 billion from the World Bank, and an additional $1 billion from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The IMF has agreed in principle, looking forward to advancing the ’reform’ agenda’ as part of the bailout. The IMF loan deal will no doubt imply a series of austerity measures that will make life harder for the bulk of the population of the country. For sure, this will trigger a new set of protests, encouraging further revolts.

Yunus and his microcredit theory have a dubious history of locking the impoverished in a vicious debt trap, not only in Bangladesh but also globally. Is he going to replicate the same for Bangladesh? The initial observations suggest that he has not advanced an economic policy that satisfies popular aspirations.

If it was the quota system that triggered the rebellion, the underlying causes are linked to deeper political and economic problems. Bangladesh faces chronic unemployment, with two-fifths of people aged between fifteen and twenty-four out of work and out of school, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

Although Sheikh Hasina claimed that an economic miracle had lifted millions of people out of poverty, in reality, the economic boom was based on the declining profitability of Bangladeshi capital. Before the pandemic-induced depression of 2020, the relative rebound in profitability after the great global recession of 2008-9 began to erode in 2013.

Can the country’s economy continue to grow with a strong focus on garment manufacturing, exploiting an abundant workforce and low wages? What’s more, the IMF’s austerity measures will recreate harsher conditions once again, forcing people out into the streets beyond this immediate euphoria.

The two principal political forces in the arena, BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, are anxiously looking at early elections to lay their hands on power. The latter appears to be very strongly organized with active networks across the country and will certainly not let go of this chance.

The way forward
The July uprising was successful with the participation of myriad social forces. Just like any other struggle against autocratic regimes, the popular aspirations were for liberty and freedom, but largely expressed in vague and abstract terms. In other words, it was not a movement guided by sharp ideological positions. The students protested for reforms but the state repression ignited a mass uprising involving wide swaths of the Bangladeshi working and middle classes, which ended in an upsurge. The students have won the trust of the people and will have to chart a way forward. One can certainly hope that the spirit of the student movement can lead to a much more nuanced consciousness about a transformational agenda.

The fate of the July events will lead to a positive outcome if workers can assume a leading role. Overcoming communal, ethnic and other divisions, the working class, other working people, oppressed groups, and their allies must fight to gain a seat at the table, but also to win real gains in wages, working conditions and social protection. It has to win the fight for climate justice as Bangladesh is immensely vulnerable to the impact of climate change. It is certain that even with the best possible parliamentary transition, the caretaker government or the future ones cannot resolve any of the challenges without a massive push-back against capitalism itself.

Gaining ground on democratic rights, socioeconomic justice, and climate justice will require the full weight of the organized working class because the forces of capital will pull in the opposite direction. Students began the revolution, and working people will have to make sure it succeeds. Herein lies the biggest challenge for the left in Bangladesh.

Whither left?
However, the organized left is extremely weak in Bangladesh. Two major parties, the Bangladesh Workers’ Party and a faction of the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JASAD), were part of the Hasina government and are complicit in its crimes. It’s true that other left-wing organizations, including the Communist Party of Bangladesh, were on the streets resulting in a few of their workers being killed and many others injured, but their weight in Bangladeshi politics is extremely small. The left, once a powerful force in Bangladesh, is now a shadow of its former self.

It’s hard to imagine now that the Left played a key role in the language movement of 1952 and the mass uprising of 1969. At the time, the Left also had an unrivaled influence on peasant and worker mobilizations. However, the Left’s influence waned after the 1960s, partly as a result of the Sino-Soviet conflict, which led to divisions between supporters of Moscow and Peking. While Chinese influence forced part of the population to actively oppose the war of liberation, Soviet influence led others to blindly follow Bangladesh’s first president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and his authoritarian policies. Groups opposing the authoritarian regime were constantly persecuted. Thousands of left-wing workers were killed, and organizational spaces such as trade unions and student associations became sites of violent attacks, a trend that continued under military rule.

Historically, the Bangladeshi left has lacked confidence for years, depending on external support from Moscow or Beijing. Instead of creating independent organizations and unifying with other sections of the left in the 1980s, they put their strength and efforts at the service of the Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina or the BNP led by Khaleda Zia, prioritizing their agendas over those of the left.

In fact, throughout Bangladesh’s history, leaders - from Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to Ziaur Rahman, H. M. Ershad, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina - have been able to secure the unconditional support of one left-wing party or another. At present, the section of the former left is probably larger than that of the active left. The major left forces are clueless and trapped in parliamentary cretinism, while the other smaller organizations are more NGOs than political organizations.

In this process, questions of capitalist exploitation or issues such as gender or ethnic discrimination are conveniently forgotten. The only positive thing to be said about the left is that it has remained steadfastly opposed to any form of religious fundamentalism or sectarian violence. Today, Bangladesh needs a strong new anti-capitalist left, whose vision of socialism goes beyond the bureaucratic “really existing socialisms of the 20^th century”. A new left that has the capacity to take on issues like the current democratic crisis, the emergence of reactionary forces, the rise in state violence, the expanding inequality, the climate crisis and capitalism. The left must reinvent itself, reorganize and unify against all forms of bourgeois domination. An essential condition for this would be to build an independent identity and a clear, determined vision, combined with creative politics. The New Left is more than necessary today.