Reporter's account | Hasina to Yunus, what Bangladeshis look for in transition
Expectations soared when the interim regime, led by Muhammad Yunus, took over after months of bloodshed and chaos. Just 60 days, but people's patience is beginning to wear thin -- or so it seems like
Bangladesh’s interim government had completed over a month in office when The Federal reached the country for a Ground Report on how it is faring after an uprising snapped Sheikh Hasina’s iron-fisted rule.
In the queue for immigration clearance on arrival at the Dhaka International Airport, named after 12-13th century Sufi saint Hazrat Shahjalal, it was heartening to see a substantial number of Indian passport holders.
In quest of the real story
Among them were students from Uttara Women's Medical College, Dhaka and Indian workers returning to the country they had left during the July-August violence.
The official behind the immigration counter was chatty and welcoming, offsetting any apprehension about the reported anti-India feeling gripping the country.
“Oh! apnar J-visa. Reportinger jonno aisen? Kaun media? (Yours is a journalist visa. Have you come for reporting? Which media house do you represent?),” he asked.
“It’s good that you have come to see for yourself the situation in our country. Try to find out whether things have changed for a better…From a distance, you don’t get the real picture.”
That was the gist of what the official said in Bengali after a few formal routine queries.
Ambitious initiatives
In the brief conversation was a broad hint about the expectations of Bangladeshis from the interim government headed by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus – a holistic change.
For one visiting Bangladesh after about a decade, the changes that first caught the eye were the actions of the previous regime—the upcoming swanky new terminal of the Dhaka airport (90 percent of the work has been completed), newly constructed elevated expressways, flyovers, and metro rails.
Several such mega infrastructure projects initiated by the previous Hasina government have either been implemented or are in the process of being implemented across the country.
Some of these big-ticket projects include Padma Bridge and rail link, Dhaka metro rail, Chittagong-Cox’s Bazar rail link, Rooppur nuclear power plant, thermal power plants at Matarbari and Rampal, and the Payra sea port.
Ironically, these seeming edifices of development contributed, among other socio-political factors, to the writing of the Hasina government’s sorry epitaph.
Debt burden that led to Hasina’s fall
These projects were marred by issues like cost overruns, environmental degradation, and mounting external debt, irregularities, corruption, and flawed project planning, according to a recent report of the LightCastle Partners (LCP), an international management consulting firm.
These expensive projects have been funded through both internal and external financing, embroiling the country in a debt-trap.
According to data from the Bangladesh Bank, the country's total public and private sector debt stood at $99.30 billion (1 USD = 119.489 Bangladesh Taka) as of March.
The external debt for the first time climbed to $100.64 billion in December last year. The debt-to-GDP ratio is at the threshold of a whopping 40 per cent.
The situation could be worse as there are doubts about the integrity of the country’s official data, one of Bangladesh’s leading economists and political commentator Anu Muhammad told The Federal.
No competitive bidding, higher project costs
Combined with internal loans, the total debt-to-GDP ratio could exceed 50 per cent, LCP cautioned in its report.
According to an estimate of the current government’s Finance Division, the total foreign and domestic debt left behind by the previous regime is Tk 18.36 trillion – Tk 10.35 trillion in domestic debts and Tk 8.01 trillion in foreign debts.
The high debt is allegedly because of the astonishingly higher project costs.
“The capital cost of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) selected without competitive bidding is 44–56 per cent higher than those chosen through competitive bidding in developing countries, including Bangladesh. Additionally, the cost of road construction per kilometre in Bangladesh is two to nine times that in India and China, and as much as double the cost in Europe, despite Bangladesh’s relatively low labour costs,” according to the LCP’s report.
It attributed these significant cost differences to prolonged project timelines, inefficient logistics, negligence of implementing agencies, corruption, and flawed designs.
‘Friends of Hasina govt were beneficiaries’
Muhammad said project costs were jacked up to benefit the erstwhile government’s “international and domestic friends” and earn kickbacks.
He said only a handful of Bangladeshis were the real beneficiaries of the project, leading to growing disparity. Even the government incurred losses.
Data from just six mega projects in the transportation sector indicated a loss of potential economic benefit amounting to BDT 503.87 billion, according to the LCP.
The inadequate development planning and cost-benefit analysis of the projects created economic conditions for the mass uprising.
Balance of payment crisis led to depreciation of the country’s currency taka, which in turn caused inflation and increased cost of living, disgruntling the poor and the middle class. The average inflation rate in Bangladesh was 9.72 per cent in June 2024.
Costly projects diverted focus from health, education
The high budgetary allocation for mega projects, limited spending on social sectors like education and health, the brunt of which was faced by the poor.
The high youth unemployment rate, at 8 per cent, further caused unease among the students.
“Over the past two decades, the real income or the GDP share of the bottom 90 per cent has declined. The income is now concentrated in the hands of the top 10 per cent, with the top one per cent capturing the lion’s share,” the economist said, pointing out that the economic inequality is one of the forms of discrimination that needed to be addressed.
The Hasina government ignored the disparity to its peril.
Woes of garment industry
Bangladesh's garment industry, another projected success story of the previous government appeared to be unravelling.
The sector accounts for over 80 per cent of the country’s total export earnings and contributes approximately 11 per cent to its GDP.
“Low wage, poor working conditions and threat-culture dogged the sector for long,” said Saiful Islam, the publicity secretary of the Garment Workers’ Federation.
The minimum monthly wage fixed by the previous regime was a meagre Tk 12,500 in December last year after protests by workers, Islam added.
But most of the garment units did not implement the minimum wage determined by the government. The protests were suppressed by violent crackdown by state forces and repression by the musclemen employed by the management. Non-complying workers were blacklisted by owners making it impossible for them to get another job in the sector.
Due to low wages, employees are often compelled to work overtime for prolonged hours to make ends meet. According to Islam, the workers’ demand to adequately increase the overtime wage went unheeded.
Did interim govt right the wrongs?
No wonder that garment workers overwhelmingly took part in the July-August mass uprising against the Awami League government. A total of 26 garment workers were killed in the student-led uprising, according to data collected by the various garment workers’ associations.
After the fall of the Hasina government, the workers renewed their demands for better pay and working conditions, paralysing the sector for days.
After much dilly-dallying, the interim government last week finally brokered a tripartite agreement between the factory owners, garment workers and the government representative.
The owners agreed to meet all 18 workers' demands, including the compulsory payment of minimum wage by all factories. Many owners soon went back on the promise, leading to a massive protest by workers at the garment hub of Ashulia, on the outskirts of Dhaka on September 30. A garment worker was shot dead, and around 30 people were injured during a clash between protesting workers and law enforcers, reported Dhaka-based Daily Star.
Impoverished, discriminated classes await justice
Islam said working classes in Bangladesh in general want the regime formed at the cost of their blood to address various forms of inequalities, class discrimination being the most prominent.
Many government-owned jute and sugar mills are closed, allegedly because the previous regime wanted to promote private businesses run by those close to the ruling dispensation.
“We must discuss issues such as workers' wages, the increasing commercialisation of education and healthcare, and the consequent alienation of a large segment of the population. Families are going bankrupt seeking medical treatment or educating their children. These processes—deprivation coexisting with growth—are causing a large number of people to become increasingly alienated. Those who are alienated, living in poverty and deprivation, were a significant part of the recent uprising. What will happen to them, and what programmes will be implemented to lift them out of their current desperation, is a crucial question,” Muhammad said.
Long road to recovery
Clearly, the economic growth envisioned by Hasina failed to factor in the larger interest of common Bangladeshis.
The onus is now on the interim government to do the needful.
So far, no significant change, physical or abstract, has been visible that suggests the present dispensation would be markedly different from past governments.
True, one-and-a-half months is too short a time to judge any government’s performance.
However, it has not yet clearly outlined its economic, social and political vision for the country. It has constituted six commissions to reform the constitution, electoral system, the judiciary, the police, Anti-corruption Commission, and public administration.
“The commissions are expected to start their work from October 1. They will roll out a reform roadmap,” said Nahid Islam, adviser for information and broadcasting in the interim government. The commissions would reportedly take at least six months to come out with a broad contour of their plan.
Till then Bangladesh can only wait with hope and despair.