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The Yemeni peace activist Tawakkol Karman once said that youth is a revolution; they cannot be stopped, they cannot be oppressed, and they cannot be silenced. That was certainly true in Bangladesh on August 5.

The sudden toppling of the country’s authoritarian ruler,��, led Karman’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate����to declare it Bangladesh’s “.”��

What began as a����against the country’s highly politicised system of public-sector job quotas quickly escalated into an anti-government��. This youth uprising lit a match in a society that was already deeply dissatisfied with rising living costs, corruption, and violent crackdowns on dissent.��

The catalyst came on July 16, when police shot and����the student leader Abu Sayed. Tens of thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets to demand justice, but Hasina’s government����the killing and deployed party student cadres, border security guards, and the military to crack down on the protests. Outraged by this violent response, the protesters demanded Hasina’s resignation, while she labelled them all��.��

Then, on August 4, nearly 100 people were killed after the government imposed a new digital and street��. But the����in the country’s post-independence history turned the tide against Asia’s Iron Lady.

The army chief����to continue enforcing the curfew, and she resigned the next morning as massive crowds marched on her official residence in Dhaka. Eager to avoid more bloodshed, the army facilitated Hasina’s escape by helicopter while distancing itself from her party to signal a neutral stance during the transition.��

Bangladesh’s highly politicised job quota system had become a symbol of Hasina’s broken promises and corruption. With the number of university students growing rapidly, the failure to create enough jobs left millions unemployed after graduation. The combination of rising aspirations and limited opportunities has left an entire generation feeling thwarted.��

At the macroeconomic level, growth under Hasina’s tenure was not widely shared. Businesses and political elites close to the regime reaped most of the profits, and the restrictive job quota system rewarded party loyalists. The private sector struggled to absorb a growing educated workforce because export-led growth remained concentrated in low-skill sectors like textiles. And even there, the proportion of women workers has been��.��

Instead of focusing on harmonising education and����with private-sector job creation, the government embraced����mega-infrastructure projects. As the size of the state bureaucracy increased, so did benefits and pay for civil servants, crowding out funds for private-sector investment.��

In addition to presiding over rampant corruption, cronyism, rising living costs, and a stagnant labour market, Hasina’s regime grew increasingly����over time.

�ճ�����������kept her in power for nearly 16 years, and hundreds of people have been “disappeared” or locked away as political prisoners.��

Now, her spectacular fall has allowed Yunus to take the reins, leading a new caretaker government with��other��advisers. It is an ironic development, considering that Hasina had long sought to����Yunus’s Grameen Bank, which pioneered the field of microfinance to support the poor.

Weaponising Bangladesh’s legal system, Hasina����nearly 200 trumped-up charges against Yunus, eventually securing a conviction against the 84-year-old at the beginning of this year.��

To restore Bangladesh’s democracy, the new government must tackle several����simultaneously. These include stabilising the economy, winning back the confidence of the business community, securing support from the international development banks, and restoring civil order. Yunus is well-equipped for the task, given his enormous domestic and international prestige, his grassroots experience as the founder of one of the world’s largest NGOs, and his promotion of social business.��

A return to democracy is not guaranteed, of course. After three national elections that were nothing more than a��, the institutions needed to sustain a functional electoral democracy have been hollowed out.

In the days following Hasina’s departure, Bangladesh had no government, leading to a sharp rise in����and violence against members of her regime. Hundreds of police stations were burned, and the parliament building was vandalised.��

Moreover, there are already worrying signs that other political parties may try to seize control of key institutions. The country’s��, for example, is a senior member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition party.

None of the country’s mainstream parties is untainted by a legacy of corruption and repression, and all are trying to����the country into an early election, so that Yunus’s interim rule may not be long enough to make a difference.

Just as the Arab Spring soon became what Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman called an��, Bangladesh’s democratic renewal could be smothered in its crib.��

But a disappointing outcome is far from inevitable. The mass uprisings in the Arab world failed partly because young people played only a limited role in them. In Bangladesh, by contrast, Gen Z protesters led the charge, and they have not stopped at bringing down a dictator.

Before a transitional government was created, students and Boy Scouts stepped in to��, performing the duties of traffic police, cleaning crews, and security personnel. In a heartening sign of what could be, Muslim student volunteers guarded temples and��.��

Most importantly, Bangladeshi youth are exercising political agency, establishing a framework for what comes next, and articulating a vision of good governance and a merit-based society.

Instead of waiting for the army or mainstream political parties to take charge, they convinced Yunus to do so. With Hasina’s rubber-stamp parliament dissolved and Yunus’s interim government sworn in, Bangladesh has embraced a more inclusive style of leadership – two����of the anti-discrimination student group have been appointed to the cabinet.

As long as the country’s elites accept this��, and as long as the youth movement remains committed, the country’s “Bangla Spring” will continue.

M. Niaz Asadullah, Head of the Southeast Asia cluster of the Global Labor Organization, is a visiting professor of economics at the University of Reading and a professorial fellow at North South University in Bangladesh.

This��was first published on��

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