How Bangladesh's young generation forced the leader who had ruled the country for most of their lives to step down
Janatul Brom hopes to leave Bangladesh to continue studying or perhaps find a job after completing her degree, frustrated by a system she says does not reward merit and offers few opportunities for young people.
“Our scope here is very limited,” said the 21-year-old, who would have left sooner if her family had enough money to pay for tuition at foreign universities for herself and her older brother at the same time.
But recent events have given her hope that she might one day be able to return to a changing Bangladesh: After 15 years in power, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country last week — hounded by young protesters, including Bromi, who say they are fed up with the way her increasingly authoritarian rule has suppressed dissent, favored the elite and widened inequality.
In June, students took to the streets of Bangladesh to demand an end to rules that reserved up to 30% of government jobs for descendants of veterans of the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Protesters said the decision benefited supporters of Hasina’s Awami League, which led that struggle—and who were already part of the elite. In fact, the quotas and other allocations for marginalized groups meant that only 44% of civil service jobs were awarded on the basis of merit.
That such jobs are at the heart of the movement is no coincidence: they are among the most stable and best-paying in a country where the economy has boomed in recent years but has not created enough solid, professional jobs for the well-educated middle class.
It’s also no surprise that Generation Z is leading this uprising: young people like Bromi are among the most frustrated and affected by the lack of opportunities in Bangladesh — and at the same time, they are not beholden to the taboos and outdated narratives that the quota system reflects.
Their willingness to break with the past was evident when Hasina played down their demands in mid-July, asking who should be given government jobs if not freedom fighters.
“Who will do that? The descendants of Razakar?” Hasina responded, using a highly offensive word referring to those who collaborated with Pakistan to suppress Bangladesh’s independence struggle.
But the student protesters wore the word as a badge of honor. They marched through the Dhaka University campus chanting, “Who are you? Who am I? Rizakar. Who said this? The dictator.”
The next day, protesters were killed in clashes with security forces, only fueling the demonstrations, which grew into a broader uprising against Hasina's rule.
Many of the protesters are so young they can’t remember the time before Hasina became prime minister, said Sabrina Karim, a Cornell University professor who studies political violence and Bangladesh’s military history.
They, like generations before them, had grown up on stories of the struggle for independence — with Hasina’s family at the center. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was the first leader of independent Bangladesh and was later assassinated in a military coup. But Karim said that narrative was less relevant to the young protesters than it was to their grandparents.
“It doesn't resonate with them the way it used to. They want something new,” she said.
For Noreen Sultana Toma, a 22-year-old student at Dhaka University, Hasina’s equating of student protesters with traitors made her realise the gap between what the youth want and what the government can provide.
She said she had watched Bangladesh slowly become a country immune to inequality, with people losing hope that things would ever improve.
The country’s longest-serving prime minister boasted of boosting per capita incomes and transforming Bangladesh’s economy into a global competitor — turning fields into garment factories and bumpy roads into winding highways. But Toma said she saw the daily struggles of people trying to buy necessities or find work, and her demands for basic rights were met with insults and violence.
“This can no longer be tolerated,” Toma said.
Young people in Bangladesh have felt the economic pain acutely. According to Chitij Bajpai, a South Asia researcher at Chatham House, 18 million young people in a country of 170 million are unemployed or not in school. And after the pandemic, private-sector jobs have become even scarcer.
Many young people try to study abroad or move abroad after graduation in the hope of finding decent work, shrinking the middle class and leading to a brain drain.
“The class gap has widened,” said Janathon Nahar Ankan, 28, who works for a non-profit organization in Dhaka and joined the protests.
Despite these problems, none of the protesters seemed to really believe that their movement would be able to unseat Hasina.
Rafij Khan, 24, was on the street preparing to join a protest when he heard that Hasina had resigned and fled the country. He called home repeatedly to see if he could verify the news.
He said people of all classes, religions and professions had joined students on the streets in the last days of the protests. Now they were hugging each other, while others sat on the ground in disbelief.
“I can't describe the joy people felt that day,” he said.
But some of that euphoria is now fading as we realize the enormity of the task ahead. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as interim leader on Thursday, and he and a cabinet of two student protest leaders will have to restore peace, build institutions and prepare the country for new elections.
The hope for most students is that the interim government will be given time to reform Bangladesh's institutions while a new political party is formed – one not led by the old political dynasties.
“If I am asked to vote in the elections now, I don't know who I will vote for. We don't want to replace one dictatorship with another,” Khan said.
The young people who took to the streets are often described as a generation that “hates politics.”
But Azahir Uddin Anik, a 26-year-old digital security specialist and recent Dhaka University graduate, said that was a misnomer.
They don't hate all politics, they hate the divisive politics of Bangladesh.
Although he admits that the structural reforms the country needs now may be more difficult than removing the prime minister, he feels hopeful for the first time in a while.
“My recent experience tells me that the impossible can happen,” he said. “And maybe it’s not too late.”