Bangladeshi students have taken to the streets to challenge the government’s quota system that restricts the job market.
As thousands take to the streets, the government has unleashed unprecedented repression.
The university campuses of Dhaka are usually peaceful spaces, far from the din of the traffic of the city outside. The buildings of Jahangirnagar University are immersed in the jungle forests of the Bay of Bengal where the youth can enjoy exchanging ideas in the tea rooms and train for their future. Dhaka University also boasts of large parks that seek to generate the same tranquility and seclusion.
Until a few days ago, few would have guessed that the youth of these campuses would flood the streets of the capital and start a major rebellion that would soon spread across the country, sparking an unprecedented crisis that would put the current Awami League government on the ropes.
Since the uprising began last week, the government has moved to establish a curfew and deployed paramilitary forces to curb the protests. Over a hundred people are said to have been killed.
How Did It Begin?
The current movement was sparked by a Supreme Court ruling, through which Prime Minister Sheik Hasina’s government reinstated the quota system in government jobs, which had been on hold since 2018 following a wave of protests against it. The quota system indicates that 30 percent of the limited quotas are reserved for family members of the heroes of Pakistan’s 1971 War of Independence. According to the students, admission should be based on merit, i.e., on the basis of the best results in competitive examinations. Following the government’s decision to reinstate the quota, the anger was not long in coming.
Thousands of students from all universities spontaneously flooded the streets of Dhaka, Chittagong and other cities. From Dhaka University, Jahangirnagar, Rangpur, and Cumilla, the youth held sit-ins on the main avenues of the capital of 30 million people. The movement quickly spread to other cities; universities in the interior of the country joined in, as well as high school students.
The government’s response has been to meet these protests with large-scale repression. Hasina activated her repressive apparatus, which fired tear gas and beat students with sticks at every protest point. But she also sent thugs from her student group, the Chhatra League, armed with machetes — some, with guns — to beat the students, including many women.
A breaking point was last Monday, July 15: at least 6 people were killed and 500 injured in street clashes. The protests intensified after Hasina told the students that they are “razakars,” a label used to refer to war criminals and collaborators of Pakistan during independence.
All existing student organizations have taken up the mobilizations; the movement is not associated with any one particular party. In response to the repression, the protests have only grown. Additional sectors have also joined the students’ demands, such as the doctors’ union and some from the textile sector — which is strategic for the country — such as the Bangladesh Garment Workers’ Trade Union Confederation (GWTUC).
Beyond Quotas
The protests by the students are profound because they strike at the core of the state power of Sheik Hasina and her party, the Awami League. As mentioned, one-third of government jobs are reserved for the children of those who fought for the country’s independence in 1971. Some are also reserved for women, ethnic minorities and the disabled. But the complaint is that the government is building, in the students’ words, a “dictatorship” by monopolizing a large part of the public service positions.
According to them, the system unfairly benefits the children of pro-government party supporters of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who won her fourth consecutive election in January 2024. The prime minister is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is largely seen by Bangladeshis as a founder of the country following its independence. Rahman was killed by the 1975 military coup that grew support for Bangladesh’s other big political family, the Zias, who run the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Hasina has shielded herself behind the umbrella of extreme vindication of the heroes of independence, in order to tackle the political opposition coming from both the right and the left.
Bangladesh has enjoyed strong sustained growth (6% per year) in recent decades, driven by the textile sector, real estate investment and public works, but structural problems such as unemployment and extreme poverty of the majority of its 170 million inhabitants have deepened. Since 2022, the country faces a strong economic slowdown.
Against this backdrop, the student protests point to the crisis of access to employment for the youth. After finishing their studies, a Bangladeshi must face a narrow bottleneck to get a job: according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), every year, between 1.8 and 1.9 million young people enter the labor market. Competition is fierce. Many workabroad to send remittances to their families. Meanwhile, a large number of young people become street vendors, selling paan, cigarettes, or street food such as alu poori, beguni and tea.
In addition, many must pay the police a “bribe” to “guard” their businesses. According to the Bangladesh Street Vendors Federation, each street vendor has to pay a bribe they call a “toll” of 300 taka per day, which means that about 30 billion taka are collected in “tolls” per year.
On the other hand, many are forced to take jobs for low monthly salaries of just 10,000 to 12,000 taka ($80-$100) after graduating from private sector universities. This is partly the case of textile workers, who have been struggling for a minimum wage of 23,000 taka (~$200 per month), in addition to fighting to improve the abhorrent conditions they work in.
These crises are compounded by the fact that, in Bangladesh, studying in any educational institution is also tied to material means. Every year, hundreds of thousands of students drop out of primary, secondary, and higher secondary education due to poverty. Working families do not have adequate opportunities to provide a better alternative for their children.
In the face of the explosive anger of a generation left behind, Sheik Hasina’s government has cut the internet and communications within the country and has deployed the army to quell the protests. The government has been raiding the offices of opposition parties and has shut down the entire education system. In practice, there is a state of emergency.
Since the protests began, the GWTUC has expressed their solidarity, but that “it is likely that we will call for a strike in the textile sector to confront the dictatorship”. Although there is enormous union fragmentation in the textile sector, the GWTUC has played an important role in recent decades in the fight for improvements in working conditions. The active participation of the textile unions could quickly twist the government’s arm and radicalize the movement.
Between the Savar district and downtown Dhaka there are countless textile factories. On his daily bus ride, Kais, a student of Jahangirnagar University, says, “The working class is tired; they will join the protest movement very soon.” For him, if this were to happen, “it would likely be the beginning of the end of Hasina and Awami League.”