The dramatic, youth-led movement that brought an abrupt end to Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s long rule has opened a rare political interregnum in Bangladesh—one filled with democratic promise but also profound uncertainty. Hasina’s flight to India after weeks of sustained protests symbolised not merely the fall of an individual leader, but the collapse of a governance model that had increasingly relied on legacy, patronage, and coercion rather than popular consent. For a nation born through a mass uprising against authoritarianism, the irony was striking.

Pakistan’s Delivery Trap

For nearly two decades, Bangladesh under Hasina recorded impressive economic indicators. Export growth, large-scale infrastructure projects, improvements in human development indices, and relative macroeconomic stability earned international praise. Yet economic performance did not translate into democratic consolidation. Elections became increasingly contested rituals rather than genuine exercises of choice. Opposition space shrank, dissent was securitised, the media faced pressure, and state institutions—from the judiciary to electoral bodies—were steadily politicised.

The Widening Gap

The regime ruled less through persuasion than intimidation, invoking the liberation legacy of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman while hollowing out the pluralist spirit that legacy once promised. Liberation symbolism became a shield against accountability. Nationalism was monopolised, dissent equated with disloyalty, and political competition framed as an existential threat. Over time, this fusion of historical legitimacy and coercive governance produced stability without trust—and growth without inclusion.

The uprising that dismantled this order was neither ideological nor partisan. It was generational. Bangladesh’s Gen-Z—urban, digitally connected, globally aware, and politically impatient—did not revolt against development but against exclusion. Their demand was simple yet fundamentally democratic: dignity, voice, and participation. However, revolutions that erupt organically often struggle to institutionalise themselves, and Bangladesh now confronts that familiar post-uprising dilemma: how to translate moral........

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