Introduction: The Fall of an Authoritarian Order
Bangladesh in 2025 is living through one of the most turbulent moments since its birth in 1971. The collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s long rule was not a peaceful retirement, as liberal commentators in the West might suggest, but the product of a mass revolt against authoritarian neoliberalism. For more than a decade, the Awami League perfected the machinery of repression: rigged elections, a domesticated judiciary, violent policing of opposition, and wholesale capture of civil institutions.
Yet beneath the facade of “stability” lay deep contradictions: skyrocketing inequality, dispossession of farmers from their land, garment workers trapped in global supply-chain exploitation, and a suffocating atmosphere of fear. The uprising of 2024, led by students, young workers, and peasants, tore through that veneer. Hasina’s fall was not the gift of the military, nor the benevolence of the ruling elite–it was forced by the insurgent energy of the oppressed.
Into this breach stepped Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, celebrated abroad as the “banker to the poor” but reviled by many workers’ movements at home as a technocrat of microcredit dependency. Yunus’s caretaker government, hailed by the West and sections of the middle class as a “neutral solution,” represents not the victory of the people’s struggle but the attempt of the ruling bloc—both local and international—to re-stabilize bourgeois order.
Yunus has now promised elections in February 2026, a timeline that reassures foreign donors but fails to address the burning demands of the masses. The question facing Bangladesh is stark: will the 2024 uprising be contained within the old cycle of elite-managed elections, or will it open the door to a deeper revolutionary transformation?
The Nature of the Hasina Regime
To understand the present moment, one must recall the character of the regime that just collapsed. Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League presented itself as the guardian of secular nationalism and the developmental state. In practice, it presided over a fusion of authoritarianism and neoliberalism, serving the interests of local oligarchs, global capital, and Indian regional hegemony.
The government rode the boom of the ready-made garment (RMG) industry, the lifeline of Bangladesh’s export economy, but this boom was founded on the super-exploitation of women workers trapped in sweatshops serving Western fast-fashion brands. Trade unions were brutally suppressed, labor organizers murdered or jailed, and strikes crushed by police violence.
In the countryside, millions of peasants faced land dispossession through “development” projects, shrimp cultivation, and real estate expansion. Agricultural subsidies declined, while corporate agribusiness gained ground. Climate-induced disasters–cyclones, floods, and salinity intrusion–further eroded rural livelihoods, producing an ever-growing group of migrant laborers forced into Dhaka’s slums or overseas work.
Politically, the Awami League hollowed out democracy. The 2014, 2018, and 2024 elections were widely denounced as fraudulent, with opposition candidates barred, intimidated, or disappeared. The judiciary and Election Commission became instruments of the ruling party. Civil society organizations were co-opted or crushed through surveillance. By 2024, Bangladesh was effectively a one-party authoritarian state in all but name.
The Mass Uprising of 2024
The eruption of revolt in 2024 did not come from nowhere. It was the result of years of accumulated grievances. The student movement–historically the vanguard of Bangladesh’s democratic struggles–took the lead, mobilizing against authoritarianism, unemployment, and price hikes. They were soon joined by garment workers striking for wages in the midst of spiraling inflation, peasants protesting land grabs, and ordinary citizens suffocated by the regime’s corruption.
The uprising was polycentric and spontaneous, a mosaic of street protests, strikes, and campus occupations, drawing its power from class anger: against repression, inequality, and the suffocating grip of the oligarchy. Hasina’s security apparatus cracked down brutally, but repression only deepened the revolt. The regime’s legitimacy crumbled as defections spread, and international backers–particularly the United States and India–calculated that her time was over. She fled power not through negotiation, but through the collapse of her ruling bloc’s cohesion.
Yunus as a Transitional Figure
Into this void entered Dr. Muhammad Yunus, parachuted in as a “neutral” caretaker by an alliance of elite forces and international actors. His appeal lies in international reputation: Nobel laureate, pioneer of microcredit, palatable to Western governments, donor agencies, and the Bangladeshi middle class.
Yet Yunus lacks any mass political base. Microcredit left a bitter legacy in the countryside, trapping many borrowers in cycles of debt and dependency. For peasants and workers, Yunus is a technocrat, not a revolutionary leader. His caretaker government presents itself as a bridge to democracy, but the contradiction is glaring: he rules without electoral mandate, depending entirely on the promise of elections. His February 2026 timeline reassures imperialist powers more than it serves the people.
The February Elections and Bourgeois Democracy
Elections are not designed to empower the masses but to restore legitimacy to an exploitative system.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), long marginalized under Hasina, sees this as a chance to return. Yet its past record is authoritarian: corruption, crony capitalism, and reliance on Islamist allies. For BNP, February is a ticket to power, not systemic transformation.
The Awami League, weakened but reorganizing, seeks to exploit Yunus’s transitional weakness, biding time for rehabilitation. International actors–U.S., EU, India–view elections as a deadline to restore “stability” while maintaining the neoliberal-export model.
Thus, February is a restoration project, not a revolutionary opening.
The Rise of Jamaat-e-Islami
Crucially, the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami has officially been withdrawn after the 2024 uprising. Jamaat is now operating openly in politics, actively seeking influence and preparing to regain power. Their re-entry represents the revival of organized Islamist politics in Bangladesh and adds a volatile dimension to the transitional crisis. Fragmented Islamist networks exploit political vacuums, presenting themselves as moral alternatives to corrupt elites, but they offer no solution to structural inequality or labor exploitation.
Structural Problems Beyond Elections
Elections will not resolve Bangladesh’s deep structural crises:
1.Land Dispossession: Corporate agriculture, shrimp cultivation, and urban expansion continue to displace peasants; food sovereignty collapses.
2.Garment Exploitation: Workers face stagnant wages and unsafe conditions; foreign investors demand “stability,” translating into continued suppression.
3.Climate Crisis: Rising seas, salinity, and cyclones displace hundreds of thousands annually; donor-driven adaptation dominates the discourse.
4.Youth Unemployment: Millions of graduates face precarious gig work or migration.
Without structural change, elections are cosmetic, reshuffling personnel but leaving exploitation intact.
Imperialism and Bangladesh
Bangladesh remains deeply tied to imperialist dependency: garment exports, remittances, IMF loans, and strategic alignment with India and the U.S. Yunus’s caretaker role reflects this dependency, ensuring the country does not slip into uncontrollable radicalism. The February timeline aligns with donor conferences, investment cycles, and imperialist interests.
Revolutionary Left and Popular Movements
Despite chaos, the revolutionary Left retains potential. Peasant, worker, and student organizations participated in the 2024 uprising, demanding land reform, food sovereignty, and workers’ rights. Movements like the Bangladesh Krishok Federation emphasize land occupation and agroecology as alternatives to corporate control. Students and laborers continue strikes, challenging both bosses and police.
The Left’s task is to consolidate these struggles into a coherent revolutionary program: constituent assembly, radical land reform, workers’ control, and climate justice. Without this, February elections will absorb discontent into the old cycle.
Gramsci, Lenin, and the Crisis of Hegemony
Bangladesh today faces a crisis of hegemony. Hasina’s authoritarian developmentalism has collapsed, but no new equilibrium exists. Gramsci warns that morbid symptoms–technocratic governments, Islamist mobilization–emerge in such interregna. Lenin stresses that spontaneous uprisings alone do not produce revolution; organized revolutionary leadership is essential. Yunus’s regime exemplifies elite capture of mass revolt.
Scenarios Ahead
1.Elite Restoration: Elections proceed, BNP or AL returns, imperialist order restored, mass discontent reabsorbed.
2.Prolonged Instability: Elections delayed, Yunus overstays, protests escalate, instability deepens.
3.Revolutionary Opening: Popular movements break free from electoral containment, demand structural change, and push for a constituent assembly or radical reforms.
The outcome will depend on the balance of class forces.
Conclusion: Beyond February
Bangladesh faces not only an election timetable but the question of what kind of democracy and for whom. Bourgeois democracy, managed by AL, BNP, or technocrats like Yunus, perpetuates exploitation under imperialist dependency.
The 2024 uprising demonstrated that students, peasants, and workers are not passive. The challenge is to channel that insurgent energy into revolutionary organizations. Demands should go beyond February elections, toward a constituent assembly that breaks elite domination, enacts land reform, ensures workers’ power, and charts a path toward genuine sovereignty.
Only then will Bangladesh’s crisis lead not to restoration, but to revolutionary renewal–a continuation of the struggle for liberation begun in 1971 but betrayed by decades of authoritarianism and imperialist subjugation.
By
Badrul Alam -15 September 2025
Dhaka
