Gantry 5

 

Bangladesh: A serious social and political crisis shakes the country

Bulletin No49 aout 2024  For weeks, a serious social and political crisis has been shaking Bangladesh. It resulted in the hasty flight to India of the resigning Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who has been at the head of the country since 2009, and her replacement by Mohammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
This major crisis marked by significant demonstrations, particularly by students protesting against the allocation of quotas for civil service posts, was the subject of fierce repression by the government, causing hundreds of deaths [1] . While the students obtained the removal of quotas on 21 July, popular anger grew and reached its peak on 5 August when a veritable human tide converged on the capital Dhaka. While many soldiers broke ranks and the textile factories in the capital simultaneously went on strike to support the movement, the government was defeated and Hasina resigned and fled to India.
Such events are rooted in a context of crisis that should be situated and started to be analyzed. If Bangladesh is a very densely populated poor country with 1,286 inhabitants/km2 in 2020 [2] , it is located in a region in full development which is a very active development center of international capitalism [3] . Like all the countries in the region, it is at the heart of the clashes within the imperialist system and does not escape the major one between the USA and China [4] , but also the influences and aims of a neighbor as powerful as India.
For its part, Bangladesh has experienced rapid development over the past ten years, with growth of 7%. This capitalist development is mainly concentrated in urban areas, while 70% of the population lives in the countryside. Here, capitalist development is weak, agriculture uses very little machinery: 1% mechanization, compared to 70% in India, and 95% for rice in Sri Lanka. The agricultural plots are tiny, geared towards subsistence and not the market.
The development of capitalism in Bangladesh, and particularly in the textile sector, has been fuelled by a significant flow of foreign direct investment and subcontracting practices for large Western firms. This has created an urban proletariat that is all the more impoverished as the deterioration of the international situation weighs heavily on workers. It is in these conditions that major strikes developed in the sector in October and November. The demand of the workers, especially women workers, was to triple the current monthly salary of 5,710 taka, when it would take 37,000 to live. Without achieving the goal of tripling, the struggles have allowed it to be almost doubled to 10,000 taka (1 taka = 0.0077 euro).
If the social situation of workers, peasants and youth allows us to understand how the discontent that led to the overthrow of the government was aggregated, it should not be overlooked that the authoritarian forms taken by the government for decades have contributed to a deadlock without an institutional solution.
While the popular nature of the uprising is undoubtedly rooted in the conditions of capitalist development in Bangladesh, it should not be overlooked that the dominant political forces present do not call into question the capitalist trajectory but add to it the interests of neighboring powers: India, Pakistan... For its part, the Communist Party of Bangladesh, through the voice of its leaders, declares itself: "   deeply concerned by the delay in the formation of the interim government and the lack of dialogue with the progressive leftists. The President of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), Mohammad Shah Alam, and the General Secretary Ruhin Hossain Prince expressed their deep concern in a statement on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, denouncing the delay in the formation of the interim government and the lack of discussion with the progressive leftists ."
The solution that seems to be emerging is the military's appointment of Mohammad Yunus, who is unquestionably a man of the United States if we refer to his past [5] . Thus, Yunus' NGO known as Grameen Bank [6] , which, since its creation in 1983 and until 2008, provided the sum of 7.6 billion dollars in unsecured loans to farmers in Bangladesh, has created a vast network of influence in the country! The question that arises is whether this appointment by the military is a popular screen while waiting to find a more lasting solution allowing American interests to be better and more surely heard.

At this point, history is not yet written, but while we should not be mistaken about the nature of the class conflict in Bangladesh in the context of the rapid development of capitalism dominated by foreign interests and supported by a local comprador bourgeoisie, we should not neglect the strong tropisms of the conflicts within imperialism in the region.