Anita Anand | As Yunus takes charge in Dhaka, can he deliver on a ‘2nd liberation’?

On August 5, Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding father, fled Bangladesh as angry protesters marched towards her palatial residence in Dhaka, calling for her resignation. She served as Prime Minister from June 1996 to July 2001 and again for 15 years from January 2009 to August 2024.

Since earlier this year, students have been agitating against a high court order which reinstated quotas for the families of those who fought in the 1971 freedom struggle from what was at that time West Pakistan. The then election results had favoured Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founder of the Awami League party. Not willing to accept the election results, West Pakistan sent troops to East Pakistan and eventually faced a humiliating defeat. The independent nation of Bangladesh was born.

Since 1971, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in its development indicators. From being one of the poorest nations in 1971, it reached lower-middle income status in 2015. The national poverty rate decreased from 80 per cent in 1971 to 44.2 per cent in 1991 to 12.9 per cent in 2021, with a significant fall in infant mortality and stunting, an increase in literacy rates, and access to electricity. According to a World Bank update, a robust demographic dividend, strong ready-made garment (RMG) exports, resilient remittance inflows and stable macro-economic conditions have supported rapid economic growth since 2000. It is the second-largest economy in South Asia, surpassing India and Pakistan’s per capita income levels.

And yet, the autocratic rule under Sheikh Hasina has left many angry and this has spilled over to the protests and rioting, destruction of property, and deaths.

Bangladesh has a vibrant civil society and one of its primary visionaries and leaders has been Muhammad Yunus. An economist by training, he saw the link between poverty alleviation and market forces, unlike many socialist-minded leaders. He experimented with offering small amounts of low-interest loans to entrepreneurs to break the cycle of poverty and debt, as opposed to handouts to the poor. The experiment evolved into the microfinance movement and Yunus went on to create the Grameen Bank. The model was phenomenally successful and adopted by almost a hundred countries. In 2006, Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering microfinance and for their efforts to eradicate poverty. In 2021, Grameen Bank had 9.41 million members, of which 97 per cent were women, covering 93 per cent of villages in Bangladesh.

In January 2024, the Awami League led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fourth term in Bangladesh’s general election, amid rumours of vote-rigging and much discontent. A student protest erupted around the policy of quotas, a trigger for other grievances against the government. Hasina’s government came down heavily on the protesters, refusing to engage with them and using force to control the protests.

Sheikh Hasina and others like her in ex-colonial and developing countries start as idealistic, nationalistic (in a healthy way), and freedom-loving individuals. When they come to power, some of them become autocrats and come down heavily on those who disagree with or challenge them.

The people who voted them in, then want them out. They could be part of dynasties, monarchies, or left-leaning radicals, but end up as autocrats, out of touch with the people that brought them to power, with an inevitable loss of democracy and a breakdown of governance.

Eventually, Yunus too became critical of Hasina and her autocratic policies and practices as repression became the norm with a serious breakdown of human rights. Many dissidents left the country. The government filed false cases against Yunus and other prominent civil society persons critical of Hasina, to the protests of the global community. Yunus was recently jailed for six months.

So, how come Muhammad Yunus is now leader of the interim government? The protesting students asked for him and the Army, which took over after Hasina fled, agreed. In an invited article for the Economist magazine on August 7, Yunus writes that he would continue to support young people coming into politics and encourage them to create a world of three zeros: zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration, and zero unemployment.

Yunus is popular with the youth. In a lecture at Oxford in 2015, he criticised capitalism which he said was built on appealing to the selfishness in humans. But human beings also have selfless genes. He used an analogy of the bonsai, planted with a good seed but constrained, deliberately, in space so it cannot grow. The poor, said Yunus, were the good seeds and would grow if given space. “Young people have the power to harness technology to make society better today, not tomorrow or in the future. Not to harness power but to be the power”, he said.

As a professional in the development sector, I have long followed Yunus and his achievements, impressed by his passion for poverty reduction by promoting entrepreneurship or social business, as he often calls it. No handouts, no welfare schemes such as in India. He pioneered not just the microfinance movement but also sustainability in businesses in the IT and energy-saving sector. His demeanour is calm, and he speaks honestly and clearly. He inspires people and comes across as a person who can be trusted.

As Bangladesh faces a critical time in its history, Muhammad Yunus calls it the time for a “second liberation”, harking back to the 1971 war and separation from Pakistan.