By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, July 20: Since July 5 the whole of Bangladesh has been in the grip of violence on a scale not seen for a long time. University students, both boys and girls, across the country, are in revolt, facing police bullets and lathis of ruling party’s goons. The death toll is officially 39 but is rumoured to be 105.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told her 14-party alliance on Friday that she was going to impose a country-wide curfew and call in the army, the Kolkata daily Telegraph reported.
All universities are shut, hundreds of vehicles have been torched, transport has come to a halt, and internet has been shut. The struggle shows no sign of abating even though police banned all gatherings.
The root cause is a controversial quota system for recruitment to white collar jobs in the government. The students’ objection is not to the quotas as such, but to the quantum of quotas, especially for the descendants of freedom fighters.
Students have been saying from the very beginning that they are for reasonable quotas for disadvantaged groups like women, the disabled and ethnic minorities who deserve a helping hand.
But Sheikh Hasina, who gets offended whenever anybody questions the wisdom of her father and founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahaman, would not countenance diluting the quota that he had assigned to freedom fighters’ families and their descendants, which was a whopping 30%.
In addition to the 30% quota for freedom fighters’ families, there was 10% reservation for women who were victimized in the war; 40% for people from underrepresented districts; and only 20% for meritorious candidates.
After Mujib’s assassination in 1975, and the removal of his Awami League from power, the government reduced the quota for people from underrepresented districts to 20%. This increased the quota for merit-based candidates to 40%.
As the quota for women who were victimized in the war went unclaimed largely, the quota for them was thrown open to all women in 1985. The district-based quota was reduced to 10%. The government created a new 5% quota for the indigenous (tribal) communities of Bangladesh.
This measures increased the quota for the merit-based 45%.
By 1997, 26 years after the Bangladesh Liberation War, the freedom fighters’ population had decreased. Therefore, Sheikh Hasina who had come to power by then, increased the quota to the children of freedom fighters.
In 2008, the Bangladesh Public Service Commission said that the quota system was flawed and called for reforms. But in 2010, when Hasina was back in power, the quota for freedom fighters was extended to include their grandchildren.
Bangladesh Public Service Commission added a 1% quota for disabled candidates in 2012.
These decisions decreased the merit-based jobs quota to 44%.
However, despite the 30% quota for children and grandchildren of freedom fighters, actual recruitment in that category never exceeded 10%.
On 8 March 2018, the Bangladesh High Court rejected a petition challenging the legality of the entire quota system. On March 21, 2018 Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stated that she intended to keep the quota for descendants of freedom fighters, thus triggering a student agitation.
However, Sheikh Hasina issued an executive order removing all quotas from the Bangladesh Civil Service.
This came as a shock to students because they were demanding a reform of the quota system, not abolition of all quotas.
But Hasina stuck to her decision and in July 2020, the decision to abolish quota became effective.
However, on 5 June 2024, the Bangladesh High Court issued a verdict that nullified the government notification abolishing all quotas. Thus quotas in Bangladesh Civil Service recruitment was restored.
The High Court’s verdict was on an appeal filed by a descendant of a freedom fighter and six others in 2021 challenging the government order cancelling the quota system.
The government filed an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. Thereupon, students of public and private universities and colleges in Bangladesh launched the “2024 Bangladesh quota reform movement.”
The Appellate Division then issued an order which halted the High Court’s verdict till the Appellate Division finished its hearing on the government’s appeal.
Sheikh Hasina, appealed to the students to wait till the Supreme Court gave its verdict. But the agitating students said that they want the government to discuss the matter with the stakeholders and come to an executive decision on a rational and socially justifiable quota system which will also do justice to merit.
Fixation About Mujib’s Legacy
It is suspected that Sheikh Hasina would not countenance the removal of a large quota for freedom fighters’ families as she considers it to be her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s sacred legacy.
But the protesters said the quota system creates a two-tier Bangladesh where a politically connected elite benefits by their birth, much as in a caste system.
The protesters acknowledge that the freedom fighters and many women had sacrificed a lot for freeing Bangladesh. A quota for them was logical. But in the past, not now, two generations down the line.
Nowadays, the quota for freedom fighters is seen as discrimination and as a method of generating supporters for Hasina’s Awami League.
Dubbing Protesters as Razakars
Protests escalated when Sheikh Hasina refused to talk to the students, calling them “Razakars” (pro-Pakistan storm troopers who killed freedom fighters and raped women after the Pakistani army launched a crackdown in March 1971).
The students swore that would not stop the agitation unless she apologised for the insult.
But an unrepentant Hasina unleashed stick wielding members of the Bangladesh Chatra League – the student wing of the ruling Awami League – on student protesters including girls. She also deployed the Rapid Action Battalion, which was sanctioned by the US in 2021 after “widespread allegations of serious human rights abuses.”
Unemployment among the Educated
It appears that Hasina does not realise that there is a massive problem of the university-educated being unemployed in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has been experiencing growth but without employment generation.
Given the fact that the private sector is not expanding, government continues to be the principal employer. But government recruitment is vitiated by the quota system which severely limits opportunities for meritorious candidates.
An unfair advantage has been given to descendants of freedom fighters without any contemporary social or economic relevance.
The quota system became increasingly irksome as employment prospects for the university educated kept shrinking. The latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) showed that 46% of the unemployed youth were university graduates.
In one case it was found that 500,000 to 600,000 young men and women were competing for 600 to 700 government jobs. But they came up against both normal competition and quota barriers.
US and UN Condemn
“Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are essential building blocks to any thriving democracy, and we condemn the recent acts of violence in Bangladesh,” a US State Department spokesman said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for restraint on all sides and urged the government to investigate all acts of violence, according to UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
“The secretary-general encourages the meaningful and constructive participation of youth to address the ongoing challenges in Bangladesh. Violence can never be the solution,” Dujarric said.
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