As protests in Bangladesh intensify and the Prime Minister flees the country, we take a look at the quota which sparked the now widespread conflagration.
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has resigned and fled Dhaka, as protests in the capital escalate. What started as a student protest over quotas accorded to freedom fighters in government jobs has turned into a protest against Hasina and the Awami League Party. Protestors have demanded the resignation of Hasina as a single-point priority, while the government alleges that the Bangladesh Nationalist party and the now banned Jamaat-e-Islami is behind the agitation.
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The mass uprising is creating ripples of unrest across the nation, and has intensified after a particularly violent weekend which saw the deaths of around hundred Bangladeshis.
Protests have continued despite the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court dismissing the order of the High Court which had precipitated the crisis. It announced the allocation of 93% of the seats in government services based on merit, reserving a mere 5% jobs for freedom fighters and their descendants. A 1% quota each has been reserved for tribes, differentially abled individuals and sexual minorities.
We take a look at the now-scrapped quota, why it was instituted and why the government sought to defend it.
What is the quota being protested?
After the Bangladesh Liberation war of 1971, the nation was remodelled, socially, economically and politically. One of the chief promises at the base of the state’s creation was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assurance that the new nation would do justice by those who sacrificed and suffered for the cause of freedom, facing off against the Pakistani military.
Post his return to Dhaka In 1972, Mujib resolved to create a quota for freedom fighters, or Mukti joddhas. Besides this, Mujib also carved out a quota for Bangladeshi women who had been tortured by the Pakistani military. After Sheikh Mujib was assasinated in 1975, the quota system saw some changes. Measures for freedom fighters were diluted, and the quota was extended to underrepresented sections of society, bringing women, individuals hailing from underdeveloped areas and ethnic minorities or tribes under the ambit of the quota system.
Why are there protests over the quota?
As the years passes, the number of freedom fighters who could avail of the quota system reduced. This led to underutilisation of the quota for the purposes it was meant, and led to increased probability of the misuse of the quota. Critics highlighted that it was fair to grant reservation to freedom fighters when they were young and looking for work. But after their death, the reservations were being given to the children, and then the grandchildren of the freedom fighters. This, they were opposed to, especially when combined with suspicions that shortfalls in the reserved seats were compensated for by extending the quota to party members belonging to Ms. Hasina’s Awami League.
The political system in Bangladesh has long been in the grasp of Sheikh Hasina, daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and her party, the Awami League. Opposition parties and critics of the government gradually began to suspect that the quota for freedom fighters was a system to create a group of Awami League loyalists within the bureaucracy who would ensure the continuance of the League’s rule.
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The seeds of the present quota reform movement lie in a smaller anti-quota movement of 2018. On March 8, 2018, the Bangladesh High Court rejected a petition challenging the legality of the quota system in the nation, existing since the 1970s. Against this backdrop, Ms. Hasina declared that she would maintain the quota for the descendants of the veterans of the liberation war. This was widely regarded as an emotional matter for Ms. Hasina to maintain her father’s legacy. But her declaration sparked a major agitation by students.
In response to the unrest, Ms. Hasina cancelled all quotas in the Bangladesh Civil service, through an executive order. This, however, was not what the students sought either— they sought a reform of the quota system and not its abolition. But, Ms. Hasina’s move seemed to indicate that if freedom fighters were not to get any quota, no one else would either. Over the course of several discussions in the next two years, Ms. Hasina remained firm in her decision. In 2020, the executive order became operational.
Why does the government feel strongly about the freedom fighters quota?
From the very start of her long association with politics, Ms. Hasina’s governance has been shaped by the legacy and the priniciples of Sheikh Mujib, now widely regarded as the Father of the Nation. The quota for fighters who endured torture at the hands of the Pakistani military for the the nation’s freedom is a key part of this legacy.
In her previous negotations with students, she has indicated her suspicions that by critiquing freedom fighters, opponents to the system are allowing themselves to be used as a Trojan horse for opposition parties such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami.
-Based on inputs from Kallol Bhattacherjee
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