Challenging Tasks For Bangladesh Interim Government
Octogenarian leader Yunus struggles to keep nation together
By: Nava Thakuria
With seven months having passed since Muhammad Yunus took over the leadership of a caretaker government in a chaotic Bangladesh in the wake of the hurried departure of the despotic dowager Sheikh Hasina, the microfinance pioneer continues to grapple with deep-rooted corruption, continuing economic disorder and concerns over his decision to lift the ban on Islamist parties, intensifying fears of an Islamist restoration from the tight rein Hasinah kept on them.
Recent attacks on Hindu minorities have hardly assuaged fears that the country’s secular orientation under Hasina’s Awami League may go by the board, straining ties with India, on which Dhaka depends heavily in trade, work, and medical services as well as its supply of rice, wheat, and other foodstuffs.
Yunus, a one-time World Bank economist viewed as an incorruptible moderate, has issued plans for general elections between this December and June 2026, seeking to mollify concerns that the democratic process has been short-circuited indefinitely. He assured a delegation of opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party figures that the election for the Jatiya Sansad, the national assembly, wouldn’t be delayed beyond mid-2026. The BNP, headed by Hasinah’s arch-rival Khaleda Zia, remains suspicious, demanding polls this year.
Yunus, the founder of the celebrated Grameen Bank for microloans to the poor, took charge as the chief adviser to the interim government after a student-led public uprising compelled Hasina to flee to India, where she remains, plotting a return should Yunus falter. In a recent fiery Internet message to her followers, she called the 2006 Nobel peace laureate a "loan shark," a "foreign-backed conspirator," and accused him of engineering the country’s political and economic chaos.
Economically, the country faces an uncertain future. Although the Asian Development Bank, in its current economic outlook, forecasts GDP to grow by 3.9 percent in fiscal year 2025, down from 5.1 percent a year earlier, US President Donald Trump is threatening the country with a reciprocal tariff of up to 37 percent. The garment industry, which employs 4 million workers, the majority women, accounts for a whopping 80 percent of the country’s export revenue. The US is one of the country’s two top exports destinations. Inflation peaked at a decade-high 11.7 percent last July, easing to an annual 9.4 percent in March, but well above the central bank's target of 5-6 percent.
To huge expectations, Yunus took over last August with the message that he wants a new Bangladesh with equal opportunity irrespective of religious faith or ethnicity. One of his initial moves, however, was to bring Dhaka closer to Islamabad, a risky attempt to revitalize bilateral relations with Pakistan, once a major ally after breaking away from India in 1947. That ended in a bloody partition in which up to 3 million died.
When Yunus broke a number of rules to welcome Pakistani agencies, the federal government in Delhi, which regards Pakistan as its foremost foe, remained silent, although it didn’t take the development lightly. India hasn’t responded to Dhaka’s repeated requests to extradite Hasina, who took shelter after her departure by helicopter ahead of angry mobs. Delhi has only said it wants cordial relations with Dhaka. Indian authorities haven’t responded to Yunus’s call to prevent Hasina from making inflammatory statements.
Yunus also recently visited China, another India archrival, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sat for a one-to-one meeting with him at a Bay of Bengal cooperation meeting on April 4, with Modi raising the issue of minority (read Hindu) persecution in Bangladesh during the regime change.
Yunus insists on repatriating Hasina to face charges involving genocide and the disappearance of opponents during her 16-year reign. Arrest warrants have been issued against Hasina, her son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy (now in the US), daughter Saima Wazed (also known as Putul, who works for the World Health Organization in Delhi) and several other party leaders.
Although Yunus presented a framed photo of the two of them taken when Modi presented a gold medal to him in 2015, the gesture didn’t stop New Delhi from withdrawing a transshipment facility offered to Bangladesh in 2020 through which Bangladeshi goods were exported to reach global destinations through Indian seaports and airports. Nepal and Bhutan continued to be exempted from difficulties because of the new restriction on Bangladeshi exports.
It’s widely speculated that Yunus offered an airfield to China in northern Bangladesh, adjacent to India’s Siliguri Corridor (also known as the Chicken’s Neck), irritating New Delhi as it would be a serious security threat to the landlocked north-eastern part of the country. Fighting Chinese influence in trouble-torn Myanmar has already taught New Delhi a grim lesson, and it would hardly allow the same in another eastern neighbor.
Another major concern for New Delhi emerged from apprehension that Bangladesh may soon return to the Islamic fold. Stray comments from Islamists preaching hatred towards non-Muslim families have complicated the situation. Killings of Hindu nationals, frequent vandalizing of temples and other religious places, as well as atrocities against non-believers of Islam grabbed international headlines during the July-August revolution.
However, Yunus has repeatedly denied allegations that the victims were targeted over their religion, arguing they were singled out for their allegiance to the Awami League. Recently, when Bangladesh welcomed the traditional new year with a joyous first day of the ethnic Bengali Nababarsha, or New Year, on April 14, the organizers had to change the name of a colorful procession from ‘Mangal Shobhajatra (literarily meaning auspicious/welfare parade) to Barshabaran Ananda Shobhajatra (welcoming joyous new year procession) because the word Mangal has roots in Sanscrit, the ancient Indian language, which is taboo. The new year cultural procession scheduled for Chittagong locality in south Bangladesh had to be canceled due to security concerns.
On the eve of Nababarsha, Yunus in a video message called on his countrymen to work together to create a discrimination-free Bangladesh, asserting that despite differences in beliefs and customs, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, and various ethnic communities are all part of one family, united by diversity of language, culture, and traditions.
Earlier, on Bangladesh’s March 25 Independence Day and Eid-ul-Fitr, Yunus addressed the nation to say the National Consensus Commission had sent letters to more than 35 political parties describing initiatives for major reform, with 166 recommendations received from six reform commissions. The commission’s goal is to identify the areas where political parties are in agreement and prepare a list of those to be included in a July reform charter.
Bangladeshi nationals have started a national campaign to keep Yunus in power for five years to complete the reform process, but BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir asserted that they oppose such ideas. The Election Commission has already begun preparing.
Past elections have been depressingly violent as rivalry exploded between the BNP and the Awami League, requiring the army to step in to keep the peace. Yunus, at age 84, has probably had enough. If he can fashion a stabilized, democratic country out of the ethnic, religious, and economic stew he has on his hands, that will likely be enough for him.