We are currently living a critical juncture in Bangladesh's history. The students, whose lives, blood, and sweat brought the change, have made it abundantly clear that the change of players is just the first step towards changing the game, not the final or even the penultimate step. They cannot be gamed into thinking that the game is changing. The question now is what exactly needs to change and how.

A broken political model

Let's take a step back to reflect on what led to the historic July 2024, including its five days extension.

The previous government offered an alternative model to liberal democracy without a coherent political ideology. Their political practice monopolised most of the country's wealth while vesting political power in one person. This system had the outward appearance of an orderly state with a functioning bureaucracy. It was easily gamed by well-connected elites. Knowledge of kinship connections was more useful than the knowledge of the Bangladesh and the global economy. The government blamed all their failures on others and diverted attention to real or imaginary external and internal threats whenever voices were raised against their malpractices.

Politics at the grassroots was criminalised using muscle and money. Voters' voices were never counted despite regular elections. The elections were held under abysmally low rule of law and freedom of speech. The "robber barons" invested in economic expansion to build unparalleled fortunes by routinely abusing their economic and political connections. The rulers used laws in a way the former Brazilian president Getolo Vegas reportedly expressed: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law". We learnt the hard way that the mechanics of democracy such as regular national and local elections are meaningless indicators of democratic health.

The ability to benefit from the discretionary use of law encouraged state incapacity and disorganisation. The ruling regime overestimated that a few mega infrastructures could mobilise society and transform the political agenda by creating a national community and public loyalty. The refusal to accept constraints on the exercise of political power and compromise made them incapable of redressing social imbalances. Not only did the regime bother to know how the people feel, but it wanted people to feel whatever it wants. 

The government patronised an oligopolistic industrial structure within which a corrupt bureaucracy flourished. Corruption became a tool for the intimidation and harassment of those outside the power structures.  It infiltrated almost every sphere of the nation's life. We slid into a blackhole where leaders and citizens found it advantageous to heap more abuse on norms and accountability rather than work to make it work.

The dictatorial regime wanted people to love them and hate their opponents. They preached belief in representative bodies, political parties, universal suffrage, and human rights. They combined a willful ignorance of history with unabashed political discrimination. They conflated truth with belief. Endemic corruption, lawlessness by law makers and enforcers, malfunctioning services, and staggering inequality intensified disenchantments.

The meager possessions of the poor are their very breath. Extortions by party cadres plugged their nostrils. Reaction to the consequent suffocation was inevitable because it is biochemical, not to speak of emotional trepidations. All it needed was a trigger. This came as students' protests against the court order restoring quota in public service gained a life of its own in July 2024.

The government used fear and state violence to tackle the situation. It lost its temper and reacted far too arrogantly with unspeakably disproportionate force. History will remember Abu Sayeed and Mugdho as signatures of state brutality against its own people. Political history shows a seemingly invincible regime can collapse due to a minor problem if that is seen as undermining its legitimacy. The prime minister's tagging the student protestors as "Razakars" and unleashing her party's muscle power against the students brought the cat out of the bag for good.

Some preliminary lessons

It is awfully hard to know the truth when you are holding absolute power.  Worse, such power distorts the truth.  The one-party autocracy lost touch with the ground because they locked themselves inside an echo chamber of like-minded network and self-confirming newsfeeds. Their beliefs were seldom challenged. The power of such groupthink was so pervasive that it became increasingly difficult to break its hold even when the views seemed obviously arbitrary. Plenty of advisers and intelligence agencies did not make things better. 

The rule of thumb from history says no "sultans" should ever trust underlings to tell the truth. Great power warps the very space around it. The closer you get to it, the more twisted everything becomes. Each person the sultan sees tries to flatter, appease, and get something. They know the sultan can only spare them so much time. So, they fear saying something improper or muddled, thus ending up mouthing either empty slogans or the greatest but most boring cliches of all.  

The cascading economic crisis destabilised institutions and eviscerated trust in them to begin with. The autocrat relaxed the institutional checks because they stand in the way of implementing "my way or no way" model of governance. That's where the ethical and moral imperatives of the government went completely asunder.

It is hard to set priorities in real time and all too easy to second guess them with hindsight. When confronted by the mess of brutal dictatorships, as we did, the outsider political parties often put their unquestioning faith in the ritual of general elections as if holding general elections will turn the country into a tropical version of Denmark. What we need at this juncture is to build safeguards against the return of authoritarian regime and protect all citizens from the worst consequences of disruption, violence, and deprivation.

The inhabitants in any economy flourish when social norms foster morality, trust and long-term cooperation. The best intentions, policy and technology disappoint endlessly without such a broad compass.  As we find ways of getting out of the political abyss, it will serve us well to constantly keep in mind an ancient Chinese philosophical treatise that says: "The ruler is a boat; people are the water.  The water can carry the boat; the water can sink the boat."

This is a lesson our conventional political leaders are apparently unable to digest despite several historical reminders, the most salient being August 5, 2024. They do so at the nation's peril and their own. We hope the conventional political culture will change under the watch of the new student leadership and the guidance of a dreamer, doer, mobiliser and communicator like Professor Muhammad Yunus.

We cannot bring back the same model

Power is all about changing reality rather than seeing it for what it is.  They say when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  When you have great power, everything looks like an invitation to meddle. Even if you somehow overcome this urge, the people surrounding you will never let you forget about the giant hammer you are holding.

All wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite, while a vast majority of people are suffering from irrelevance which is worse than exploitation. We are suffering simultaneously from high underemployment and a shortage of skilled labour. Inequality skyrockets when common people lose their economic value.

The ultra rich only invested in Bangladesh under carefully secured insider knowledge and favourable regulatory treatment. Else, they laundered their money overseas. It became rational for everyone to suck the water out of the ground before others could do so. With no stake in Bangladesh's education, the elites could bother little about its rot. We have to change this model.

During every storm, as the nation is currently weathering, many unforeseen things happen. Mistakes are made, atrocities are committed, public opinion wavers, neutrals change their stance, and the balance of power shifts. The theatre of violence generates visceral fears of anarchy, making people feel as if the social order is about to collapse. 

If we are not careful this time, we might end up with the same old game with a revolving set of players wreaking havoc on the country. This is what the Anti-Discrimination Movement is striving to change. After a month-long bloody struggle, we have crawled out of the blackhole of despotism and tyranny. But the blackhole is still there, patiently waiting to swallow us once again. The nation must not let its guard down.

The writer is the former lead economist of the World Bank's Dhaka office.