On January 16, a warning surfaced in Bangladesh’s public discourse that deserves far more attention than it has received. Speaking at a programme organised by the Citizen Platform for SDGs, the economist and public intellectual Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya offered a blunt assessment: despite its language of renewal, the interim government has, in many cases, become hostage to a small but extremist group.
This was not rhetorical excess. It was a diagnosis of power.
The effects of that captivity are already visible. The state has struggled to ensure public safety. Minority communities have faced repeated attacks without justice. Journalists operate under growing pressure. And hovering above all of this is a question that cuts to the heart of democratic legitimacy: can an election conducted under such conditions ever be impartial?
Bangladesh’s political crisis is often framed as procedural—a matter of flawed elections, weak institutions, or broken rules. But as Dr Bhattacharya’s remarks made clear, the problem runs deeper. Reform has failed repeatedly not because Bangladesh lacks ideas, laws, or blueprints, but because it has avoided confronting power itself: who controls it, who benefits from it, and who is organised enough to block meaningful change.
“Changing the superstructure alone cannot bring a new political settlement,” Dr Bhattacharya warned. Without organised social and economic forces committed to democracy, reform efforts are easily captured by vested interests and recycled through familiar political arrangements.
This pattern is not new. Caretaker governments have come and gone. Reform agendas have been announced with promise and dismantled with speed. The deeper structure of power—its informal alliances, incentives, and enforcers—has remained largely intact.
What distinguished the Citizen Platform’s intervention was not only its critique, but its insistence that democracy cannot survive without material security. Alongside Dr Bhattacharya, economists Toufiqul Islam Khan and Professor Mustafizur Rahman outlined a reform package aimed at the everyday vulnerabilities that leave citizens politically exposed: insecure income, food shortages, inadequate healthcare, unemployment, and the steady erosion of dignity.
Their proposals were ambitious yet pragmatic: a phased universal minimum income of Tk 4,540 per family; a nationwide school meal programme to reduce dropouts, child labour, and malnutrition; youth credit cards to unlock economic participation; and a National Health Card to protect elderly and vulnerable households from catastrophic medical costs. The total cost—around 2 percent of GDP—stands in stark contrast to the far greater sums Bangladesh routinely loses to corruption and misgovernance.
Yet even the most carefully costed reforms, speakers acknowledged, will fail without political will and accountability.
Sultana Kamal, a leading rights activist and CPD board member, reminded the audience of a principle often forgotten in moments of political struggle: the state does not belong to those who temporarily govern it. It belongs to citizens. Rights, she argued, must be inseparable from dignity. She also raised a question that resonates sharply in today’s climate—without a free and secure press, how can citizens’ voices reach the public sphere at all?
Former caretaker adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury drew a direct line between corruption and democratic decay. Digital systems, she cautioned, mean little when middlemen continue to control outcomes. Reform, in her view, must reshape political culture and bureaucratic behavior, not merely modernise their appearance.
Others echoed similar concerns. Shaheen Anam pointed to months of violence against minority communities without accountability. Professor Mustafizur Rahman warned that development rhetoric rings hollow without planning discipline and parliamentary scrutiny. Five-year plans are drafted with regularity, he noted, but implemented—and examined—with remarkable inconsistency.
Taken together, the message was unmistakable. Bangladesh does not suffer from a shortage of policies. It suffers from a shortage of protection for democratic forces. When governments become captive to extremist pressure—whether ideological, political, or violent—the consequences are predictable: citizens lose security, minorities lose protection, journalists lose space, and elections lose credibility.
Dr Bhattacharya’s warning should therefore be read not as an abstract critique, but as a test. Can the state reclaim autonomy from narrow forces and act in the public interest? Can reform be defended by an organised and engaged citizenry rather than surrendered to those who profit from stagnation?
Bangladesh has reached such crossroads before. What remains uncertain is whether this time the warning will be heard—or whether yet another promise of reform will quietly dissolve, leaving democracy narrower than before.
