After winning four successive elections in 2008, 2014, 2018 and 2024 in Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced by mass protests to resign and flee to India on 5 August 2024. She had alienated both students and the military, traditionally a toxic combination in Bangladesh that leads to the downfall of governments. This would have come as no surprise to any interested observer; Indian visitors had been warned by local well-wishers since 2021 that India’s reputation was being progressively besmirched by Hasina’s corruption and autocratic behaviour.

Many Indian observers, including former diplomats, had warned in print that India’s influence was in jeopardy after Hasina’s departure. Once hailed as a pro-democracy leader, Hasina in 2011 annulled the law that provided for free and fair elections under a caretaker government, opposing advice from a commission that the practice should continue for some time. Each of her three victories after 2008 were regarded as sham with either the opposition absent or intimidated by thousands of arrests. The USA and EU made their displeasure public, and in 2021 Washington sanctioned the Rapid Action Battalion for human rights violations.

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Nevertheless, Hasina and her party the Awami League was robustly supported by New Delhi because Bangladesh’s geography makes it intrinsic to India’s security with 4,156 km of common border and its northern and eastern frontiers contiguous with India’s sensitive Northeast states. Hasina was accommodative to India’s security concerns which overrode other considerations, but it would be interesting to speculate on what advice, if any, New Delhi rendered to Hasina during the recent past about the gathering storm. If any advice was given, it was likely to have been ignored, since the former prime minister is a self righteous personality, impervious to reasoned argument.

Hasina’s attraction for Indian support is plausible; refusal to allow Bangladesh to be used against India by state or non-state actors; apprehensions about the main opposition BNP/Jamaat’s tilt to political Islam, that she was conscious about India’s fears about Bangladesh ties with China, that Bangladesh would never forget India’s role in the liberation struggle of 1971 against Pakistan, USA and China, and that China was only a development partner and not a strategic one. Bangladesh’s fall from grace since 2020 has been precipitous. A country of 170 million (with minority Hindus, Christians and Buddhists numbering about 13 million), it was one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, its per capita income had tripled over the last decade, and the World Bank estimated that 25 million people were lifted out of poverty in two decades.

With Chinese assistance, Hasina had undertaken huge infrastructure projects, including the flagship $2.9 bn. Padma bridge. After the Covid pandemic, there was less absolute poverty but also less economic equality, fewer foreign remittances and job losses in the informal sector. More than 32 million Bangladeshis received social benefits or stipends to support school children. Foreign exchange reserves dropped from $48 bn. in 2021 to around $20 bn. or less than three months imports, foreign debt doubled since 2016 to $100 bn. with debt servicing that will hit $3.56 bn. Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest garment exporter and shipped more than $45 bn. worth to Europe and USA but reliance on garments exports made it vulnerable to external shocks.

Crony capitalism, rampant corruption and a huge capital flight led to the banking sector being left in disarray with non-performing loans constituting 10.11 per cent of the total, and a liquidity crisis led to halting of bank transactions on several occasions. Inflation is over 9 per cent, while the market indicates a far higher rate and there is a cost of-living crisis.

The Bangladeshi Taka depreciated about 28 per cent over the past year, and Dhaka asked for a loan of $4.7 bn. from the IMF to avert a balance of payment crisis in return for greater austerity. On the domestic scene, in the absence of free media and an independent judiciary, the human rights situation caused concern. With violence and misuse of the state apparatus, a staggering number of arrests and convictions, indiscriminate approach to detaining thousands of opposition workers, and thousands of cases of enforced disappearances, blindings and extra-judicial killings since 2009, Hasina’s support eroded. Public protests in 2024 erupted, triggered by reservations for descendants of freedom fighters, which were widely interpreted as corrupt favouritism. The police were instructed to open fire and 90 persons were killed in a single day.

Transparency International ranked Bangladesh the 12th most corrupt country of 180 and V-Dem 154th out of 202 in the liberal democracy index. The judicial system was weaponized to attack journalists, human rights activists, NGOs and civil society leaders. Mohammed Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microcredit and village uplift, and Mahfuz Anam. the editor of the popular Daily Star. were persecuted with dozens of trumped-up charges. For more than a decade, Awami League’s youth wing the Chhatra League ruled campuses with an iron grip while Chhatra Dal, the BNP counterpart maintained a precarious presence and Jamaat’s Chhatra Shibir was forced underground. Chhatra League has now been banned for forcing opponents out of campuses, torturing and murdering opposition students.

After Hasina’s self-exile, the interim government under Mohamed Yunus has promised to redress past wrongs but Bangladesh is facing great challenges. While Yunus has announced his intention of elections by early 2026, he faces pressure from Students against Discrimination and Jatiya Nagorik Committee’s demand for urgent reforms and a new constitution. Reform Commissions have been established with a long agenda to report within three months, but it will take time, perhaps till the next elected government, to pronounce on justice, equality and accountability. The task in Dhaka is to prioritise the exigencies, facilitate dialogue across society and provide stability. The heads of security forces have apologized and transfers effected, but issues of responsibility and accountability still need to be addressed. The main public gain in the short run is seen as freedom of expression without fear.

An overthrow of constituted authority is commonplace among SAARC members. Apart from India and Bhutan, every country has suffered this upheaval. Irrespective of the many warning signals, New Delhi appeared taken aback at Hasina’s overthrow and arrival in India, where she remains in a ‘secure location’ and delivers the occasional statement, inter alia, accusing Yunus of being illegitimate and involved in genocide. Her son’s Facebook’s posts from outside Bangladesh also aggravate the relationship between New Delhi and Dhaka. Hasina is as unlikely to return home in the near future as Assad to Syria or al-Alimi to Yemen, and although politics, quoting Bismarck, is the art of the possible, it is highly improbable that Hasina, now 77, will have any future leadership role.

The writers are, respectively, a student of politics, religion and partition history’s aftermath, and India’s former foreign secretary.