On a current night, in a brand-new workplace on the primary flooring of a business constructing the place wires dangled from the ceiling and new flooring was nonetheless being laid, a bunch of college college students have been plotting a brand new future for Bangladesh.
A couple of months earlier, they have been among the many hundreds who had risen up and overthrown Sheikh Hasina, whose 15-year rule had descended into authoritarianism, brutality and corruption.
Now, the scholars are decided to grab their opening — nevertheless lengthy it might final or nevertheless messy the method could also be — to rebuild Bangladesh as a sturdy democracy. They envision a system with free and honest elections, social justice and bulwarks towards autocracy that no chief might chip away.
“Our political energy is in a really fluid type proper now,” stated Arif Sohel, 26, a pupil organizer. He stated he hoped to unite college students and win over political events with a pithy message: “We need a nation that’s secure and can progress.”
It is a frightening job for Bangladesh, a nation born in violence 53 years in the past and turbulent ever since. The work has fallen to an uncommon mixture of unelected individuals within the interim authorities — extremely educated consultants with lengthy, distinguished careers and college students simply embarking on theirs — who’re working underneath monumental pressures past the burden of historical past.
A serious political get together that had been suppressed underneath Ms. Hasina is demanding that contemporary elections be held, maybe inside months, earlier than any reforms are formalized. Weary residents proceed to undergo underneath excessive inflation, which has pushed up costs for necessities like oil and rice. Protests preserve disrupting life in Dhaka, the capital. Tensions with neighboring India have soared amid studies of assaults by Muslims on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh. There are fears of a resurgence of militant Islam.
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