India is now grappling with the delicate task of finding a sanctuary for the ousted Sheikh Hasina, who had long been a steadfast and trusted ally in South Asia. The decision is aimed at preventing further deterioration in its already strained relations with Bangladesh. Meanwhile, the new interim government, led by Nobel laureate Dr. Yunus, seems to be gathering momentum and is poised to reshape the regional political landscape. Once celebrated as an “Iron Lady” for bringing stability—an essential prerequisite for business, whether for democratic or authoritarian powers—Hasina’s dislodgement by a popular uprising now compels every major global player to reassess their strategies. Hasina’s fall from power has been marked by a violent and disgraceful exit, which resulted in approximately 1,500 deaths, including children. This tragic outcome underscores one of the bloodiest modern-day attempts by any dictator to cling to power. Her efforts crumbled when security chiefs refused to shoot civ...

 In the hours before Sheikh Hasina fled Gonobhaban, her official residence in Dhaka, on 5 August, Bangladeshi security forces killed scores of protesters who had joined a huge march to the capital demanding an end to her autocratic rule. Around the same time, it has since been reported, Hasina had pressured the army chief to enforce a curfew using deadly force, which would have meant the military joining the bloodbath. The army chief refused. The prime minister’s desperate hold on power finally slipped when security chiefs warned that the advancing protesters would reach Gonobhaban within an hour and they doubted their ability to contain the crowd. Speculation that India, her strongest international ally, would intervene in her favour proved unfounded, and Hasina was left at the mercy of the military, which ultimately facilitated her escape across the border. She wound up at a safe house in Delhi, trying but failing to gain asylum in the United Kingdom. All told, the...

On 7 January, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, is set to claim re-election in what some observers have called “staged polling”, the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has termed a “dummy election” and   The Economist  has described as a “farce”. Desperate to avoid a genuine democratic exercise, Hasina’s government has preemptively removed its only real challenger from the field. More than twenty thousand BNP activists are behind bars, as are key BNP leaders, and the opposition party has decided to boycott the election rather than contest an unfair vote. The farce is best explained with the facts. For the 300 directly elected seats in Bangladesh’s parliament, the ruling Awami League has official nominees in 263 constituencies. In addition, it also has 269 party members standing as “independent” candidates, meaning there are two or sometimes even more Awami League candidates in many places – and that’s not counting the candidates of other parties allied to ...

Bangladesh has had two elections since the system of a non-partisan caretaker government overseeing elections was abolished. One was boycotted by most of the parties except the allies of the ruling Awami League, and the other was participated in by all the registered and unregistered parties. In reality, neither could be termed participatory, as voters were practically disenfranchised on both occasions. As we approach the third consecutive election to be held under the AL administration—which has so far been a restaging of 2014, due to the boycott by opposition parties—one question that worries everyone is: how will the world react? It is clear why Awami League is so desperate to make January 7, 2024 look like a genuine competition, without any real competitors. Allowing aspirants of ruling party tickets to run as independents against ruling party nominees has already resulted in numerous bloody, internecine conflicts. Discontent among the ruling party’s allies, too, makes the future o...

After months of speculation and anticipation, Bangladesh has unveiled its ‘Indo-Pacific outlook’(IPO) that ‘envisions a free, open, peaceful, secure, and inclusive Indo- Pacific for the shared prosperity for all.’ The United States, which originally conceived and floated the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and has been urging Bangladesh for the last few years to join them in implementing the IPS. Though Bangladesh doesn’t use the term strategy or IPS, the vision it lays out is remarkably similar to the IPS.  If we review the joint statement made on June 2, 2022 after the Second Bangladesh - US High-Level Economic Consultation held in Washington, it would be difficult to differentiate the language. The joint statement under the subhead Infrastructure/ Trade reads,”Both countries share a common vision of a free, open, inclusive, peaceful, and secure Indo-Pacific region with shared prosperity for all.”   These words have been repeated innumerable times by the US officials to def...

In early March, Myanmar’s military junta took diplomats from Bangladesh, India, China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries to Maungdaw and Sittwe in Rakhine state, on the country’s western coast, to show apparent preparations to begin repatriation of the Rohingya. The diplomats were told that the Myanmar authorities want to start piloting the repatriation process soon, but without any clear date given. One may recall that in November 2017, months after a military crackdown on the Rohingya drove vast numbers of them out of Rakhine, Myanmar’s civilian government of the time, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, signed a bilateral agreement with Bangladesh for repatriating what it called “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals”. Bangladesh was then grappling with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees who had poured in across the border from Rakhine; their number in Bangladesh now is more than one million. China mediated that bilateral deal to help Myanmar, an ally, temp...

Going by media reports, India has triumphed in South Asia against its rival China in vaccine diplomacy. At least four South Asian neighbours – Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives have gladly accepted India’s generous gift of 3.2 million doses of Covid 19 vaccine produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) under the licence of Oxford-AstraZeneca. As the world is striving for finding a way out of the pandemic, India found its vaccine producing capacity very useful for diplomatic revival in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, such enthusiasm was markedly absent in relation to the Chinese vaccines.   Among those four nations, China had offered Bangladesh and Nepal some of its varieties as gift. It has also offered similar goodwill gestures to few other countries in Asia and Africa. Pakistan has already accepted the Chinese offer of half a million doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine. China has made a concerted push to sell its vaccines to countries around the globe for months but only re...