Smoke rises from burning vehicles after protesters set them on fire near the Disaster Management Directorate office in Dhaka on July 18.AFP via Getty Images
Bangladesh has been grappling with some of its most violent unrest in years as tens of thousands of people participate in university student-led demonstrations against a decades-old quota employment system for government positions.
The protests, which first erupted on July 1, escalated further this week as protesters clashed with police and counter-protesters in confrontations that sometimes turned deadly. As of Thursday, as many as 25 people had been killed, and hundreds more are estimated to have been injured.
The source of the unrest is a contentious quota hiring system established in 1972, when Bangladesh was reeling from war and had just declared its independence from Pakistan. Under the quota system, 30 percent of highly coveted government jobs are reserved for the descendants of so-called freedom fighters who fought for Bangladesh in the war, while a percentage of other positions are allocated to additional select groups. In total, 56 percent of all positions have traditionally been reserved for members of various groups, including ethnic minorities, women, individuals with disabilities, and people from underrepresented districts.
Protesters want to dismantle this system because they say it is discriminatory and that hiring should be based on merit. Although the country has experienced remarkable economic growth in the decades since independence, it remains one of the world’s least developed countries, according to the United Nations, and its post-pandemic recovery has been rocky: Real GDP growth slowed to 5.8 percent in fiscal year 2023, down from 7.1 percent in the previous year, per the World Bank. Government jobs, seen as more stable and better paid than those in the private sector, are highly sought after, with more than 400,000 graduates competing for about 3,000 government jobs each year, Bloomberg reports.
Demonstrators also contend that the quota system favors Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her supporters, since Hasina’s party, the Awami League, spearheaded the country’s independence drive. Critics “believe that the quota system is partisan and meant to ensure sufficient party support within the government, all while reducing the availability of merit-based jobs in a country with high youth unemployment,” Michael Kugelman wrote in FP’s South Asia Brief newsletter.
Hasina previously scrapped the system following a wave of protests in 2018, but a top Bangladeshi court restored it last month, sparking the current unrest. In an apparent attempt to appease protesters, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court last week suspended the quota system for a month and said it would make a final decision at the end of that period.
Hasina has defended the system and accused the country’s main opposition parties of fueling the unrest. She deployed paramilitary forces to help police quell the demonstrations in major cities, though she vowed to establish an investigatory judicial committee over the deaths and promised justice for students. Law Minister Anisul Huq said on Thursday that the government was ready to meet with student leaders to find a solution, though he said the final decision would be up to the Supreme Court.
But demonstrators—who have threatened to launch a “complete shutdown” of the country’s transportation systems, businesses, and schools if their demands aren’t met—seem intent on continuing the fight. “We want a permanent executive order from the government, saying that the quotas are abolished, except some quotas for the disabled and minorities,” Parvez Mosharraf, a student at Dhaka University, told Dawn last week. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party has backed the protesters’ call for a shutdown.