Bangladesh is considered to be one of the great mysteries in social development: Swati Narayan

The author and academic discusses Bangladesh’s state of turmoil, former PM Sheikh Hasina’s contentious tenure, social and economic progress, and more.

Swati Narayan, author of Unequal: Why India Lags Behind Its Neighbours | Photo Credit: Pran P.S.

Swati Narayan’s book Unequal: Why India Lags Behind Its Neighbours has drawn attention in intellectual circles for its comprehensive field research across Bangladesh, Nepal, and India. Narayan’s work notably highlights Bangladesh’s surprising surge past India in various human development indices, from sanitation to education. Her ground-level observations align with international data confirming Bangladesh’s remarkable progress. But recent political turmoil in Bangladesh threatens this advancement. In this conversation with Saba Naqvi, Narayan addresses a crucial question: How does she interpret Bangladesh’s current situation, given her firsthand research of its development journey? What are her thoughts on the country’s impressive progress now facing potential reversal due to authoritarian governance? Excerpts:

WATCH:

Author and academic Swati Narayan discusses Bangladesh’s recent political turmoil, its political instabilities, citizens’ secular practices, and more.  | Video Credit: Interview by Saba Naqvi; Editing by Samson Ronald K.

How do you, as someone who has done work on the ground, view a country that was poorer than India, had worse development indices than India, come up, and then just blows apart because it was, say, authoritarian? What is your take on what is happening in Bangladesh?

These are the most important times in Bangladesh, but not unexpected for those of us who have travelled there. This was a situation waiting to explode. Although it may sound otherwise, Bangladesh is considered to be one of the great mysteries in social development. They’ve progressed, but it was always known that while advancing socially and economically, politically, the country remained very fragile in terms of its democracy. People in Bangladesh wouldn’t speak much about politics in public. They would discuss it in drawing rooms, behind closed doors. But it was obvious that an authoritarian regime couldn’t sustain itself through more than three elections that were supposedly rigged.

But Bangladesh made huge advances under “authoritarianism”. Your book shows significant development gaps between Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and India in areas like life expectancy and sanitation. Yet these countries are now facing political turmoil. Have authoritarian regimes in our neighbourhood actually enabled development? How would you rate Sheikh Hasina’s impact on Bangladesh’s progress?

Let me be clear. Based on this analysis and broader macro-level data, Bangladesh started overtaking India around 1996 to 2001, about 25 years ago. Since then, we’ve observed improvements in Bangladesh’s literacy, life expectancy, school participation, and healthcare. Sri Lanka has been advancing for the last 50 years; even at India’s independence, Sri Lanka’s literacy rates were far higher, and women could vote.

So, the development in Bangladesh is at least 20 years old, and in Sri Lanka, at least 50. The resulting social development creates a tinderbox of increased aspirations. People are literate and expect jobs, and when politics fails to deliver, it explodes.

Most successes occurred during competitive democratic politics. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s in Bangladesh, the Awami League and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) rotated power every five to six years. But over the last 15 years, Sheikh Hasina hasn’t held free and fair elections. She abolished the concept of a caretaker government, which ensured fair elections, in 2011.

Since then, authoritarianism has increased, despite her government being ostensibly liberal and secular. She wasn’t delivering, and people felt she was extremely autocratic. There were murders and forced disappearances. Everyone was afraid to speak. So this outcome isn’t unexpected, just the speed at which it happened is surprising.

Now, there seems to be growing hostility towards Indians, Hindus, and figures like Mujibur Rahman. There are even unverified reports of attacks on Rabindranath Tagore’s statues. How do you interpret this shift in sentiment?

It’s particularly sad. Even yesterday, I was checking areas where I had visited Awami League members’ homes, and minorities have been attacked. When I was there, Bangladesh had a rich history of unity. The language movement for Bengali in the 1950s and 60s led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, uniting people of all religions. Cultural freedoms were celebrated—Rabindra Sangeet was sung, saris were worn, and Dhaka University hosted both Saraswati and Durga pujas. This secular fabric seems to be eroding now.

The secular fabric may not tear completely. I have another anecdote, which isn’t in the book. In Indian schools, the morning assembly typically includes a prayer. In Bangladesh, however, they select students from different faiths—Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian—to recite passages from their respective scriptures: the Quran, Gita, Dhammapada, and Bible. I was surprised to see this in a country with an Islamic constitution, especially since it was initially secular before General Ershad changed it to a Muslim state. Yet, everyday life in Bangladesh remains largely secular, with Rabindra Sangeet being a part of daily culture.

Is this practice in every school in Bangladesh?

Yes, in every government school. They also have a subject called moral science. There are different textbooks for Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, based on their own religions. I found this both on the government website and in schools. I didn’t write much about this in the book because it was one of those mysteries of Bangladesh that I wasn’t sure how it would unfold. I hope the secular fabric remains in the country because people fought for Bangladesh as a Bengali country more than anything else, across religious divides. Yesterday’s news was a little sad, and I hope the violence calms down soon.

Have you been in touch with the regions you’ve written about? Are there attacks happening on Indians, Hindus, and symbols of the old regime?

When I called people, they sent me WhatsApp messages of Muslims protecting temples. This is a political scenario that could unfold into anarchy. Hopefully, if a new government steps in and the army patrols as promised, the violence will reduce soon, leading to a transition to a good, democratic government.

It’s complicated with many nuances and implications. Let’s return to your work. When our countries’ journeys began, Bangladesh was founded much later in 1971. What were the main reasons Bangladesh could overtake India on social development indices? Jean Drèze also flagged India’s graded inequalities, essentially the caste system, as responsible for our lack of progress on many fronts. Is that the big difference?

It’s a historical mystery how East Bengal’s population converted to Islam en masse in the 13th century after [Turkish-Afghan military conqueror] Muhammad Bakhtiyar’s arrival. Overall, we see that caste features are less prominent in Bangladesh than in India. Even old British colonial records show high levels of social mobility among Muslims in Bangladesh. Among Hindus, caste gradations remain, and there are many Dalit Hindus. But cross the border into Bihar, just 50 km away, and you’re in a completely different environment where caste dictates every aspect of life. In Bihar, inequalities are greater; even among Dalits, the Musahar communities are extremely backward, lacking social services and education.

I believe social solidarity brought students together across divides to fight against an autocratic regime in Bangladesh. In Bihar, people don’t expect much from the government. Bridges can collapse, anganwadis can close, schools might not serve midday meals, but across caste divides, nobody fights together to improve public services. In Bangladesh, there’s a strong social contract after the 1974 famine. Rulers, even if autocratic, knew they had to provide social services or people would take to the streets of Dhaka. This has happened before.

Your book opens with a vivid description of the sanitation contrast at the Bangladesh-India border. On the Bangladesh side, everyone has toilets, while on the Indian side, open defecation is common, even after Swachh Bharat. Why did you choose to compare Bangladesh with Bihar instead of West Bengal?

My field survey was in 2016, two years after Swachh Bharat began. While things have improved slightly in Bihar, we shouldn’t believe claims that open defecation has been eliminated there. The key point is that 20 years before Swachh Bharat, nearly every house in Bangladesh already had a toilet.

I didn’t compare with West Bengal because it’s much richer than Bangladesh. Bangladesh and Bihar have similar per capita incomes. West Bengal has ATMs and malls, while Bangladesh has a rural landscape but better social indicators. The contrast is between Bihar, representing the Hindi heartland, and Bangladesh at similar income levels.

Can you describe Bangladesh’s economic hierarchy and income sources? Has migration to India stopped?

Bangladesh is becoming prosperous. In rural areas, people are sharecroppers or landowners. Agriculture is crucial. Urban and rural areas have factories, including agro-processing and garment industries. The private sector is booming but not creating enough jobs. The main problem is corruption, which has increased significantly in the last 15 years, eroding the country’s fabric. While socially and economically progressing, Bangladesh was politically declining, becoming an electoral autocracy.

Bangladesh is obviously quite different. I don’t even think you can compare what’s happened in Bangladesh to India. One of the factors I consider when looking at the region is that we’ve never had military rule. Once you’ve had that in a society, democracy keeps breaking apart, and you have that option. We’ve never had that. Yes, we’ve had imperfections. We’ve had the Emergency. We’ve had what is called electoral autocracy. But we have somehow...

That’s the beauty of Indian democracy. 

Bangladesh politics has been dominated by two women for decades [Sheikh Hasina (of the Awami League and Khaleda Zia of the BNP]. In your book, there was some data showing that more women were in their workspace than in India, in your field work area. If the Jamaat takes over, would they reduce women’s participation? 

The gender conundrum actually started with the 1971 war. Everybody says there was an awakening of feminist consciousness. The reason was simple: rape was used as a weapon of war by the Pakistani army, and there was mass rape of women at that time. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman gave the term “birangana” to these women, many of whom actually gave birth to children who were given up for international adoption. After this time, Bangladeshi women, especially in rural areas, realised that nobody could help them—they needed to help themselves. Purdah norms were broken, and for survival, women started taking up whatever jobs were available.

On top of that, three or four years later, you had the 1974 famine. That’s when, I think, a social contract was established between the rulers and the citizens, as Naomi Hossain has written about. NGOs started blooming, women’s movements started blooming, and NGOs largely employed 90 per cent women.

Right now, the only parties apart from the military dictators who have been in power have been BNP or Awami League. The BNP, is less secular than the Awami League, but the Jamaat has never the leading party. Hopefully, they will not regress to such an extent.

Let’s be clear, this movement was led by students, and many of these students have been women. In fact, I’ve seen so many wonderful stories where they are now taking over functions of the police, controlling traffic, and managing the roads. They seem to be idealistic students, and many of them are women. In Bangladesh, women are more educated than men. Across classrooms, I saw more women than boys, because boys start working very early. They had a female secondary education stipend program which really increased girls’ education.

Unless there’s extreme Islamization of Bangladesh, hopefully it will not descend into some form of anarchy. If stable governments are formed, then I think it all bodes well for the country. It could also be that new political parties emerge in this political vacuum.

You’re looking at development indicators. You’re working in this field. Your work suggests you care about schools, education, sanitation, all these things. What is your view of Muhammad Yunus, who is likely to lead Bangladesh at this point? 

Choosing him as a pick to be the interim advisor has been very intelligent by the students because he’s internationally respected in terms of the impact of microcredit. I’ve given some statistics: almost 2 per cent of people go out of poverty every year because of microcredit. This has spurred entrepreneurship in Bangladesh. It’s not now just Grameen Bank [founded by Yunus] as a microcredit organisation, but also Grameen Phone, which is the largest phone network in Bangladesh. There are different businesses which have started from microcredit organisations.

In terms of its impact, one thing I’m not so sure about is that previously there have been caretaker governments in Bangladesh, and they usually take an oath that they will not stand for elections. At one point, Yunus wanted to start his own party, which actually could have gotten a lot of support through the microcredit groups. But now if he becomes interim advisor, he can’t stand for election or start a new party. So that is a big question mark as to what will happen. Will there be a new formation or not?

In terms of being well-respected and somebody who was wrongfully removed from his own organisation after getting a Nobel Prize, there was a lot of politics going on. I really hope Bangladesh goes in the right direction. Fingers crossed. Who knows what will happen, but hopefully there’ll be political stability.

To end, I would say the only parallel is with Sri Lanka. I think people power and removing autocratic governments is the main lesson we seem to be learning from South Asia. The Rajapaksas were removed by a people’s revolt. Even a secular liberal government like Sheikh Hasina’s, which became increasingly authoritarian, was removed by students. So I think that’s the one lesson: social development and economic development are important, but so is political democracy in South Asia. At least that’s what it seems to be showing.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.