Failing to satisfy citizens’ expectations of democracy leads to serious societal problems, including the intensification of conflict. This is a finding from research (a collaborative research with SOAS, University of London, exploring parliament and public engagement) that my colleagues and I conducted in Bangladesh from 2014 to 2017. In Bangladesh, the 2018 quota movement and the July 2024 students’ uprising against the quota system are textbook examples of this. These movements have eventually challenged the one-party system. After a series of street demonstrations, to which the ruling party responded with unprecedented brutality, killing at least 1,000 protesters, prime minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign and flee the country. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus was chosen to lead an interim government, and he took the responsibility as the chief adviser on August 8.
The Awami League government was in power for one and a half decades this time and made a long history of using violence and state-sponsored terrorism. They had manipulated each institution in the country. Consequently, anti-establishment forces found new ways to combine mass activism with national interest, orchestrating a student-public resistance constructed against the tyranny of the AL government. It is a good starting point, but only a starting point for the processes that anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has called ‘deepening democracy’, which emphasises a more active and participatory role in governance. In contrast, ‘shallow democracy’ refers to a form of ‘representative democracy’ where the emphasis is primarily on the right to vote in elections, with less focus on broader civic engagement and participation in the process.
In a shallow sense, democracy is widely meant as electing representatives through the ritual of voting. More broadly, the current situation under the interim government in Bangladesh is that without holding a national election, disintegration amongst the united political and social forces against the fascist government can lead to divisions in society. Rather than assuming that only global investment will necessarily speed up economic development, reaching out public through holding elections is a pressing need. Let me say a few words about the current status of democracy in Bangladesh.
Shallow democracy reinforced fascist activities such as enforced disappearance, violence, terrorism and election engineering. It focused on ‘electing’ MPs to represent constituents about how a ‘democracy’ involves staging a parliament in collaboration with the loyal opposition Jatiyo Party and other allies. The citizens, meanwhile, observed that the AL-led parliament actually served one-party politics in the name of public representation, empowering their MPs whilst excluding the main opposition party, like the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. So, the process of ‘deepening democracy’ is a political question, demanding structural reforms of the electoral process, which the interim government has promised to do. Bangladeshis are hopeful for retaining the spirit of the July 2024 movement, as embodied in regular elections, as well as a diverse and inclusive candidate pool.
Though changeover, conflict and distrust continue to preclude the deepening of democracy, it is only by understanding the long and specific history of Bangladesh that actions can be proposed for reconciling diversity. Our findings suggest that certain groups faced exclusionÌýon grounds of gender, ethnicity or religion, but their inclusion should require different strategies in particular parliamentary constituencies. The field data also shows that MPs handle their roles and relationships with the party, government, parliament and constituency differently, but the way they interact with constituents has hardly been scrutinised. Close observation of relationships between MPs and citizens — the interaction between them during events, conversations or political actions — reveals the everyday life of an MP at work in practice as against an idealised fantasy about their roles and responsibilities.
Democracy has been shallow in Bangladesh, largely because of a history of failing to represent ordinary citizens. Furthermore, many would agree that a combination of rising expectations and the failures of past autocratic rule explode the myth that development will lead to democracy. We aspire for both parliamentary strengthening and democratisation, emanating from history and politics that have to be taken into account. At the same time, we aspire for a shift from a narrow, top-down and technical approach to institutional strengthening democracy, which focuses on mass involvement in various elections, including the upcoming parliament election, in favour of a broader and participatory pursuit of better governance through multi-party representatives.
Strengthening the capacity of oversight political institutions, the media and civil society and starting processes for public debate and opinion through holding free and fair elections is a priority for tackling the post-fascist regime in Bangladesh. We need to respond to the urgent need for a detailed and historical understanding of the demand of the masses when recommending or implementing any kind of reform, including parliamentary reform.
It is an urgent need for the interim government to respond to fast-changing contexts and must not neglect holding a general election by December 2025 for the sake of a democratic transition in the country. Democracy itself focuses on electing leaders to broader ideas about how a developed democracy involves establishing the scope of public deliberation, empowering historically marginalised and alienated groups, and increasing government responsiveness.
Ìý
Dr Zahir Ahmed is a research professor at State University of New York, Buffalo.
