In the subcontinent, Tamil Nadu is probably the state whose politics is closest to ours. A two party system where both parties are pro market and pro industrialisation. But they differentiate themselves on identity and/or corruption. Although I'll admit my understanding of their politics is very general and second hand.
My worry is that youth of today are going to bring welfarism and islamism to politics. Welfarism and islamism will go well together too since the main constituency of islamism is not the rural poor but the unemployed urban middle class. Basically people who are too lazy to do a blue collar job but stupid for a white collar one.
The likely scenarios for the Bangladesh in 5 years.
1) Islamist takeover like post 1979 Iran. 20%
2) Military takeover of government like Egypt after Arab Spring. 30%
3) Federalism + electoral reform like Indonesia after dictatorship in the 90s. 10%
4) Current politicians lose the mandate because of incompetence or having to do tough IMF reforms. Then Hasina or her son comes back to Bangladesh and wins a legit election. She is less authoritarian this time around because she is in coalition with new political actors. However there will be a long term decline for BAL's electoral success as the rest of the political scene matures. Like India after 1973 emergency. 40%.
1. Zero. Bangladesh is not a Shia country and it won't be like Iran. Even a broader Islamist takeover by 2030 is less than 5%.
2. Zero. Army takeover in Egypt was in response to the Muslim Brotherhood overreach. We are not going to get a Jamaat victory in the 2026 election and therefore won't get an Egypt like coup. Too soon to tell what might happen after 2030.
3. Zero. Federalism is not on the card. Nor Indonesia style reform. However, I am optimistic about a PR upper house.
4. Zero. Hasina is not coming back, nor her son. Awami League under anyone in Sheikh family is finished.
We will have a BNP government in early 2026. Over the next five years, we will likely see this government lose popularity. The major opposition to this government will come from a soft Islamist coalition. The political question in the early 2030s will be whether the urban elites rally behind an unpopular BNP government because of their fear of Islamists.
There has never been and never will be a people's revolution. When the masses are unhappy they just do crime. Revolution occurs when there is a fracture amongst the elite and/or elite overproduction. Bangladesh is an example of both.
(There was not a banking crisis. There was a PUBLIC banking and Islamic banking crisis. Most private banks are fine. As usual the thing that holds back bangladesh are public sector employees and Islam. Nothing surprising there.)
There was banking problems before the election. Around election time the government relaxed a lot of restrictions on the banking sector. She also did a bunch of price controls that obviously didn't work. So you lost the support of businesses while also not winning any brownie points with the masses. After the election there was going be austerity resulting in lower industrial and electricity subsidies. These factors led to elite fracture. The rising unemployment amongst the educated youth is the elite overproduction.
You are looking at the symptoms, not the underlying cause. It wasn't public sector employees or Islam. It was the regime that was primarily interested in its own survival, and the cronies who were interested in feeding off it.
This is what we as Bangladeshis always get wrong. We blame the individual and not the institution. We keep thinking that if we change the man in charge the outcome will be different, but that's not how anything works. The outcome will only be different only if we change the incentive.
That's why I'm foundationally pessimistic about the reform agenda being implemented now. It's mostly about purging and reshuffling the people at the top and replacing them with "better and more honest" people. We'll be back to square one within a few years.
Individuals' incentives are downstream of institutions. Our institutions made it more likely to have a despotic regime. The despotic regime is gone, but the underlying institutional will take time. Public service jobs and Islam are peripheral in the scheme of things.
They're not peripheral but central. The median voter in Bangladesh wants their kid to have a cushy public sector job and that's what motivates politicians to over compensate public sector employees and difficult to sack them for poor performance. Hell the government can't even sack them for not showing up to work.
Our media focuses too much on elite corruption at the national parliament level but not enough on the middle class corruption of public sector employees which I think is more problematic in the long run.
Given that there hasn't been any election or any credible opinion poll since at least 2013, any statemment about what the median voter in Bangladesh wants is just one's opinion. Public service payroll in Bangladesh is actually much smaller than similar countries when scaled by either GDP or population.
Do you mean the percentage of gdp that is spent on public sector salaries or do you mean the public sector wage premium relative to the private sector?
If it's the former than I agree with you. But if it's the later I disagree.
In neighbouring India, for example, the percentage of public sector employees is also relatively low. But the wage premium is very high. For example, a public school teacher is paid 4-5 times more than a private school teacher with worse education outcomes.
In the subcontinent, Tamil Nadu is probably the state whose politics is closest to ours. A two party system where both parties are pro market and pro industrialisation. But they differentiate themselves on identity and/or corruption. Although I'll admit my understanding of their politics is very general and second hand.
My worry is that youth of today are going to bring welfarism and islamism to politics. Welfarism and islamism will go well together too since the main constituency of islamism is not the rural poor but the unemployed urban middle class. Basically people who are too lazy to do a blue collar job but stupid for a white collar one.
Too soon to tell.
The likely scenarios for the Bangladesh in 5 years.
1) Islamist takeover like post 1979 Iran. 20%
2) Military takeover of government like Egypt after Arab Spring. 30%
3) Federalism + electoral reform like Indonesia after dictatorship in the 90s. 10%
4) Current politicians lose the mandate because of incompetence or having to do tough IMF reforms. Then Hasina or her son comes back to Bangladesh and wins a legit election. She is less authoritarian this time around because she is in coalition with new political actors. However there will be a long term decline for BAL's electoral success as the rest of the political scene matures. Like India after 1973 emergency. 40%.
What odds would you place on these scenarios?
1. Zero. Bangladesh is not a Shia country and it won't be like Iran. Even a broader Islamist takeover by 2030 is less than 5%.
2. Zero. Army takeover in Egypt was in response to the Muslim Brotherhood overreach. We are not going to get a Jamaat victory in the 2026 election and therefore won't get an Egypt like coup. Too soon to tell what might happen after 2030.
3. Zero. Federalism is not on the card. Nor Indonesia style reform. However, I am optimistic about a PR upper house.
4. Zero. Hasina is not coming back, nor her son. Awami League under anyone in Sheikh family is finished.
We will have a BNP government in early 2026. Over the next five years, we will likely see this government lose popularity. The major opposition to this government will come from a soft Islamist coalition. The political question in the early 2030s will be whether the urban elites rally behind an unpopular BNP government because of their fear of Islamists.
There has never been and never will be a people's revolution. When the masses are unhappy they just do crime. Revolution occurs when there is a fracture amongst the elite and/or elite overproduction. Bangladesh is an example of both.
(There was not a banking crisis. There was a PUBLIC banking and Islamic banking crisis. Most private banks are fine. As usual the thing that holds back bangladesh are public sector employees and Islam. Nothing surprising there.)
There was banking problems before the election. Around election time the government relaxed a lot of restrictions on the banking sector. She also did a bunch of price controls that obviously didn't work. So you lost the support of businesses while also not winning any brownie points with the masses. After the election there was going be austerity resulting in lower industrial and electricity subsidies. These factors led to elite fracture. The rising unemployment amongst the educated youth is the elite overproduction.
You are looking at the symptoms, not the underlying cause. It wasn't public sector employees or Islam. It was the regime that was primarily interested in its own survival, and the cronies who were interested in feeding off it.
This is what we as Bangladeshis always get wrong. We blame the individual and not the institution. We keep thinking that if we change the man in charge the outcome will be different, but that's not how anything works. The outcome will only be different only if we change the incentive.
That's why I'm foundationally pessimistic about the reform agenda being implemented now. It's mostly about purging and reshuffling the people at the top and replacing them with "better and more honest" people. We'll be back to square one within a few years.
Individuals' incentives are downstream of institutions. Our institutions made it more likely to have a despotic regime. The despotic regime is gone, but the underlying institutional will take time. Public service jobs and Islam are peripheral in the scheme of things.
They're not peripheral but central. The median voter in Bangladesh wants their kid to have a cushy public sector job and that's what motivates politicians to over compensate public sector employees and difficult to sack them for poor performance. Hell the government can't even sack them for not showing up to work.
Our media focuses too much on elite corruption at the national parliament level but not enough on the middle class corruption of public sector employees which I think is more problematic in the long run.
Given that there hasn't been any election or any credible opinion poll since at least 2013, any statemment about what the median voter in Bangladesh wants is just one's opinion. Public service payroll in Bangladesh is actually much smaller than similar countries when scaled by either GDP or population.
Do you mean the percentage of gdp that is spent on public sector salaries or do you mean the public sector wage premium relative to the private sector?
If it's the former than I agree with you. But if it's the later I disagree.
In neighbouring India, for example, the percentage of public sector employees is also relatively low. But the wage premium is very high. For example, a public school teacher is paid 4-5 times more than a private school teacher with worse education outcomes.