Mint Explainer: Why India needs to have a wary eye on the Bangladesh coup

livemint.com:

Mint goes into the details on the latest developments in Bangladesh and the implications for India. The protests were triggered by students seeking the dismantling of quota-based reservations in government jobs. The unrest snowballed after a court ruling in June reinstated reservations in government jobs.

The reservations—amounting to more than 50% of all government jobs—were abolished by the Sheikh Hasina government in 2018. Angering the students was the fact that 30% of those jobs were reserved for the descendants of freedom fighters, i.e., those who had fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. They were of the view that quotas favoured allies of the governing Awami League party, which led the independence movement in 1971.

Also read | Now Bangladesh shows the risk posed by unresolved job crises What infuriated protestors was that the quotas reinstatement happened at a time when the Bangladeshi economy wasn’t doing well. The economy is yet to fully recover from the impact of the covid-19 pandemic. The country’s real GDP, according to the World Bank, had slowed to 5.8% in 2022-23 from 7.1% in 2021-22.

With inflation at around 30%, general dissatisfaction has been high. Private sector jobs are hard to come by. Against these odds, government jobs are seen as a stable alternative for those entering the job market.

The developments in Dhaka almost exactly mirrored what happened in Sri Lanka two years ago. In 2022, Sri Lanka was in the throes of what was described as the worst economic crisis since its independence in 1948. Common people in the island nation situated to the south of India, protesting a massive spike in inflation, plunging foreign reserves, and critical shortages of fuel, food and