Bangladesh: Politics and Game theory

07 Aug, 2024

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably aware about the whole Bangladesh fiasco. In a nutshell:

• Since 1971, Bangladesh has had a shaky governance owing to a tripartite power struggle between Awami League, BNP and the Jamaat. The BNP and the Jamaat are Centre-right and Hard Right respectively, while the Awami League with Sheikh Hasina, one of the two surviving children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman - the founding father of Bangladesh - at the helm is along the liberal spectrum.
• Over the years, power hungry Hasina has been cornering all opposition through covert and overt means, including actions against Muhammad Yunus which drew US fire against Sheikh Hasina's autocratic behavior.
• Recent announcements about a 30% reservation quota for descendants of the freedom fighters (Mukti Joddha) drew massive protests from students all over the country, which culminated in a protracted series of street protests and violent riots that led to loss of lives through police and Awami league cadre-led violence. Even after the Supreme Court reduced the quota to 5%, the students demanded Hasina step down.
• And finally on 5th August, 2024, Sheikh Hasina's nearly 20 year run as PM of Bangladesh ended unceremoniously as she scuttled away to seek refuge in Delhi as thousands of protesters looted and ransacked her official residence and the Bangladeshi Parliament. What follows even now, is widespread violence and blatant destruction of property belonging to Awami league supporters and police officials. Many have been lynched and hunted down, and many have escaped to India. Armed groups have been destroying Hindu properties, temples and houses, and killing Hindus and other minorities in an eerie reminder of Op Searchlight. The violence continues as of this moment.

So what happens now? Muhammad Yunus has been named as the country's Interim Leader, which is ironic considering all of Hasina's attempts to ostracize him from the political landscape. In mathematical parlance, Gradient descent is ubiquitous. But what does this reveal about the political games people play?

1. The hardliners in B'desh have been historically the remnants of Pakistani sympathizers, or Razakars. With the rise of ISIS and Jamaat-e-Islami, these hardliners have found a powerful stream of weapons and tools to bend the public machinery to their will. With sponsors like Pakistan and China, this gets easier and leaves a formidable dent in the post-democratic landscape. With Hasina out of the picture, the Jamaat shall now have a louder voice in the politics of the nation, and as history has time and again revealed, this can only spell bad news for the region at large.
2. The political and civil society will try its best to rectify its image, and with Yunus at the helm, there can be a faint glimmer of hope. But what we're actually looking at is a series of financial aid from US and China to harbor their political ambitions, and the resident politics benefiting from the power games between the giants. With a shaky pre-election US, the deep state is essentially running the show, and the greater implications of the Manipur conflict, Zo state, Myanmar unrest and St. Martin's Island must never be discounted from the gameplan. With China's domestic economy stagnating, a lot of eyes have been shifted off to Japanese market freefall, but this is exactly what hides behind the curtain. China has invested heavily in B'desh and will now up the ante through military and financial aid, and the political vacuum created only aids China, as it lends it breathing space to make inroads into a fragile economy at threat from multiple fronts. Essentially, B'desh is set to become a vassal state, but to whom, is what time shall reveal.
3. The student politics is just a fading footnote, and all the lofty dreams of a "Secular" nation are just that: dreams. With the nascent power struggle between the Pak-China aligned Jamaat, and the US-aligned Yunus, the third player in the game, i.e. Progressive student leaders, has been rendered a wallflower. Majority of students have already voiced their support for Yunus, and this rift shall only widen as the consolidation begins with the President announcing fresh elections once the dust settles. Till then, its a free-for-all loot.

With multiple players in a constrained setting, games shall always settle down into a two-player tussle, through incapacitation and elimination of weaker players. This binary nature of multipartite games is a ubiquitous phenomenon, and the concept of pressure-groups points to the leverage that these third voices wield over the two primaries. What makes real life stranger than theory, is the wild card entries and chaotic events that drastically alter all previously considered notions. With Bangladesh in the crosshairs, this is going to be a decisive, and juicy tale.