The highlights this week: The public grows impatient with Bangladesh’s interim government six months after protests that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, voters head to the polls in Delhi state elections , and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week.
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The highlights this week: The public grows impatient with Bangladesh’s interim government six months after protests that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, voters head to the polls in Delhi state elections, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington next week.
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Wednesday marks six months since Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned under pressure from mass protests. It was a stunning feat: What began as demonstrations against job quotas were met with violence at the hands of security forces and morphed into a nationwide revolt against Hasina’s repressive rule.
Students and young people fronted the protests, and some of them now hold posts in Bangladesh’s interim government, led by Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus. The spirit of the movement—the so-called Gen Z revolution—lives on.
I spent last week in Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, where the legacy of Hasina’s father, former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, once loomed larger than life. The independence leader was depicted in statues and murals, and his name was routinely invoked in public speeches. Today, he is nowhere to be found, but the city is filled with commemorations of the Gen Z revolution.
However, the main takeaway from my trip was that the Bangladeshi public is growing impatient with an interim government that has made ambitious promises—to restore democracy, rebuild institutions, and reform governance—yet has underperformed so far.
Public safety has improved, with little of the deadly retributive violence that was unleashed against Hasina supporters in the days following her ouster. But many police officers are still refusing to report to duty, and activists buoyed by last year’s movement are regularly mobilizing in the streets for various causes. Many Bangladeshis, including business leaders, still worry about law and order.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s economy is floundering, continuing a decline that began in the last years of Hasina’s rule. Today, inflation is falling, but it is close to double digits. Bangladesh’s GDP growth between July and December 2024 was less than 2 percent, and foreign direct investment fell by 71 percent in the three months after Hasina’s ouster.
Additionally, the public has limited information about the interim government’s reforms process. Though commissions were formed to focus on subjects including banking and the country’s constitution, it’s unclear what goals they have set. The government insists that it will all take time; as one senior official put it to me, Hasina eviscerated the country’s governance fabric, and there is no easy way out.
Still, the lack of a formal public mandate will undermine the interim government. Most Bangladeshis welcomed the new administration last August, but it is not an elected government. The longer it stays in power, the more pressure it will face to call elections. According to multiple people I spoke with in Dhaka, two key constituencies already want to see elections soon: the business community and the military.
Yunus has said elections could take place by the end of the year, but the government has not announced a formal timeframe. Protest leaders within the government want to see reforms through—and they also likely want more time to build up the new political party that they plan to form. However, if the interim government holds off elections to ensure the implementation of reforms, the next elected government could just reverse them.
This uncertainty has intensified public concerns about Bangladesh’s future. By no means are people growing nostalgic for Hasina; there is an overwhelming view that today’s situation is preferable to the repression of the past. Still, if tangible improvements—especially economic ones—remain elusive, the public’s patience will wane.
Bangladesh’s next government will inherit not only domestic policy challenges but also growing external worries—including tense ties with India, uncertain relations with the new Trump administration in the United States, and a border with Myanmar now controlled by the rebel Arakan Army. Things won’t get any easier for Dhaka after elections, whenever they are held.
Delhi elections. Residents of India’s National Capital Territory of Delhi went to the polls on Wednesday, with results expected on Saturday. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, have ruled Delhi, which has its own legislature, for a decade. Despite its dominance over national politics, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hasn’t won Delhi elections for nearly 30 years.
Kejriwal is one of India’s most prominent politicians not affiliated with the BJP or the main opposition Indian National Congress. He and the AAP have little clout beyond Delhi and the nearby state of Punjab, which the party also controls. But Kejriwal, a former tax inspector, exploded onto the political scene in the 2010s as an anti-corruption crusader.
In recent years, Kejriwal has been saddled with corruption charges of his own, which prompted him to step down as Delhi chief minister last year. The BJP hopes that this will undercut the AAP’s electoral prospects; Kejriwal’s supporters reject the charges as politically motivated, part of an unrelenting ruling party crackdown on critics.
Modi to visit Washington. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected in Washington sometime next week—likely on Feb. 12 and 13, according to Indian reports. He will be one of the first world leaders to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba this week.
Trade and defense will reportedly be among the issues on the agenda for Trump and Modi. One of Modi’s chief objectives will probably be to ensure that India doesn’t face new U.S. tariffs, and he might come prepared to propose the start of talks over a new economic agreement that would reduce tariffs on both sides.
Pakistan opposition talks collapse. Last Friday, Pakistan’s government announced that it would end talks with the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party after the PTI refused to continue. Though Pakistani media described the PTI’s position as “unexpected,” the party had threatened to end talks by Jan. 31 if its core demands were not met.
The PTI requested judicial commissions to investigate violent protests targeting military facilities in May 2023 and a state crackdown on PTI protesters last November; Islamabad declined to form these commissions. For its part, the government said the PTI also demanded the release of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and other senior party leaders from prison but did not include this in a formal charter.
The breakdown in talks is a blow to prospects for more stability in Pakistan. The PTI now claims that it will seek new alliances within the opposition. It has also announced plans to hold protests on Saturday, the one-year anniversary of Pakistan’s last election, in which PTI-backed independent candidates won the most seats but not enough to form a government on their own. The PTI says the election was rigged.
India announces new budget. Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the new federal budget over the weekend amid ample apprehension. Indian government data recently showed that GDP growth in the third quarter of 2024 was lower than projected, at 5.4 percent—a seven-quarter low. The return of Trump and ongoing global conflict also worry policymakers.
Given persistent inflation and youth unemployment, India is under pressure to provide relief to the masses—but it also faces expectations to help the private sector. Some Indian officials recently pushed for India’s main interest rate, which has remained at 6.5 percent for several years, to be lowered; its reserve bank has so far declined to do so.
Not surprisingly, the new federal budget aims to help both the public and business. It includes income tax cuts for the middle class, intended to increase private consumption, and provides support to a range of industries, including agriculture, energy, and start-ups. Sitharaman said there will also be support for initiatives to boost manufacturing and exports.
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In the Kathmandu Post, poet Abhi Subedi argues that while it may be fashionable to lament the failures of Nepal’s politics, it’s not all that bad. “It is important to discuss political angst related to the political system,” he writes. But “before pronouncing the apocalyptic end of this system, we should look at the positive modes of its origin and continuity.”
In Dawn, journalist Arifa Noor highlights an overlooked aspect of opposition protests in Islamabad last November: the alleged exploitation of Afghan refugees. “[A] story made its way to electronic news channels in which different young men confessed on camera that they were illegal refugees who had been paid to take part in the protest,” she writes.
In the Hindu, writer Bhashyam Kasturi draws attention to the Indian state of Punjab’s decades-long challenge with drug trafficking. “Its proximity to the heroin-producing Golden Crescent—Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran—makes it vulnerable to the problem. This is why the drugs menace is also a national security issue,” he writes.