The lazy consensus floating around international circuits is comforting, simple, and entirely wrong. The narrative goes that Bangladesh is suffering under a fragile interim administration, inflation is biting, currency controls are strangling trade, and therefore the populace is allegedly weeping for the return of Sheikh Hasina. Human rights figures and armchair geopolitical analysts love this line because it fits a neat, predictable template: authoritarian stability is preferable to chaotic democratic transition.
It is a fairy tale told by people who do not have to live with the structural debt, institutional rot, and systemic capital flight baked in during fifteen years of crony capitalism disguised as high growth.
I have watched emerging market macro funds pour billions into frontier economies only to watch them implode because analysts mistook surface-level GDP prints for structural health. I have seen central banks cook books to preserve an artificial exchange rate while foreign exchange reserves bled out behind closed doors. What is happening in Bangladesh right now is not a referendum on a fallen dictator. It is the violent, necessary process of a nation waking up from a debt-fueled hallucination.
The Growth Mirage That Built a House of Cards
To understand why the romanticism surrounding Hasina’s tenure is a macroeconomic delusion, you have to look past the shiny flyovers and the readymade garment export volume. For years, the official narrative touted Bangladesh as the unstoppable Asian tiger.
The numbers were staggering on paper. Six percent growth, seven percent growth, steady industrial expansion. But gross domestic product figures mean nothing when they are bought on credit and subsidized by hidden liabilities.
Here is what the apologists ignore:
- The Banking Sector Black Hole: Non-performing loans in state and private banks grew into a cancer. Political cronies treated commercial banks like personal piggy banks, siphoning liquidity with zero intention of repayment.
- The Reserve Illusion: Official foreign exchange reserves were propped up by creative accounting, delayed import payments, and dwindling inflows that failed to cover actual short-term liabilities.
- The Monoculture Trap: The entire economic engine hitched its wagon to a single sector: readymade garments. When global demand wobbled or domestic energy supplies choked, the entire structure trembled.
When an economy is built on political patronage rather than institutional rule of law, stability is just a countdown timer. Hasina did not engineer an economic miracle; she managed a multi-year delay on an inevitable reckoning.
The Myth of Popular Redemption
The claim that the streets are crying out for Hasina’s comeback belongs in the realm of political fiction. Yes, inflation hurts. Yes, supply chains face friction during a turbulent political transition. People are struggling to buy essentials, and opportunistic actors exploit that pain for political mileage.
Conflating short-term economic hardship with a desire for autocracy is a lazy analytical shortcut.
Ask the families of the victims who faced enforced disappearances. Ask the business owners who had to pay extortionate bribes just to clear shipping containers through Chittagong port. Ask the millions of youth who faced a rigged job market where civil service quotas favored political loyalists over actual competence.
The protests that toppled the regime were not born in a vacuum. They were driven by a generation that realized they had no economic future under a system that traded their upward mobility for elite enrichment. Reverting to the old guard because prices spiked during a global commodity crunch and a domestic political overhaul is like diving back into a burning building because it is cold outside.
Dismantling the Stability Argument
The core defense of authoritarian regimes in emerging markets always boils down to one word: stability. Proponents argue that foreign investors hate uncertainty, and autocrats provide a predictable business environment.
This argument collapses under scrutiny.
Autocratic stability is fragile because it depends entirely on the whims of one person and an inner circle. When the shock finally arrives—and it always arrives—there are no institutional shock absorbers left. The judiciary has been hollowed out, the central bank has been turned into a rubber stamp, and the press has been silenced.
True stability comes from transparent institutions, independent regulators, and the rule of law. These elements were systematically dismantled over the past decade and a half. The current volatility in Bangladesh is not the disease; it is the fever breaking.
What the Clean-Up Actually Looks Like
Fixing an economy recovering from decade-long structural distortion is messy, painful, and deeply unpopular in the short run.
The interim administration faces a brutal set of choices. They have to let the currency find its true market-clearing level, which triggers imported inflation. They have to restructure toxic banking assets, which cuts off cheap credit to zombie enterprises. They have to rationalize public spending, which hurts patronage networks.
Foreign investors are sweating because the era of backroom deals and guaranteed state contracts is over. Good. That system was a parasite draining the host.
If you want a resilient market in South Asia, you have to tolerate the friction of reform. You cannot shortcut institutional rebuilding with a strongman.
Nostalgia for a broken past is a luxury afforded only to those who profited from it. The rest of the country is paying the bill. Stop romanticizing the jailer just because the door is currently unlocked.
