Why Post-kakistocracy Dawn Is Stalling

Exactly two years ago today, Bangladesh shook the world. The July Mass Uprising culminated in an unprecedented explosion of civic defiance that fractured a 16-year autocratic rule on state machinery. Many political commentators termed it a victory against “kakistocracy” – the rule by the least qualified and the most unscrupulous citizens. As the old regime crumbled, the air in Dhaka was thick with the euphoria of a new liberation. Today, on 5th August, July Mass Uprising Day, the euphoria has vanished. The new liberation has been replaced by an uneasy, sober reality!

The transition from a hijacked state to a functional democracy is proving to be a gruelling, circular labyrinth rather than a linear pathway. While the interim administration under Dr Muhammad Yunus took the wheel to stabilise the listing ship, paving the way for the general elections and a subsequent transition to a new government, a structural rot remains stubbornly unbothered. Changing the pilots has not fixed the broken engine – the corrupt state machinery. 

New faces, old syndicates

The core tragedy of post-uprising Bangladesh is that while the apex of the kleptocracy was removed, the grassroots machinery of patronage was left completely intact. For the citizens, the daily frustration is palpable: recruitment syndicates still operate under a different brand of political cover, tender manipulation continues to choke municipal governance, and extortion networks have merely swapped loyalties.

Few prominent civil society observers have rightly pointed out that the interim framework struggled deeply to translate revolutionary ideals into credible, everyday practice. Instead of systematically dismantling the foundations of the partisan state, there was a heavy reliance on bureaucratic compromises. We have witnessed a dangerous pattern where the massive structural recommendations compiled by eleven reform commissions were largely sidelined or compromised away to appease traditional political forces eager to reclaim administrative dominance in all sectors.

Education system weakened by governmentality and kakistocracy

To understand how our governance became so profoundly corrupted, we must look at our classrooms and lecture halls through the lens of political sociology. For decades, our education system was deliberately weaponised through a toxic mix of kakistocracy and aggressive “governmentality” – a concept coined by Michel Foucault to describe how a state uses institutional techniques to discipline, control and regulate the conduct of its citizens. Rather than fostering critical thinking, schools and universities were converted into what Louis Althusser called Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). They functioned to manufacture obedience and legitimise authoritarian rule under the guise of stability and economic development (GDP growth).
Under the previous regime, merit was systematically replaced by political allegiance or fealty in a classic display of kakistocracy. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “academic capital” was entirely corrupted; intellectual excellence, peer-reviewed research and teaching credentials ceased to matter. Instead, the only currency for career advancement was political loyalty to the ruling party. University Vice-Chancellors behaved like ruling-party cadres rather than academic visionaries, and school-teacher appointments became a lucrative business for local party bosses.

Tragically, the post-uprising transition has done little to cure this institutional decay. We have just seen a change in who controls the university campuses. Instead of systematically reforming the entire system, we are witnessing a “musical chairs” of partisan appointments and retaliatory faculty purges. The foundational architecture of state-controlled indoctrination and weaponised governmentality remains almost intact.
Catastrophic rise of educated unemployment

The direct, devastating by-product of this corrupted education system is the ticking time-bomb of educated unemployment. For many years, our national economic policy focused on headline GDP growth while completely ignoring human capital. Our universities continued to operate as degree mills, churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates every year with certificates that held less relevance in a competitive and globalised economy.

The kakistocracy choked private sector innovation, meaning that the only highly sought-after, secure jobs left were in the civil service. This created the desperate, hyper-competitive environment that sparked the initial quota protests. Today, the tragedy has deepened. Millions of over-qualified young men and women sit idle; their potential decaying in an economy is being paralysed by financial instability and a lack of private investment. A democracy cannot sustain itself when its most educated citizens are forced into a passive cycle of economic irrelevance. This systemic failure has been a betrayal of the very youth who stood in front of bullets to demand a just and equitable society.

Cost of economic inertia

A major threat to our democratic renewal is the staggering inertia of macro-economic reform. A kakistocracy thrives on the deliberate subversion of financial institutions to enable capital flight and institutionalised looting. Over the last decade, an estimated TK.25,74,000 crore was drained from our national reserves.
Recovering money from this level of systematic plundering obviously requires legal, aggressive and surgical interventions. But, unfortunately, we have seen very insignificant efforts from the central bank and the national board of revenue (NBR). Instead, the low-income citizens are being crushed by rampant inflation. Yet, people encounter an erratic law-and-order situation. Even, due to shortage of gas supply and electricity, the business persons are experiencing a sluggish private sector that lacks the confidence to invest anew. When the state fails to secure basic economic stability and physical safety, the moral authority generated by a mass uprising erodes with alarming speed.

The way forward

Bangladesh cannot afford to let its historic transition devolve into a mere rotation of elites. To prevent the resurrection of another autocracy under a different name, the newly elected government and the parliament must urgently prioritise three actions: First of all, constitutional enforcement is imperative. The new parliament must amend the constitution urgently and enforce strict term limits on the Prime Minister’s office and decouple the ruling party from law enforcement agencies to guarantee institutional autonomy. Secondly, economic de-politicisation is very important. The central bank and financial regulatory bodies must be legally insulated from political interference to prevent the revival of crony capitalism. Finally, the government must foster a pluralistic inclusivity in political culture. The state must protect freedom of speech, ensure judicial neutrality and stop using state-sanctioned bans to settle political scores.

However, 5th August should not merely be a day of retrospective mourning or hollow celebration. It must serve as a stark, critical reminder that a kakistocracy is not dismantled simply by removing a tyrant. It has to be dismantled by building an unyielding, transparent system of accountability in the state machinery that no future ruler, no matter how powerful, can tear down. No doubt, the window for a true democratic renewal is closing fast. Of course, history will not forgive us if we squander it again!
___________________________________________________________
The writer is an Associate Professor of the Department of English at Stamford University Bangladesh. He can be contacted at [email protected]