Mohaiminul Rafi, 27, has spent years making ready for Bangladesh’s civil service exams, chasing what he calls “probably the most dependable path to a safe life”: a first-class authorities job.
With election campaigning underneath method throughout the nation, he’s now listening to guarantees aimed squarely at folks like him: money assist or interest-free loans for the jobless, and sweeping job-creation targets.
When requested about money assist or interest-free loans for unemployed graduates, Rafi chuckled. “In fact it might assist,” he stated. Then he paused. “However truthfully, what issues extra is a wholesome job market and recruitment on benefit.”
Rafi was among the many wave of younger individuals who joined the 2024 protests that started over a job reservation system many noticed as unfair and later spiralled right into a nationwide rebellion that toppled then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s authorities.
Now, Bangladesh is heading to an election on February 12.
With Hasina’s Awami League barred from the poll, the race is anticipated to largely revolve round a Bangladesh Nationalist Social gathering (BNP)-led coalition and a bloc led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, which has courted liberal allies, together with the uprising-born Nationwide Citizen Social gathering.
Senior figures from each camps are crisscrossing the nation, headlining rallies and stage programmes as campaigning enters its remaining stretch. From platforms to doorsteps to social media, candidates and get together activists are tapping acquainted anxieties: jobs, worth aid, tax cuts, and an finish to corruption and discrimination.
However analysts and voters say that whereas most of the guarantees go to the center of individuals’s insecurities, the size of what’s being supplied is likely to be troublesome for any authorities to realistically ship at a time when Bangladesh is grappling with a number of financial challenges.
“Everyone seems to be promising jobs and social safety prefer it’s a swap they will activate in a single day,” Rafi stated.
The guarantees land in an economic system wherein development has slowed to about 4-5 % in recent years – after increasing above 8 % earlier than the pandemic in 2019 – whereas meals and total inflation have remained within the excessive single digits for a chronic interval, squeezing folks’s buying energy and driving up the price of dwelling.
Non-public funding has remained largely caught at roughly 22–23 % of gross home product (GDP), and the nation’s tax-to-GDP ratio continues to be underneath 7 %. That is in contrast with roughly 12 % in India and 10 % in Pakistan, and is way in need of the roughly 15 % many economists cite at the least for a state to sustainably fund primary companies with out continual fiscal stress.
Hossain Zillur Rahman, an economist and the chief chairman of the Energy and Participation Analysis Centre (PPRC), a nonprofit assume tank based mostly in Dhaka, stated the interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus that took over after Hasina’s ouster introduced “some measure of fast stability to macro indicators”.
However the Yunus administration, he added, has been “terribly inattentive to financial misery at [the] family degree” and to “partaking with the enterprise group to jumpstart the economic system”.
“The financial actuality at this second is marked by persistent inflation, poverty reversals, employment emergencies, stagnant wages,” he stated, including that the federal government has “did not generate enterprise confidence, which is why the funding charge is at a standstill”.
In opposition to that backdrop, he added, an election issues as a result of it might finish the uncertainty freezing choices. “Bangladesh urgently wants a restart,” Rahman stated. “[The] election opens the potential for that, however it’s unlikely to supply any dramatic enhancements.”
Competing guarantees
Amid this tense financial temper, each the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, often known as Jamaat, are promoting a broad menu of pledges. The events are but to launch manifestos, however officers from each camps informed Al Jazeera that insurance policies unveiled at separate current high-profile occasions in Dhaka, and now circulating all through the marketing campaign, will characteristic prominently.
The BNP’s flagship pledge is a “household card” issued within the identify of a girl in every family. The get together says it might initially cowl 4 million households, offering both 2,000 to 2,500 Bangladeshi taka (about $16–$20) a month in money, usable at designated shops, or an equal month-to-month basket of necessities corresponding to rice, pulses, oil and salt.
Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, a BNP chief and former minister of commerce, stated that if elected, the BNP plans to manipulate by investing in folks, “in well being, in training, and upskilling”, and by supporting “artisans, the weavers” and small industries with credit score, in addition to serving to them entry worldwide markets, together with by serving to them with their branding.
Economists say the problem lies in scale and supply. Bangladesh at present spends about 1.16 trillion taka a yr (roughly $9.5bn) – about 2 % of GDP – on social safety throughout greater than 130 programmes, corresponding to old-age allowances and widow advantages.
The BNP’s household card pledge, if fulfilled nationwide, would value roughly 1.2 trillion taka (about $9.8bn) a yr, assuming 2,500 taka ($20) per card. Bangladesh’s present outlay on social sector protections would successfully have to double to make this work.
“You can’t guarantee high quality social safety with simply 2 % of GDP,” Towfiqul Islam Khan, extra director (analysis) on the Centre for Coverage Dialogue (CPD), stated.
For Rahman of the PPRC, social safety pledges quantity to an “acid check” for the events. “The important thing problem right here is not only additional funds”, he stated, “however avoiding leakage and guaranteeing supply to the best goal teams”.
The BNP argues its reply lies in shrinking the paperwork and digitising companies. Khasru described Bangladesh as “an over-regulated nation” the place layers of permissions increase the “value of doing enterprise”. Transferring companies on-line and eliminating bodily contact with officers, he stated, would cut back alternatives for corruption.
In the meantime, Jamaat’s principal welfare pitch is a “good social safety card”, a unified system the get together says would join the Nationwide ID card, well being entry, taxation, and social security companies.
Mokarram Hossain, a Swansea College professor who helped coordinate Jamaat’s plan, stated the get together’s focus rests on “good governance, zero tolerance to corruption, zero tolerance to extortion, and effectivity positive factors”.
Hossain stated Jamaat’s plan is to not “hand out token money”, however to construct a single system by means of which individuals can entry companies, one thing he argued would additionally cut back “leakage” in how advantages are delivered.
Khan of the CPD stated that “if income assortment improves, these long-term plans [of both coalitions] may be carried out… and they need to be”.
However for the second, he stated, each the BNP and Jamaat have inquiries to reply.
“They should clearly clarify how the financing can be organized, how lengthy implementation will take, by means of what course of will probably be executed, and the way institutional capability can be strengthened [to enable the execution of these policies],” Khan stated.
Nonetheless, there’s a cause why these guarantees, no matter how reasonable they’re, resonate with many citizens, stated Asif Shahan, a Dhaka College professor and senior analysis fellow on the BRAC Institute of Governance and Improvement, a social science analysis and tutorial institute in Dhaka.
“Folks don’t like difficult messages,” he stated. “You must give folks a really simplified message.” That is why the thought of a “household card” and a “social safety card” works higher than detailed coverage blueprints, he stated.
However it isn’t that the on a regular basis voter isn’t discerning, he stated. Voters are watching to see whether or not a celebration will ship advantages pretty to everybody, or “solely give them to get together loyalists”, he stated.
Jobs, training and youth
Card-based welfare guarantees are just one facet of the marketing campaign pitch.
Each blocs are courting younger voters, roughly one-third of Bangladesh’s 127 million voters, with sweeping job pledges.
Authorities knowledge exhibits unemployment amongst college-educated folks is at 13.5 % as of 2024, leaving about 885,000 graduates with out work, whereas total unemployment stands at 4.63 %, with roughly 2.7 million folks.
The BNP has pledged to create 10 million jobs inside 18 months and supply monetary assist to the “educated unemployed” till they discover work, in addition to guarantee “merit-based authorities recruitment”.
It has additionally pitched the “digital economic system as a serious employer”, promising 800,000 data know-how jobs and the introduction of worldwide fee gateways, corresponding to PayPal, to ease cross-border earnings for freelancers.
Chowdhury, the senior BNP chief, stated Bangladesh’s homegrown fee techniques are “very poor”, and that a number of gateways would “create competitors and assist on-line staff, in addition to make cross-border enterprise simpler”.
Jamaat’s jobs pitch, in the meantime, leans closely on coaching and placement. It has pledged to coach 10 million youth inside 5 years, saying it might set up a “youth tech lab” in each sub-district and arrange district-level “job banks” to attach folks to five million jobs throughout the identical interval.
It additionally guarantees to create 500,000 entrepreneurs, develop 1.5 million freelancers, and design “separate abilities programmes for younger folks with decrease formal training”.
However Jamaat has additionally supplied unemployed graduates interest-free month-to-month loans of as much as 10,000 taka (about $80) for as much as two years.
Hossain, the Swansea College professor, pressured that the assist would have to be repaid. “We aren’t ‘giving’ the cash,” he stated. “We’re giving a mortgage, however interest-free.”
However economists say delivering the job creation either side are promising would require sustained GDP development of 8 to 10 % and a substantial surge in home and international funding.
The PPRC’s Rahman stated he was sceptical about interest-free loans as a repair. “Curiosity-free loans are usually populist measures with out a lot confirmed impression,” he stated, arguing that “the options for unemployed graduates are their skilling and precise employment alternatives”.
Training has additionally turn out to be central to marketing campaign guarantees.
BNP’s training proposals embrace a “one trainer, one tab” initiative, underneath which the get together says it might present pill computer systems to major and secondary lecturers to assist instructing and coaching. It additionally plans to develop multimedia lecture rooms, introduce obligatory vocational training on the secondary degree, and strengthen technical and skills-based coaching alongside common training.
The get together has additional pledged to develop noon meals for college kids. Bangladesh at present runs a faculty feeding programme in components of the first and elementary college system, however protection stays restricted and uneven, and there’s no nationwide scheme on the secondary degree.
The BNP has additionally stated it might develop sport, arts and cultural training, in addition to introduce third-language studying – together with Arabic, Chinese language, Korean, Japanese and German, alongside Bengali and English – from the secondary stage, which get together leaders argue would enhance employability at dwelling and overseas.
BNP chief Chowdhury stated Bangladesh’s training system pushes too many college students in direction of superior levels, which “creates extra jobless folks”, and that the BNP desires vocational faculties “throughout the nation”, so extra college students transfer into abilities tracks after highschool. He pointed to China, the place he stated that “60 % go to vocational training”, which helps younger folks discover work “at dwelling… [and] overseas”.
Jamaat’s training platform contains interest-free training loans of as much as 10,000 taka (about $80) per 30 days for 100,000 college students chosen on benefit and want, annual assist for 100 college students a yr to check at high international universities, and upgrading giant schools into full universities.
Hossain stated Jamaat’s overseas-study pledge is restricted. College students admitted to “mounted high universities… MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge” would “get all the cash”, whereas others would obtain assist for “the primary two semesters” and repay the remainder as an interest-free mortgage.
Rahman urged warning over pupil loan-style pledges. “The concept of pupil loans additionally must be thought by means of with care,” he stated. “The burden of pupil loans hangs like a baleful cloud over the massive swath of youth within the developed world.”
He argued that expanded scholarship schemes with strict concentrating on and compliance situations may very well be a safer strategy.
Tax cuts and the income squeeze
Whereas the BNP has not specified tax charges and has as an alternative promised extra generic “business-friendly reforms and deregulation”, Jamaat has been specific on taxes, proposing cuts that might convey “company tax all the way down to 19 % and VAT [value-added tax] to 10 %”.
At current, economists say, some firms face tax charges exceeding 50 %, whereas taxes on discouraged and luxurious items can attain 700 to 800 %.
Hossain of Swansea College stated Jamaat’s finance coverage staff estimates that simply by tightening tax assortment, “plugging loopholes and curbing corruption in tax administration”, it might get better 1.05 to 2 trillion taka (roughly $8.5bn to $16.4bn), which might assist fund the “get together’s guarantees with out increasing the funds”.
He stated that the identical staff has put the estimated value of implementing Jamaat’s proposals at 2.37 trillion taka (about $19bn), whereas it tasks “potential income sources” of two.21 trillion to three.16 trillion taka (roughly $18bn to $25.7bn), pushed largely by “tighter taxation” alongside “effectivity positive factors” and “debt restructuring”.
However the CPD’s Khan stated Bangladesh wanted a broader overhaul of the income system, which might additionally assist increase funding. “A service-oriented tax system, automated return submitting and evaluation, and environment friendly tax refunds are important,” he stated. “This would cut back tax evasion and administrative delays, and enhance income.”
Business prices, farmers and well being
Jamaat has pledged to freeze industrial utility – fuel, electrical energy and water – tariffs for 3 years to assist companies. It has additionally proposed reopening closed factories by means of public-private partnerships, with 10 % possession allotted to staff.
Rahman, the economist, stated that “among the many guarantees made by Jamaat, the one which has most benefit is to freeze utility tariffs for the commercial sector for 3 years”.
The BNP’s pitch to enterprise is much less a couple of single pledge and extra a couple of structural reset.
Chowdhury framed it as shifting away from an “oligarchic economic system” tied to companies with political energy and in direction of what he known as a “democratisation of the economic system”, with a degree enjoying area for all companies.
In agriculture, the BNP has proposed a “farmer card” providing “subsidised fertiliser, seeds and pesticides, entry to equipment, simpler loans, crop insurance coverage, fair-price gross sales and cell entry to market and climate data”.
Jamaat has promised interest-free loans for small and medium farmers.
However agriculture coverage is already tied to a heavy subsidy invoice. Within the present fiscal yr, the federal government allotted about 400 billion taka (roughly $3.2bn) for agriculture, fisheries, livestock and meals safety.
Economists warning that increasing assist additional can be troublesome amid excessive inflation and income constraints. Rahman stated each events’ agriculture focus is welcome, however warned that “the identical problems with leakage and mistargeting can be vital right here, too”.
Well being has additionally featured prominently.
The BNP has pledged to recruit 100,000 healthcare staff, 80 % of them girls, to ship door-to-door major care. The get together can be promising free primary-care medicines and low-cost therapy for vital illnesses by means of public-private partnerships.
Jamaat’s insurance policies embrace free healthcare for residents over 60 and kids underneath 5, constructing 64 specialised hospitals, one in every Bangladeshi district, and increasing maternal and baby well being assist by means of a “first thousand days” programme, protecting the interval from the beginning of being pregnant by means of a baby’s first two years.
For Rahman, the competition shifting on isn’t solely about massive guarantees, however whether or not a brand new authorities can ship with out straining the economic system.
He stated this implies breaking with the interim authorities’s “governing fashion”, one he argues has did not “meaningfully interact with the enterprise group” and curb the “institutionalised corruption” entrenched underneath Hasina’s authorities.
Rafi, the job seeker, put it extra merely: Guarantees come simply, he stated.
“But when the tradition of extortions for enterprise, and bribes for a job, doesn’t disappear”, he added, “then we’re again the place we began”.
