Why would a young man face police bullets, jail and years of court dates for a political party, if not for a payoff?
On September 24, the State Minister for Local Government, Mir Shahe Alam, told BNP workers in Banshkhali that those who suffered in the party's hard times would be given "jobs, legitimate dealerships and work opportunities" within the law, and rewarded in phases.
The minister named, in effect, the reward that party workers are already collecting through extortion and tender capture.
I started writing this piece after watching the state minister's speech on social media. I went to sleep with my research half done and woke up to breaking news: Salman Muktadir, the country's most famed social media influencer, was accusing BNP goons of vandalising his studio over alleged extortion.
The news spread quickly and became a topic of discussion in my social circles. In one group, the question was asked: what is the way out? An hour of discussion and debate yielded no solution.
The politics of extortion has deep roots in Bangladesh and is not new. It is part of a political vicious cycle. Parties demand control at the grassroots. That comes with a price. The price is paid with the blood and sweat of grassroots workers. These workers then demand to be paid back. The cycle continues. The economics appears straightforward. But the payoff is not guaranteed.
Taking the risk is a necessary condition, never a sufficient one. Nevertheless, because taking risks is necessary, political workers and leaders accept them.
In Bangladesh, risk is rewarded and a jail term works as a crown for a political leader. The incentive structure lies in the political, social and economic layers that sustain it, and in how each feeds the next.
The risk comes from the political layer. Whichever party governs uses the police and the courts against its opponents. Jackman and Maitrot describe a police force "prioritised, politicised, and directed against the opposition".
The BNP's own case cell counted 1,41,633 cases against 49,26,492 accused between 2009 and September 2023, and the commission on enforced disappearances found that 68% of those still missing were from the BNP and its affiliates.
The practice continued after the change of power. After August 2024, a case filed in Chattogram by a Jubo Dal ward convener named 351 people and 1,200 unnamed accused, and the Dhaka police chief said complainants were demanding money to drop names, which he called "one type of extortion".
The social layer turns that risk into status. Bert Suykens found that "risk-taking and the performance of self-sacrifice" mark out spaces of power within the party and "broker connections to potential political patrons", and that "victimhood provides a powerful means of publicly displaying one's commitment". Jail becomes a credential.
In June, Jubo Dal leaders left out of a new committee protested at Nayapaltan that they had "suffered through cases, jail, and persecution, yet remain unrecognized". The state minister's promise to reward those who suffered follows the same logic.
Party workers cash that credential in the economic layer. TIB found in 2020 that in some areas "the local political leaders of the ruling party, especially the incumbent lawmakers, decide who will submit a specific tender proposal". When the mayor of Chattogram changed, the city corporation's top ten contractors changed completely. Below the contractors sits a larger group of petty extortionists.
Prothom Alo estimated that about 2,000 crore taka a year is collected from buses through transport associations, and that control passed to BNP-linked leaders after August 2024. A Dhaka police list in March named 1,280 extortionists and 314 patrons. The labour market offers few alternatives, with 8.85 lakh unemployed graduates in 2024.
The three layers are connected. Persecution creates the sacrifice, the sacrifice earns the credential, and the credential is exchanged for a contract or an extortion point once the party is in power. The income then pays for the muscle that the next government will persecute.
Crackdowns have failed because they attack the last link and leave the first two in place. Operation Clean Heart, launched by the BNP government in 2002, made 11,245 arrests, and by rights groups' count 44 people died in custody. In my reading, it added to the list of sacrifices waiting to be repaid.
The reform that came closest to working changed the economics. A World Bank study found that after e-GP was introduced, each tender drew 1.6-2.2 more bidders, the chance of a single bid fell by 7.8-13.5 percentage points, and more contracts went to firms from outside the district.
The system did not end the party's control over who bids, but it showed that the payoff can be reduced by changing the rules of the transaction.
Breaking the link between risk and reward needs action on all three layers. On the political layer, the key is ensuring that the judiciary is protected from being used as a political weapon. The BNP's manifesto promised to strengthen the separate Supreme Court secretariat, yet parliament repealed the ordinance that created it on 9 April, citing the need for further consultation.
It should be restored, alongside a prosecution service independent of the Law Ministry and the non-partisan Police Commission that the Police Reform Commission recommended. The incentive for the government is its own future. The BNP's workers will be in opposition again, and only an independent judiciary will protect them then.
On the social layer, the party must stop treating jail and persecution as qualifications for posts and nominations. A record of organisational work and a clean record on extortion should count for more than the length of a jail term. The incentive is the party's survival. A BNP MP from Jhalokathi warned his local leaders in August that "it seems you will end up eating the party itself."
On the economic layer, three steps would reduce the payoff. First, the government should check every winner of the 25% procurement set-aside for small, women-owned and new firms against the beneficial-ownership disclosures that the Public Procurement Rules 2025 require, and publish contract awards by constituency.
Secondly, it should remove the cash points that petty extortion depends on. Leases of hats, ghats, terminals and sand quarries should be awarded through open e-auctions with published results, and hawkers should pay a licensed fee to the city corporation by mobile money rather than a daily cut to a lineman. The Police Reform Commission's proposal for multi-party anti-extortion committees at each thana would add local oversight.
Thirdly, if the BNP wants to pay back its workers, it must find its own means. A primary member pays 10 taka to join and 20 taka to renew. The party reported an income of 22.19 crore taka for 2025, and it can add declared donations and a share of its MPs' salaries to pay its organisers, publishing the accounts it already files with the Election Commission.
So why does extortion pay for party workers? It pays because a jail term in opposition is treated as an asset, and the state's contracts and extortion points redeem it once the party is in power. That asset can lose its value. The e-GP system has already shown that changing the rules of a transaction changes who wins it.
Once the courts stop manufacturing sacrifice and open auctions decide leases and tenders, a jail term will stop earning a return. The state minister can then keep his promise of jobs and legitimate dealerships, and a young party worker will gain more from a tender he wins openly than from a jail term he served for his party.
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Md. Rubaiyath Sarwar is the Managing Director, Innovision Consulting and Lead, Inclusive Development and Socio-Economic Equity, Panam Institute