BNP govt’s first 180 days: The calm is real. So are the cracks

There is something to be said for boredom in politics. Bangladesh had rather too little of it for the better part of two years.

A revolution, the flee and flight of an ousted prime minister, an interim government, reform commissions, arguments over elections, arguments over arguments over elections, and a political vocabulary suddenly crowded with fascism, July, reform and new settlement had left the country exhausted by history.

Then came Tarique Rahman.

His BNP won decisively on February 12 this year, Tarique Rahman was sworn in as prime minister on February 17, and Bangladesh rediscovered an underrated pleasure… knowing who was actually in charge.

That is perhaps the most substantial achievement of the government's first 180 days. It restored political certainty. This sounds modest until one remembers what preceded it. During the latter part of Muhammad Yunus's interim administration, even the election timetable became an object of political combat. But the election ended that uncertainty. Elections surely have their uses.

Tarique also understood something his predecessors occasionally forgot: after upheaval, symbolism matters. He has cultivated an accessible, deliberately unimperial premiership — travelling by modest transport, visiting bereaved families, appearing at grassroots programmes and instructing officials not to inconvenience ordinary citizens merely because the prime minister is passing through. 

His press office has naturally made the most of this. Governments rarely discover modesty without arranging for photographers to be present.

Yet the style is politically intelligent. After 15 years in which the state and ruling party [of Awami League] became increasingly difficult to distinguish, and after an interim period when an unelected technocracy struggled to convert moral legitimacy into everyday authority, the sight of an elected politician attempting to look accountable rather than omnipotent has value.

There has also been a noticeable expansion of political speech. Parliament is argumentative again. Opposition voices exist inside the formal political system rather than merely outside police barricades. The government says more than 100 ordinances were converted into laws during Parliament's first session. Whatever one thinks of the substance, the return of politics to Parliament is preferable to conducting it exclusively through street ultimatums and Facebook posts.

The government's economic inheritance was less accommodating. Economists will tell you six months is too short to repair a fragile economy. Foreign-exchange reserves have strengthened and inflationary pressures have eased from their worst levels. Agricultural credit has expanded, food stocks have risen and the government has begun rolling out the Family Card and Farmer Card schemes. 

According to its 180-day assessment, agricultural loans of up to 10,000 taka including interest have been waived for 14.3 lakh farmers, while more than 67 lakh vulnerable families receive subsidised rice.

These are not trivial interventions. Nor are the two 500 crore taka funds for entrepreneurs and start-ups, the refinancing programmes for agriculture and export diversification, or attempts to restart shuttered jute mills.

But governments do not eat macroeconomic indicators. Neither do voters.

Behind the ‘green’ veneer 

The household experiences the economy at the kitchen market, in the electricity bill and in the increasingly inventive calculation required to make a salary survive until the end of the month. Inflation may be moderating statistically while remaining brutally cumulative socially. 

A government can announce that the fever has fallen from 104 to 101; the patient is entitled to point out that he still feels dreadful.

This is where the government's greatest vulnerability has appeared…energy.

Tarique's administration kept electricity relatively stable during Ramadan, an early success that encouraged expectations it could tame the sector. Then geopolitics intervened, followed by infrastructure. 

The conflict involving Iran shook fuel markets, prices were increased and problems at the country's floating LNG infrastructure removed huge volumes of gas from the grid. By July, factories were reporting severe pressure shortages, power generation was constrained and load-shedding had returned with enthusiasm.

The government was unlucky. It was not, however, elected to be lucky.

Energy Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood Tuku's defence — “We are not responsible for the current crisis” — may be factually defensible but is politically hazardous. Governments inherit problems in much the same way new homeowners inherit leaking roofs: complaining about the previous occupant ceases to be useful once the rain reaches the bedroom.

Tarique Rahman has handled the politics better, apologising for public suffering, promising improvement and seeking external assistance, including from Malaysia. His proposal for a bipartisan parliamentary committee on the energy crisis was also sensible. But the deeper problem remains. 

An economy cannot attract serious investment while factories wonder whether gas will arrive tomorrow. Energy insecurity is industrial policy conducted by power cut.

The government's second vulnerability is more political and therefore more self-inflicted.

Tarique's first address to the nation contained an admirable promise: institutions would operate according to law rather than “partisan or political influence, power or coercion”. Within days, BNP politicians were being appointed administrators of city corporations. 

Eventually BNP-linked figures were installed across 11 city corporations, while 42 district councils received administrators affiliated with the ruling party.

This is the sort of thing Bangladesh's political parties perform with remarkable consistency. They spend years denouncing politicisation, win office, then discover that politicisation becomes considerably more attractive when one is doing the politicising.

The appointments may be temporary. Some may even be competent. That misses the point. Bangladesh did not go through the trauma of 2024 merely to improve the quality of partisan appointments. The central promise of the post-uprising order was that institutions would cease being extensions of whichever party occupied 'Ganabhaban' (read PM's power centre). 

If the BNP reproduces the old habits in more polite packaging, it risks becoming not the antithesis of the system it replaced but its latest tenant.

The same danger is visible in universities.

Confrontation and violence 

Tarique Rahman has repeatedly instructed Chhatra Dal to avoid confrontation, including after April clashes with Islami Chhatra Shibir. Yet violence has persisted. In April, two DUCSU leaders were assaulted during turmoil at Shahbagh Police Station after a dispute over an allegedly offensive social-media post involving Tarique and his daughter. Other clashes followed elsewhere.

This matters beyond student politics. Bangladesh's campuses have historically functioned as miniature versions of the state: patronage, territorial control and political muscle are rehearsed there before their practitioners graduate to national politics. If PM Tarique genuinely wants to dismantle that tradition, telling Chhatra Dal to behave will not suffice. 

The test is whether ruling-party activists discover that disobeying the prime minister carries consequences.

Law and order presents the same ambiguity. Bangladesh is more politically settled than it was before the election, but murder, extortion, kidnapping, mob attacks and localised political violence remain sufficiently common to make official claims of “stability” sound premature. 

Stability is not simply the absence of a revolution. It is the boring confidence that the police will arrive, the courts will function and possessing the correct party acquaintance is unnecessary.

There have nevertheless been encouraging signs of executive responsiveness. PM Tarique has intervened when members of his administration produced avoidable embarrassments. When a state minister contrived to have newly created unions in his constituency named after his sons — a feat of dynastic imagination impressive even by Bangladeshi standards — the decision was reversed after the prime minister stepped in.

That episode encapsulates both the strength and weakness of the government. Tarique appears alert to political excess and willing to correct it. But a healthy institutional system should not require the prime minister personally to discover that naming administrative units after a minister's children is perhaps a little much.

Much of the government's celebrated 180-day programme has, meanwhile, reached the great bureaucratic kingdom known as “preparatory stage”. Dhaka's transport plans illustrate the condition. Electric buses, route rationalisation, multimodal transport, terminal relocation, monorail feeders and AI-assisted traffic enforcement offer an impressive catalogue. 

AI cameras are already operating at several intersections, while financing has been approved for electric buses. Yet many larger reforms remain studies, coordination exercises or plans for future plans.

This is not necessarily a failure. Six months is an absurdly short period in which to rebuild institutions hollowed out over decades. The danger lies in confusing announcement with achievement. Governments adore targets because targets have no potholes.

Caution and optimism 

Tarique Rahman's first 180 days therefore deserve neither the triumphalism of his press office nor the blanket dismissal favoured by his opponents.

He has delivered the thing Bangladesh most urgently required in February: a government with electoral authority, a functioning Parliament and a recognisable political centre. He has lowered the temperature. He has displayed more tolerance of criticism than the government displaced in 2024. 

Social programmes are moving, economic indicators have improved at the margins, and the prime minister has shown an instinct for public engagement that should not be underestimated.

But the next six months will be harder precisely because the excuse of the first six months is expiring.

Energy shortages can no longer be explained indefinitely as inheritance or geopolitics. Law and order must become something citizens experience rather than something spokesmen announce. Chhatra Dal cannot be permitted to become Chhatra League with different posters. And a government promising to depoliticise institutions cannot keep finding party loyalists whenever an institution needs an administrator.

PM Tarique's great advantage is that expectations remain surprisingly recoverable. Bangladeshis do not appear to demand miracles from him. After the convulsions of recent years, many would settle for electricity, predictable prices, functioning police, less traffic and politicians who occasionally feel embarrassed when caught behaving badly.

The first 180 days have established that Tarique Rahman can restore political calm. They have not yet established whether he can turn calm into a competent government.

That distinction will define his premiership. Revolutions are judged by what they destroy. Governments have the less romantic misfortune of being judged by what actually works.

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