Quota abolition pleases no one

Protesting Bangladeshi students appeared to have scored a victory with the announcement by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that a decades old quota system governing more than half the places in the country’s Public Service would be abolished.

Now it seems, they may have got more than they asked for.

The students’ main target was the 30 per cent of places reserved for the “children of freedom fighters” — descendants of those who fought successfully to detach the country from Pakistan in the 1971 war of independence.

This large block was originally provided as a reward for those who had put their lives on the line in the bloody conflict in which 300,000 died and millions more were forced into temporary exile.

However, as the years went by the quota became increasingly contentious as descendants born after the war gained easy entry into secure and potentially lucrative positions while unemployment among students without that access rose to almost 50 per cent.

While politicians still talk of the “children of freedom fighters”, most of these children are now in their 40s and it is the grandchildren who are benefitting.

Matters came to a head with widespread rioting led by students claiming the quotas were archaic and unfair, followed by Ms Hasina’s unexpected capitulation, when she told Parliament: “The quota system will be scrapped. There is no need for it and the students do not want it”.

Suddenly she was assailed from all sides. Members of her own party rallied to the defence of quotas with Minister for Agriculture, Matia Chowdhury saying the successors of those who risked their lives to fight for independence had a right to be given priority for Government jobs.

At a demonstration in the capital, Dhaka, a delegation of freedom fighters’ descendants put forward a series of demands that included eternal preservation of their quota and constitutional recognition of their status.

Even the students were critical. One of the movement’s leaders, Rashed Khan saying they had been calling for quota reform, not abolishment.

Ms Hasina’s decree does seem ill thought out. By abolishing all quotas she has also removed the 10 per cent reserved for women, 10 per cent for poor people from the regions, five per cent for ethnic minorities and one per cent for people with disabilities.

The controversy has also revealed a darker side to Bangladeshi society, with the freedom fighters group describing the students as the descendants of Razakars, the name given to collaborationists during the 1971 war, and demanding that they be permanently barred from Government positions.  

Bangladesh is beset with problems — the Rohingya refugee crisis has yet to be resolved; large sections of the population are poor and illiterate; violence against women and children is on the rise and corruption is rife.

The last thing this country needs is a return to the disruptions and divisions of the last century and a repeat of conflicts fought out in a long-ago war.