AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
For more than a month, college students took to the streets in Bangladesh to protest against the government. Hundreds were killed by the security forces, but the students refused to back down. And then last week, Sheikh Hasina, the country's prime minister for 15 years, suddenly resigned and fled to India. The impact of her overthrow continues to reverberate through South Asia, a region where India and China vie for influence. Joining us now is Mushfiq Mobarak, a professor of economics at Yale University, who's been closely following events in his homeland. Welcome to the program.
MUSHFIQ MOBARAK: Thank you for having me.
RASCOE: An interim government has already been sworn in. Just how big are the challenges facing it?
MOBARAK: The challenges are deep and fundamental. Right now, the most important challenge we're facing is that we need to re-establish law and order. The autocratic government that just left, they had the police do its bidding by committing the atrocities. So understandably, there's a lot of anger at the police. And fearing retribution, they have gone into hiding. But as soon as the police goes into hiding and ill-intentioned actors realize that, that's going to lead to some looting, some attacks, settling scores, et cetera. But once that law and order has been re-established, I think we need to face up to all these fundamental economic challenges. We need to open back up for business quickly and bring stability because Bangladesh is reliant a lot on garment sector exports. So our major buyers in the U.S. and European Union, like Walmart and H&M - they need to feel comfortable and confident that their order delivery deadlines will be met.
RASCOE: Do you have any sense of when new elections will be held?
MOBARAK: No. So this is something that the interim government has been asked about, and they have refused to answer, and for good reason. I don't think anybody has a clear idea on what the optimal length of this interim government should be. In the past, we've had a situation where because the political parties did not trust whoever was the incumbent, the party in power, to hold free and fair elections, we had a system in our constitution where there would be a caretaker government. The main role of the caretaker government was to hold elections, right? But right now we need to do something a lot more than just hold elections. We need to reorganize our system. And then there's other economic challenges, like we need to stabilize a macroeconomy. There's been a lot of lack of transparency over sort of the health of the financial sector, the banking sector, our currency reserves. We need to make investors feel confident that the country is on solid macroeconomic footing.
RASCOE: And how significant is it that Sheikh Hasina fled to India? And how will Delhi view her ouster?
MOBARAK: Yeah, so this has definitely been bad news for Delhi - there's no two ways about that - because they had carefully cultivated a relationship with this old regime. India is extremely nervous, right? And some of that nervousness comes for good reason, which is that there are other countries in the region like Pakistan, Afghanistan, who have been destabilized. But Bangladesh is different. The role of religion in politics is nowhere near as important in Bangladesh as it is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. But that doesn't mean that we're in a great place. We're in an uncertain place.
RASCOE: And what about the other regional giant, China? Will it now sense an opportunity?
MOBARAK: Yes, so China and India have been vying for influence and competing for influence in all the countries in that region - smaller countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. And given that the autocratic regime that just departed in Bangladesh was a close Indian ally - right? - on net, China will view this as a win. Bangladesh has an important geopolitical position, which is that it's the land mass that separates the main part of India from its Eastern states. And the only way to access the eastern parts of India, eastern states of India, from Delhi, from Bombay is to travel through Bangladesh. And so these are the areas where India and China have had border skirmishes. And for troop movements, for arms movements, et cetera, Bangladesh is very - has a very important position, and the previous government had started negotiating a deal with the Indian government to give it access to its eastern states.
RASCOE: That's Mushfiq Mobarak, a professor at Yale University. Thanks for speaking with us.
MOBARAK: Thank you for covering this important topic. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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