The slow drift of democracy

Power rarely reveals itself in speeches. It does in silence – in files that stop moving, in approvals that never come, and in systems that respond not to rules, but to power. I learned this first-hand during my work in Bangladesh over the past decade with a global IT major.

I was deeply involved in supporting the company’s operations that depended on the Bangladesh government’s approval. At one point, a large sum of the company’s money became trapped in Bangladeshi banks. Government controls froze the movement of funds out of Dhaka. The situation grew dangerous as a business partner became embroiled in controversy, and the company wanted to exit both the arrangement and the country. The second challenge came when the company wanted to retrench the local employees to prepare for shutting down the operations.

I spent weeks navigating ministries, regulators, and state institutions. Doors did not open easily. Processes did not move on merit alone. They moved through relationships. Through persuasion. Leveraging my relationships with senior government figures ensured that the funds were eventually released and helped the company exit the country. But the experience left me with an uneasy clarity, because I had seen, up close, how deeply the state and power were intertwined.

In those years, Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina was a country of outward stability and inward control. Elections were held, institutions existed, courts functioned, but everything was closely monitored and controlled by Hasina and her coterie. The opposition was systematically weakened; the judiciary increasingly appeared to move in alignment with executive power. Institutions did not collapse overnight. They were slowly reshaped. I read, back then, that at the centre of Bangladesh’s political future stood two heirs – two sons. Two legacies with unfinished battles, about to kick off.

One was Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed, known as Joy, who helped me set up a meeting for the then-president and CEO of the company with his mother, Sheikh Hasina, in September 2017 in New York. Educated in Kodaikanal and Bengaluru, he later moved to the United States to study at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he eventually settled. Joy built his life far from Dhaka. He lives in Washington, D.C., from where he remained an influential voice behind his mother’s government, shaping its technological and strategic vision.

The other was Tarique Rahman, known as Tarique Zia, the son of Khaleda Zia, Hasina’s lifelong rival. If Hasina represented one political dynasty, Khaleda represented another. Like Hasina’s rise to power, Tarique Zia’s story too unfolded in exile.

Reclaiming the seat

In 2008, facing prosecution and persecution after a witch-hunt by the Hasina government, he left Bangladesh for London. His mother, once Prime Minister, would spend her final years under house arrest and state custody. Exile did not mean silence. Zia waited. From London, he built networks. He prepared, watching closely as the political ground shifted beneath Hasina. He understood that power rarely collapses overnight. It erodes gradually, and when it does, it creates an opening for those patient enough to claim it.

His mother died on December 30, 2025. Five days earlier, he had returned to Dhaka. Not as an exile, but as a claimant to the highest office, two weeks after the interim administration announced national elections. His party rallied behind him, and Zia emerged as the sole contender for the top post. He returned as a man once driven out of his country, now poised to lead it as Prime Minister. Bangladesh had come full circle.

There was a deep irony in this. In 1975, Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated in a military coup. Hasina survived only because she was abroad. She spent years in exile, including in India. When she returned in 1981, she became the face of democratic resistance, jointly with Khaleda Zia. They fought military rule and demanded institutional freedom. Initially, power changed hands between Hasina and Zia. But eventually, Hasina retained power, and power changes people.

What I witnessed in Bangladesh was not sudden authoritarianism. It was gradual consolidation. Quiet. Procedural. Almost invisible to outsiders. And that is why it felt familiar. Because the erosion of institutions never announces itself dramatically. It unfolds slowly, through wrong administrative decisions, legal adjustments, economic controls, fear, and dependence. I saw it in Bangladesh, not as a spectator, but as a participant navigating its machinery.

Once you have seen it from inside, you recognise its patterns everywhere.

(The writer is an author and environmentalist who worked in Bangladesh as a senior corporate executive till 2020)