Tarnishing a Developing-World Star
The results of Bangladesh’s “over-managed” election should dismay its friends and well-wishers.
The scale of Sheikh Hasina’s victory was literally unbelievable.
Photographer: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP/Getty Images
Bangladesh under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina looks like a developing-world success story. Last year, its economy grew at close to eight percent a year, faster than its neighbor India’s. Its human development indicators, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen is fond of pointing out, are even better than its income level would indicate.
Bangladesh is also one of the few countries in the developing world which has successfully wedded secularism to its national identity. And, in a truly extraordinary act that should shame many larger and richer countries, this enormously crowded nation — the most densely populated of all countries with a population greater than 10 million — has taken in at least 700,000 persecuted Rohingya refugees from Myanmar with a minimum of fuss or outrage.