The student protests over job quota system in Bangladesh began in mid-February, with rallies and demonstrations intensifying between April 8 and 11. Their main demand is for the 56 percent quota for state jobs reserved for different social layers to be reduced to 10 percent.

Some three thousand university and college students boycotted classes and staged a march in Dhaka on Monday, 14th May. They are demanding reforms in Bangladesh’s decades-old quota system for the recruitment of civil servants.
Thousands of students at universities and colleges across the country held demonstrations in solidarity. About 1,000 students from Chittagong University staged a sit-down protest on rail tracks, preventing trains from leaving the port city throughout Monday morning.
The demonstrations ended after Nurul Huq Nur, a joint convener of the Bangladesh Council for Protecting Rights of General Students (Bangladesh Sadharan Chhatra Adhikar Sangrakkhan Parishad) told protesters that Prime Minister Hasina had given another assurance that the job quota system would be reformed. No details have been released about how their demand would be met.
The government had earlier assured the student leaders that the promised changes would be published in the gazette by May 7, but that did not happen.
Another joint convener Muhammad Rashed Khan alleged that the government did not keep its promise made to them. “The students will take to the streets if they do not stop the drama and publish the gazette soon,” he threatened.
Awami League General Secretary Obaid ul Quader has asked the protesters to show a little patience. He termed further protests as unrealistic, and told the students to have trust in prime minister’s words.
“Sheikh Hasina is the prime minister. She stood before parliament and announced that there would be no quotas. Why are there concerns about publication of the gazette then,” Quader, also road transport and bridges minister, said.
In the wake of mass protests, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on April 11 declared in parliament that the quota system would be scrapped. She added that implementation of anything takes “some time”.
The student protests over job quota system began in mid-February, with rallies and demonstrations intensifying between April 8 and 11. Their main demand is for the 56 percent quota for state jobs reserved for different social layers to be reduced to 10 percent.
Only 44 percent of the jobs are currently allocated on merit. The remaining positions are apportioned according to strict quotas—30 percent for the children and grandchildren of “freedom fighters,” 10 percent for women, 10 percent for underdeveloped districts, 5 percent for ethnic minorities and 1 percent for physically challenged people.
Minister Quader has expressed confidence that the quota problem would be resolved soon. The government is considering the case of ethnic minorities, the disabled, those from less-developed districts, freedom fighters and women, he added.
The quota system was first introduced in 1972 and has been amended on several occasions.
The students are also demanding the filling of vacant positions according to merit if eligible candidates are not found within the quota categories; the abolition of the special examination for quotas; and age-limit uniformity in the recruitment process.
Spark for Monday’s demonstrations came from the Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam as he admitted that the government had made no progress on changing job quotas.
Unemployment is on the rise in Bangladesh. “Almost a third (about 2.5 million) of college and university leavers” are unemployed”, according to Professor Ahmed Abdullah Azad. Writing in The Daily Star (April 22) he said that Bangladesh’s youth workforce constitutes about 70 percent of the country’s 160 million people, with about 45 million unemployed youth.
Suicide is increasing among unemployed youth. On April 13, the Daily Star reported that a Dhaka University graduate took his own life due to “depression stemming from not getting a government job even after trying several times.” The newspaper admitted that most students are living “under emotionally, psychologically and financially stressful situations.”
The job quota for the children and grandchildren of “freedom fighters”—i.e., those involved from the war to separate from Pakistan in 1971—was initiated in 1972 by the first prime minister, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Bangladesh student organisations are not fighting for the abolition of the quota system per se; they only want it to be reformed for what is said to be “equitable” distribution of unemployment. Social inequality is widening in Bangladesh, with the share of income by the poorest 5 percent at just 0.23 percent, down from 0.78 percent in 2010. By contrast, the richest 5 percent of the country have 27.89 percent of the total income, up from 24.61 percent in 2010.

—by Yamaaraar