The appearance of this article straddles the Bangladesh election held earlier this month and the forthcoming general election in Pakistan. There is, however, a wider context. It is estimated that in 2024, some 80 elections would take place impacting some four billion people — about half the world’s population.
South Asia is well-represented in this list. Bhutan and Bangladesh have already had their national elections in the first half of January. The Pakistan national election is scheduled for February 8. General elections in India are expected in April-May and the Sri Lankan election will follow later in the year. The Maldives’ general election in the last quarter of 2023 started the trend: its outcome was significant in that the change of government the elections threw up has been accompanied by a significant rebalancing of its external posture.
Commentary on the Bangladesh election was generally unanimous on one point: the ruling Awami League’s convincing win and the return of Sheikh Hasina Wajed for a fifth term as prime minister were entirely predictable. A significant part of Bangladesh’s Opposition boycotted the election; many were in custody. Some countries, particularly the United States of America, alleged that the election was not ‘free or fair’. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also expressed his concerns. But other countries, including India, have accepted the results and congratulated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed on her victory.
A somewhat similar situation is visible in Pakistan. The former prime minister, Imran Khan, is in jail. He has been barred from contesting the polls and his party has faced a systemic decimation over the past year. This is not unusual for Pakistan. At the time of the 2018 election, much the same set of events occurred except that in the crosshairs then were the former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and his party. Sharif’s disqualification for life from politics has been reversed only now. In Pakistan, the twists and turns in civil-military relations and the role of the army usually underwrite explanations of its politics. But in Bangladesh too, in 2018, the election was largely a one-sided and predictable affair: the Opposition boycotted it and many of the principal leaders were barred from contesting the polls or were in custody. In Pakistan, not everyone agrees, despite indications to the contrary, that Sharif’s victory is fully assured. The country is awash with rumours and uncertainty, anticipating some last-minute change in the army’s political calculations.
In general, there appears to be an unmistakable convergence on a principal aspect of political life in Bangladesh and Pakistan: the conduct and the outcome of nationwide elections. This convergence seems unusual since so much else in Pakistan and Bangladesh has diverged since their separation over fifty years ago. In the past quarter century, Bangladesh has seen major improvements in education, health and even in facing climatic disasters — areas in which Pakistan’s performance has been abysmal. Bangladesh has outpaced Pakistan on all standard macroeconomic indicators.
The most striking divergence is also in the most self-evident of areas — demography. In 1971, Pakistan broke up on account of a federal contradiction it could not resolve: politically and culturally subservient East Pakistan had numerically outnumbered West Pakistan. In contrast, Pakistan’s population today is 240 million and Bangladesh’s 175 million. This demographic shift explains much of the divergence between the two countries.
Nevertheless, if we take a wider view and look at the unfolding geopolitics to our North East and North West, the sense of a larger convergence cannot be disregarded. In Myanmar, since February 2021, when a military coup undid a civilian dispensation, the scale and the intensity of violence have been staggering. Superficially, the binary of civil versus military comes to mind but that provides only a limited explanation. Ethnic conflicts that verge on civil war, economic isolation and stagnation amidst external sanctions, and a booming narcotics production and trade are the visible markers in a country that is geographically the most proximate to us in the ASEAN region. Expectations that Myanmar’s internal crisis would get resolved by a regionally-inspired compromise and Myanmar’s membership of ASEAN would enable a dampening and tempering of conflict have been belied. There is accumulating evidence that different ethnic insurgent groups have succeeded in putting greater pressure on the Myanmar military, questioning its writ to a greater extent than before in the recent past.
There is, therefore, some justification to employ the term, ‘polycrisis’— as has been done frequently with Pakistan — to describe the situation in Myanmar. A massive refugee crisis, with about a million and a half to two million displaced persons, along with perhaps as many as a million Rohingyas in refugee camps in Bangladesh, gives Myanmar’s challenges an additional regional character. Recent developments in India in Manipur have reinforced the regional dimension of Myanmar’s crisis. The latter has fuelled speculation that the fencing of the India-Myanmar border along certain sections and the ending of traditional free movement regimes between border areas in India and Myanmar are on the cards.
To our North West, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there is, similarly, the case of acute domestic crisis overflowing national borders. The Tehreek-e-Taliban factor in the Pakistan-Afghanistan interface is assuming a progressively larger dimension: a marked increase in terrorist attacks along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is the direct consequence. The expulsion of undocumented Afghan refugees in sizeable numbers has been the Pakistan government’s response. This clearly has the potential of taking Af-Pak relations even deeper into a grey zone. This deterioration in its regional security environment, even excluding for the time being the perennially disturbed relationship with India, adds one more dimension to Pakistan’s continuing and structural polycrisis.
Regardless of the different trajectories between Bangladesh and Pakistan, the broader geopolitical convergence between our North East and North West may well be a central issue that we will have to address in 2024 and beyond. If the problem is identified as a regional one, then piecemeal solutions and approaches will not be enough. An even sharper focus on our immediate neighbourhood is called for.
T.C.A Raghavan is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan and Singapore
