DHAKA: Schools across Bangladesh have been shut down after at least six people were killed in demonstrations, demanding the government to scrap its discriminatory job quota rules for civil service jobs. The reasons behind what led the students to protest countrywide and how weeks of protests turned violent are explained here. According to a 2022 report by Bangladesh's public administration ministry, the country has over 1.
9 million civil servant posts. More than half of the people hired to these jobs are not selected on merit but under affirmative action rules prioritising women, residents of less developed districts and other disadvantaged cohorts. The most contentious aspect of this quota system is the reservation of 30% of posts for children of fighters who fought in the country’s 1971 war.
The current rules were introduced in 1972 by independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Earlier, protests by students in 2018 prompted Hasina's administration to cut down the quota scheme. But last month the High Court ruled that this change had been unlawful and ordered the government to reintroduce the "freedom fighter" category it had abolished.
Bangladesh was one of the world’s poorest countries when it gained independence in 1971 and suffered a devastating famine three years later. Its economy has grown dramatically in the decades since, thanks largely to a thriving textile industry that supplies the world's leading fast fashion b.
