Two Years After Hasina: South Asia’s Students Are Still Rising

On 5 August, Bangladesh marks the second anniversary of the student-led uprising that toppled the Sheikh Hasina government—one of the most consequential turning points in its recent history.

The anniversary invites more than national reflection. It raises a regional question: are South Asia’s student movements isolated national events, or symptoms of a deeper transformation in the region’s politics and society? The answer carries consequences well beyond Dhaka.

The question matters because Bangladesh is not an outlier. Across South Asia, one of the world’s youngest and fastest-urbanizing regions, young people have moved from the margins of politics to its centre.

Bangladesh’s July Uprising was part of a broader resurgence of youth-led activism: Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya movement forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign amid the country’s worst economic crisis since independence; Indian students have repeatedly mobilized over unemployment, recruitment delays, examination irregularities, and rising educational costs; Nepal has seen recurring protests demanding better governance, greater transparency, and improved economic opportunities.

The triggers differ, but the movements share a generation unwilling to accept the widening gap between its aspirations and the realities of governance and opportunity.

Students have long been catalysts of South Asian political history—from Bangladesh’s Language Movement of 1952 and Mass Uprising of 1969, to India’s Jayaprakash Narayan movement and Nepal’s democratic struggles.

They are rarely the sole drivers of change, but frequently the first organized voice to challenge institutions that have stopped responding to society’s expectations.

What distinguishes the current wave is that it reflects more than opposition to particular governments: it signals a deeper shift, born of forces converging across the region—a demographic transition producing the largest educated youth generation in its history, an economic transition in which labour markets have failed to keep pace with rising educational attainment, and a political transition in which citizens increasingly demand transparency and accountability.

What is different this time is that these transitions are unfolding simultaneously across several countries rather than sequentially, as in earlier decades—which is why a protest in one capital can now find an echo in another within days.

A Regional Wave, Different National Expressions
At first glance, the movements in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have little in common: different triggers, different political systems, different outcomes. Yet a closer look reveals four common structural features beneath the surface.

In Bangladesh, a protest against the quota system in public-sector recruitment escalated in July 2024 into a nationwide movement for accountability and political change, culminating in Sheikh Hasina’s resignation on 5 August 2024.

Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya emerged from an economic collapse—soaring inflation, shortages of food, fuel, and medicine, and a sovereign debt default—that united students, professionals, and civil society, ultimately forcing Rajapaksa’s resignation in July 2022.

In India, activism has taken a more diffuse form, recurring around unemployment, recruitment delays, examination leaks, and concerns over academic freedom rather than converging into one nationwide movement.

Nepal has experienced repeated waves of protest over governance failures,  corruption, political instability, and the large-scale emigration of young workers seeking opportunities their own economy fails to provide.

First, all four movements are led by educated young people whose expectations have outpaced available opportunities.

Second, they reflect eroding public confidence in institutions meant to guarantee fairness and accountability, from recruitment boards to courts to electoral bodies.

Third, digital platforms have compressed local grievances into national—sometimes regional—conversations within days, allowing a protest in one city to become a national cause within hours.

Fourth, each movement questions not just specific policies but the broader legitimacy of the relationship between citizens and the state—a demand for a different kind of governance, not merely a change of government.

South Asia, in other words, is not witnessing a series of isolated protests but the emergence of an increasingly educated, connected, and politically conscious generation redefining the terms of public engagement.

Its message is consistent even where its grievances differ: governments must deliver not only growth, but meritocracy, democratic institutions, and equal opportunity—a more demanding standard than election results or GDP figures alone can capture.

Student Movements and the Changing Social Contract
Student movements rarely emerge in isolation; they arise when public expectations outpace the capacity of institutions to respond.

Over the past three decades, South Asia has been among the world’s fastest-growing regions, substantially reducing poverty and expanding education.

Yet, as the World Bank notes, the region now faces one of its greatest development challenges: creating sufficient productive, high-quality jobs for a workforce swelled by demographics—home to nearly two billion people, South Asia has one of the world’s youngest populations, with more than half its citizens under 30.

This youth bulge offers a tremendous demographic dividend, but only if economies generate productive employment and institutions keep pace with rising expectations.

Youth unemployment in South Asia stood at roughly 15 percent in 2024—more than three times the region’s overall unemployment rate of under 5 percent—and the International Labour Organization estimates that some 85 percent of South Asian workers hold informal jobs, with low wages, little social protection, and few prospects for advancement.

Successive UNDP Human Development Reports remind us that development is not measured by income alone but by expanding people’s capabilities and freedoms.

The current wave of student activism echoes political scientist Samuel Huntington’s classic insight that instability emerges when social mobilization outpaces institutional adaptation, and Amartya Sen’s vision of development as the expansion of freedoms and capabilities rather than income alone.

Read together, they offer a useful lens for a region where GDP growth has too often been treated as a proxy for development itself.

Together, these perspectives point to a widening aspiration–institution gap: economic progress, educational expansion, and digital connectivity have raised expectations faster than institutions have adapted.

As that gap widens, public trust erodes, and student protests become visible expressions of a deeper renegotiation of the social contract between citizens and the state.

The Next Governance Challenge for South Asia
This is a structural shift, not a passing political moment. South Asia’s economic achievements over the past three decades created a larger, better educated, and more connected generation than ever before—but also raised its expectations faster than most governments have adjusted to meet them.

Citizens, particularly young people, now judge governments not only by economic performance but by the quality of governance: meritocratic recruitment, transparent public administration, credible electoral processes, an independent judiciary, and the protection of civil liberties have become central to political legitimacy rather than secondary concerns—the currency governments must now pay to keep the confidence of an increasingly educated electorate.

The student movements unfolding across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka should therefore be understood not as reactions to particular policies or governments, but as manifestations of a broader institutional transition—political systems struggling to adapt to an increasingly educated, connected, and aspirational society.

Responding to this challenge requires more than sustaining economic growth or creating jobs, important as both remain.

It requires institutions capable of converting growth into trust, opportunity, justice, and democratic legitimacy.

Universities, political parties, and civil society all have a part to play in this transition.

Universities should cultivate critical thinking and civic responsibility rather than becoming arenas of partisan confrontation.

Political leaders must treat young people as partners in nation-building rather than as electoral instruments or sources of dissent. Students, in turn, bear responsibility for keeping their activism peaceful, inclusive, and committed to democratic values.

The countries that get this balance right will be better positioned to achieve not only lasting political stability but also more inclusive and sustainable development.

Conclusion: Beyond the Anniversary
As Bangladesh marks the second anniversary of the July Uprising, its significance extends far beyond the events of 5 August 2024.

The movement is best understood as part of a broader regional transformation, in which a new generation across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka is redefining the relationship between citizens and the state—judging progress not only by economic growth but by governance, fairness, and opportunity.

Student movements are not merely episodes of protest; they are reminders that economic transformation must be matched by institutional transformation.

The lesson extends beyond South Asia: as societies grow more educated and connected, citizens increasingly judge development not by GDP growth alone but by the fairness of institutions and the opportunities available to realize their potential.

The lasting significance of Bangladesh’s July Uprising lies not only in the government it brought down, but in the future it revealed. Whether that future becomes one of democratic renewal or recurring instability will depend less on the growth rates governments post than on the trust they build with the generation set to inherit the region.

The countries that respond by strengthening accountable institutions, expanding opportunities, and deepening democratic governance will be better placed to achieve lasting stability, social cohesion, and sustainable development.

(The author: Professor of International University of Business Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT), Sector 10, Uttara Model Town, Dhaka)