Bangladesh’s hard-won ascent was grievously derailed on 5 August 2024, when, a geopolitical cabal orchestrated from Washington, in concert with domestic collaborators, unlawfully, forcibly, and unconstitutionally removed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from power. The terrorist assault served external interests while imperilling Bangladesh’s sovereignty, stability, and hard-earned development.
There are moments in a nation’s history when statistics cease to be statistics. They become human tragedies. A closed factory is not merely a shuttered building. It is a vanished wage. A dismissed worker is not merely a number. It is a family suddenly deprived of food, education, dignity and hope.
That is the Bangladesh confronting us today.
For years, Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh was presented as a country of accelerating development, expanding industrialisation, rising exports and growing economic ambition.
Whatever criticisms may be levelled against her government, the scale of transformation cannot simply be erased from public memory. Roads, bridges, power infrastructure, export-oriented industries and expanding employment formed part of a development narrative that sought to move Bangladesh beyond chronic scarcity.
Yet today, that trajectory appears increasingly imperilled.
The July terrorist assault has left the country hanging between uncertainty and paralysis.
Electricity and gas shortages are disrupting production. Textile mills are closing. Garment factories are shutting their gates. Steel production is suffering. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is under pressure. Power plants themselves are reportedly struggling. The industrial engine that once drove Bangladesh’s economic aspirations is sputtering.
The most alarming evidence is emerging from the garment sector.
According to the figures presented in the supplied account, 95 garment factories have closed within seven months, leaving approximately 61,000 workers without employment.
In another six-month period, 27 factories reportedly shut permanently, affecting nearly 20,000 workers.
Across Gazipur, Narayanganj, Narsingdi, Savar and Ashulia, closure notices have become an increasingly familiar sight. Over a two-year period, the number of closed industrial units is cited as 457.
Behind every number stands a household.
There is a mother calculating how long the remaining rice will last. There is a father wondering how school fees will be paid. There is a young worker confronting an uncertain tomorrow. There is a landlord demanding rent, a creditor demanding repayment and a family discovering, perhaps for the first time, how brutally dependent ordinary life is upon the continuity of employment.
The situation described in Bhaluka is even more disturbing. Nearly all of the area’s 99 gas-dependent factories are reportedly affected by inadequate gas supplies.
Workers are being sent home before completing their shifts because keeping factories operational without sufficient fuel becomes economically ruinous.
This is not merely an energy crisis.
It is an employment crisis.
It is an industrial crisis.
It is an export crisis.
Ultimately, it is a crisis of national confidence.
The consequences inevitably travel beyond factory gates. Production disruptions weaken export earnings. Cancelled orders damage relationships with international buyers. Factory closures intensify pressure on banks already burdened by non-performing loans. Household incomes contract while living costs rise. Unemployment can deepen social distress and intensify labour unrest.
The question, therefore, is unavoidable: where is the urgent national strategy to reverse this deterioration?
Those who once spoke passionately about load-shedding and industrial difficulties during Sheikh Hasina’s tenure cannot now remain conspicuously silent when factories are closing and tens of thousands of workers are losing their livelihoods.
Accountability cannot be selective. A political system worthy of a modern Bangladesh must apply the same standard to every government.
Sheikh Hasina herself has expressed grave concern over the electricity and energy crisis and its consequences for industry and employment.
Her emphasis on restoring industrial production and creating opportunities for those who have lost work speaks directly to the anxiety of millions whose livelihoods depend upon a functioning economy.
The deeper issue, however, transcends any individual leader.
Bangladesh cannot afford the destruction of its productive capacity for the sake of the present perilous political situation.
Governments come and go; factories, skilled workers, export relationships and industrial ecosystems take years—even decades—to build. Once destroyed, they cannot be reconstructed overnight.
The garment sector, in particular, is not simply another industry. It represents the accumulated labour of entrepreneurs, workers, engineers, technicians, exporters and countless supporting businesses. Its survival is inseparable from Bangladesh’s international economic standing.
A nation cannot eat political slogans.
It needs electricity. It needs gas. It needs functioning factories. It needs investment. It needs exports. It needs employment. And above all, it needs confidence.
The Bangladesh envisioned through decades of development under the able and dynamic leadership of HPM Sheikh Hasina cannot be allowed to descend into a landscape of locked factory gates and unemployed workers. Nor should the suffering of labourers become collateral damage in an endless contest for political power.
The country now needs competence rather than complacency; production rather than paralysis; reconciliation rather than recrimination; and a national economic strategy rather than short-term political arithmetic.
History will ultimately judge governments not merely by the speeches they delivered, but by the lives they enabled—or failed—to sustain.
If Bangladesh’s industrial foundations are allowed to crumble, the damage will reach far beyond one administration or one political party now in power. It will burden an entire generation.
The challenge, therefore, is stark: save the factories, save employment, restore energy security, revive exports, and preserve the Bangladesh that generations of workers helped build.
A nation that once dreamed of development must not awaken to the nightmare of deindustrialisation.
Bangladesh deserves better. Its workers deserve better. And the country’s hard-won economic gains deserve to be protected rather than squandered.
Bangladesh now stands amid the ruins of a nation painstakingly forged through decades of development, progress, and sacrifice. What was once an inspiring trajectory toward prosperity has been gravely imperilled, leaving behind shattered confidence, faltering industries, and an uncertain national destiny.
The Daughter of Democracy.
The Architect of a Transforming Bangladesh.
The indefatigable Sheikh Hasina.
She stands in the imagination of countless observers as a towering force behind Bangladesh’s extraordinary transformation—a leader associated with development, ambition, resilience, and national progress. To them, she is more than a political figure: she is the lifeline of a nation striving toward prosperity and global stature.
Bangladesh’s people celebrate her as a visionary who helped reshape Bangladesh’s economic and infrastructural landscape through determination and bold leadership. In their eyes, Sheikh Hasina embodies the courage of a modern Joan of Arc—resolute, unyielding, and eternally devoted to the destiny of Bangladesh and its people.
Bangladesh is safe in her hands. Sheikh Hasina’s return from exile is imperative so that she may once again take the helm of the nation and restore it to stability, prosperity, and its rightful course.
