Dhaka, Feb. 28 -- The last time Akhtar Hossain and Nahid Islam launched a political platform, it was hardly such a marquee event. It was back in October 2023, with the authoritarian regime of Sheikh Hasina still looking as strong as ever, continuing to defy the opposition's conditions for an inclusive and participatory democratic election the following January. The two politically conscious students, part of a generation that had grown up understandably disillusioned by the political landscape in Bangladesh, could hardly have known what a worthwhile step they were taking.

Gonotantrik Chhatra Shakti, or Democratic Students Force, was meant to be a student-centric platform, and it was in fact a splinter group of the Bangladesh Chhatra Odhi...