New Delhi, Dec. 27 -- Bangladesh was born in 1971 amid extraordinary hope. Its creation followed a just war, a moral intervention, and an overwhelming popular mandate. Yet, almost from inception, the state struggled to translate liberation into durable governance.

Authoritarian Rule, Military Control

History shapes the future. Two developments in the immediate post-independence period decisively shaped the troubled political trajectory Bangladesh.

First, following his release from Pakistan on 10 January 1972, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman assumed near-total control of the new state, initially as provisional president and later as prime minister. Authority was heavily centralised around a single towering personality. Institutions, still fragile...