Dhaka, Dec. 15 -- Bangladesh's power and energy sector has long enjoyed a peculiar privilege. It consumes public money at an industrial scale while remaining remarkably immune to fundamental reform. The interim government inherited this privilege along with a swollen balance sheet, a weakened Bangladesh Power Development Board, and a policy architecture that seems designed to reward inefficiency while punishing consumers with ever-rising costs.

One year on, the question is no longer who broke the system, but whether the system has any real intention of being fixed.

The numbers alone tell an uncomfortable story. Over fifteen years, power generation capacity expanded roughly fourfold. The cost of that expansion, however, grew eleven times...