From Textile Shutdowns to Street Power: How Bangladesh Is Sliding Toward Pakistan’s Model
Bangladesh’s textile shutdown threat is not just an industrial dispute or a trade policy misfire. It is the first visible crack in a deeper state failure. When an economy built around one sector begins to choke, politics does not stay neutral. Power shifts. Narratives harden. Street mobilisation replaces institutional debate. This is how countries slide, not suddenly, but predictably.
The textile and garment ecosystem is Bangladesh’s economic spine. It feeds exports, jobs, foreign exchange, and urban stability. When spinning mills and textile units threaten indefinite closure, it signals that the backbone itself is under stress. This is not about one lobby losing out to another. It is about the collapse of backward integration that made Bangladesh competitive in the first place. Once that chain breaks, it does not quietly repair itself.
The roots of the crisis lie in policy paralysis. Successive governments tried to keep everyone happy by doing nothing decisively. Duty free imports continued without reform. Energy pricing remained distorted. Banking exposure ballooned. Warnings from domestic producers were ignored until survival itself became questionable. This was not an external shock. It was accumulated neglect disguised as stability.
Economic stress always finds a political outlet. Factory closures mean wage delays, job losses, and fear. Fear does not stay confined to balance sheets. It spills onto streets, campuses, and neighbourhoods. In such conditions, people do not rally around complex reform packages. They rally around whoever offers certainty, identity, and someone else to blame.
That is where Islamist mobilisation enters the picture. Not because clerics suddenly discovered economic wisdom, but because ideology thrives when governance collapses. Islamist groups do not need to fix power tariffs or credit flows. They only need to frame hardship as betrayal, corruption, or foreign conspiracy. When institutions fall silent, slogans speak louder.
This trajectory is uncomfortably familiar. Pakistan did not collapse because of one bad year or one extremist wave. It decayed through repeated cycles of economic mismanagement, denial, scapegoating, and ideological substitution. Each time the economy failed, identity politics filled the vacuum. Each time accountability was dodged, the state weakened further. Bangladesh is now showing early signs of the same pattern.
Scapegoating India fits neatly into this script. It is simple, emotional, and politically safe. Blaming domestic policy requires naming ministers, regulators, and decisions. Blaming India requires none of that. It converts economic failure into nationalist theatre. Pakistan perfected this model decades ago. Bangladesh is beginning to borrow from the same playbook.
The role of technocratic leadership in this moment deserves scrutiny. Credibility in international forums does not translate into crisis management at home. Delayed decisions, mixed signals, and moral posturing without political control do not stabilise economies. They create vacuums. Vacuums are never neutral. They are always filled by the loudest, not the most competent.
If this course continues, the risks are clear. Industrial capacity will be lost permanently. Skilled labour will drift away. Banks will absorb more bad debt. Politics will radicalise as economic space shrinks. Once that cycle sets in, recovery becomes far harder and far costlier.
Bangladesh is not destined to repeat Pakistan’s history. But history does not need destiny. It only needs denial. When economic collapse is met with blame instead of reform, when governance retreats and ideology advances, countries do not fall. They slide. And by the time the slide is obvious, stopping it becomes much harder.
