Paper Short Abstract:

The post-revolt government’s intervention against the working class protests in Bangladesh disrupted the years old narrative of ‘saviors’ and ‘main resources for foreign exchanges’ and labeled them as the ‘associates of the tyrant’, referring to the ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Paper Abstract:

This paper examines the post-uprising (July-August uprising in Bangladesh) governmentality in Bangladesh that tend to define working class protests as remaining of the autocratic government that was ousted from the power on August 5, 2024. This convenient portrayal of working class population, especially those protested for some basic rights during the period from August to October, 2024, largely from garment industry, was emerged on the backdrop of a prolonged and orchestrated campaign of constructing the garment workers as ‘saviors’ and main resources for ‘foreign exchanges’. That garment industries predominantly have a huge number of women workers has to do with the gendered wage pattern is altogether a different research query but has a demonstrational effect on the on-street protests that showcased a huge number of females. With reference to specific history of industrialization (or lack of it) in Bangladesh, garment industry marked extraordinary profit-making ventures in the wake of neoliberal global policies since the 90s compounded with a large number of women workers emerged and appropriated from the ruins of agrarian ‘rural’ Bangladesh. There have been a series of political and literary rhetoric produced to regard these women whereas they had to protest on regular basis to secure their basic rights and pending payments and accept police brutality against them. While it was a regular scenario during the regime, the post-revolt government’s intervention against the protests disrupted the years old narrative as the workers are now labeled as the ‘associates of the tyrant’, referring to Sheikh Hasina.