Bangladesh is watching something more corrosive than a routine change in power. What’s reportedly taking shape is a shift in how power is used: not as a public trust, but as a private instrument. An interim administration is supposed to be temporary, restrained, and constitutionally disciplined. It is meant to keep the machinery of the state neutral until people can decide the country’s future at the ballot box. But when an unelected authority is perceived to have taken power unlawfully or unconstitutionally and then proceeds to deliver a chain of benefits that consistently favour one individual and his close allies, the

country isn’t being “stabilised." It is being quietly re-engineered. And here’s what that really means: the state becomes smaller for the ordinary citizen and larger for the connected few. Justice becomes negotiable. Regulation becomes selective. Public assets become bargaining chips. The final bill lands where it always lands — on the common people.