Two important events took place this week to help us understand the road ahead for the country. First, a National Citizens' Committee was launched by the leaders of the movement that brought down the Awami League government on August 5, with mostly students figuring among its 55 members.

Akhtar Hossain, a former social welfare secretary of Dhaka University Central Students' Union, the only DUCSU that was elected after 1991 (he was part of Nurul Huq Nur's Students' Rights' Council at the time), was named as a member secretary. It may not be widely known, but Akhtar was a leading figure in the movement till he was picked up by law enforcers on July 17, and not released till after Sheikh Hasina had fled the country. With most people questioning whether the movement would yield a political party to carry forward the student's interests, this can probably be safely assumed to be the first steps towards that. By including some of the figures who were openly sympathetic to the Anti-Discrimination Students' movement, it is styled as a platform to channel the hopes and aspirations of the various sections of society that came together by the end of the movement.

The committee is also mandated to make necessary policy proposals to rebuild the state institutions, and taking necessary political steps to implement the proposals. It will also work to raise public opinion in favour of a new democratic constitution, by forming a constituent assembly through a referendum. For now, it has avoided articulating any ambition of taking part in the next elections.

The second, more immediately relevant occurrence, was the formation of six commissions to lead institutional reforms in six areas: the judiciary, the electoral system, the administration, the police, the Anti-Corruption Commission, and the question of the constitution. With men like Badiul Alam Majumdar (electoral system) and Shahdeen Malik (constitution) being put in charge of these bodies, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus inspired confidence in his speech to the nation announcing their formation.

Some have raised the point that there will need to be more such commissions, for fields such as education and issues such as the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and that may well be the case. A banking commission has already been formed to cleanse the banking system of the rot that took hold over at least 15 years of crony capitalism. We also await to see what kind of reforms can be expected within the political parties themselves. The interim government, careful not to rattle parties like the BNP, seems happy to leave them to their own devices, in which case they will be unwise not to sense the public's pulse. The lack of intra-party democracy was one of the biggest enablers of the Awami League drifting into authoritarianism in the course of its prolonged spell in government post-2009, and intelligent voices within our political parties must seize the moment to push for reforms. If not now, when?