Recently, I spent a month in Bangladesh-mostly in Dhaka-revisiting friends and relatives after a three-year absence. Moving between conversations with writers, intellectuals, and political operatives, I sought the pulse of a post-revolutionary nation. Instead, what I found on the streets was a devastating, all-pervasive pessimism. Almost no one seemed happy. Nearly everyone shared the same unsettling sentiment: they saw no reason for hope.

This despondency was shocking. In the time I had been away, a historic, student-led mass movement had overthrown a deeply entrenched autocracy. A democratic transition was underway. Yet on the ground, few believed real change would come. In the new Bangladesh, hope felt like the rarest commodity.

The telltale signs of this crisis were everywhere. Gas and electricity are available only intermittently. Families are forced to cook at midnight to catch the fleeting hours when gas flows through city lines, and motorists queue for six or seven hours in the dead of night for a few gallons of gasoline.

Yet, these exhausting daily challenges pale in comparison to the acute collapse of law and order. A profound vulnerability has settled over Dhaka. People simply do not know if they will be safe tomorrow.

Two recent events are deeply symptomatic of this malady. The first was the brazen destruction of a maternal and child healthcare center in Mirpur. More than 200 masked attackers overran the facility, restrained guards, looted vital medicines, and used heavy machinery to demolish a building that had served low-income families for decades. Despite desperate alerts, the police never took action. Reports later implicated a sitting Member of Parliament and local police complicity.

The second incident involved a violent attack on the studio of Salman Muqtadir, a popular content creator targeted by land-grabbers. When the media later questioned the Home Minister about the state's failure to protect the studio despite prior extortion reports, he nonchalantly replied that action would await a formal investigation. Muqtadir delivered a biting, cynical quip in response: "Don't worry, such things are normal in Bangladesh."

It is this very normalization of lawlessness that defines our nation's "hope deficit." When citizens meet crime with a shrug, it signals a collective abandonment of faith in the rule of law. In an op-ed in Dhaka's Daily Prothom Alo, I presented an outline of a theory, defining Hope Deficit and distinguishing it from the traditional Democracy deficit. You can read it here: https://www.prothomalo.com/opinion/column/obsnea7kjh

The statistics back this despair. In its March-August 2026 monitoring report, the Human Rights Support Society recorded at least 300 incidents of mob violence resulting in 142 deaths-a staggering jump from the 181 incidents and 87 deaths during the same period in 2025. What is most disquieting is the lack of response from authorities and the resulting normalization.

It is important to underline the critical difference between a democratic deficit and a hope deficit. A democratic deficit asks whether people have a vote. A hope deficit asks a much deeper question: even when people speak, vote, and organize, do they believe those actions can actually produce safety or justice? Muqtadir's comment, it's normal in Bangladesh, tells you all that you need to know about today's reality in Bangladesh.

Left unchecked, a hope deficit breeds a dangerous feedback loop. When violence goes unpunished, perpetrators become bolder and citizens stop relying on the state, eventually tempting them to welcome a strongman who promises order at the expense of accountability.

But a hope deficit does not have to be an unmovable reality, because Bangladesh possesses an extraordinary counterweight: the unyielding worthiness of its people's resistance.

Brazilian educator Paulo Freire famously observed, "Without a minimum of hope, we cannot so much as start the struggle." Crucially, Freire distinguished true hope from passive waiting. Hope is a pragmatic requirement for a society to function, but it achieves nothing on its own-it must be transformed into organized, defiant action.

What happened in the immediate aftermath of the Mirpur and studio attacks provides a vital testament to this exact power of resistance. The public refused to accept these crimes as "normal." A fierce, sustained wave of outrage erupted across social media and local newspapers. Everyday citizens drew a line in the sand, demanding that the state fulfill its basic duties.

Faced with this relentless public pressure, the transitional government was forced to wake from its slumber. The sitting MP alleged to be the mastermind behind the clinic's destruction resigned under duress. A retired Major General was arrested for complicity in the content creator's case, and several other perpetrators were swiftly taken into custody.

These victories, won not by state benevolence but by public outrage, prove that resistance is never futile. When people lose faith that their actions matter, injustice wins by default. But when the public organizes, even a sluggish state is forced to act.

Restoring the soul of Bangladesh requires more than reassuring words from its political leaders; it requires visible, unselective justice on a daily basis. The recent arrests demonstrate that the collective courage which sparked the revolution remains alive.

Hope makes our struggle possible, but it is our continuous, uncompromising struggle for justice that gives our hope its ultimate purpose.

Hasan Ferdous is a journalist and author, based in New York