After the unprecedented violence of the past two weeks, the most important question facing the nation must be to figure out how we heal from this. According to the vernacular daily Prothom Alo, the death toll till Wednesday (July 24) reached 197. This is way beyond anyone's expectations, and serious questions will need to be asked about how the law enforcing agencies allowed things to get quite so out of hand.

In particular, the scale of the deaths over the three day period from July 18-20, as the country was plunged into an information blackhole with the full shutdown of the internet, must be investigated. The Supreme Court on Sunday stated that it expects the judicial probe commission, led by a High Court judge, to unearth the reasons behind the deaths of the students. But the judicial probe commission, led by Justice Khandaker Diliruzzaman, will only investigate the six deaths on July 16 amid the quota reform movement for now.

The student movement for quota reform cannot in any manner be linked to its violent and devastating outcome. From the start, there was a move on the part of both the government and the opposition to politicise the movement. Protesters were branded as anti-liberation and 'razakars' by the government, while the country's main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and right wing Jamaat-e-Islami party extended their support to the protests. While violence spread across the country, many government establishments were also under attack in Dhaka. Yet it is true that many unarmed protesters were also killed, among them many teenage students. Whoever is to blame, there must be accountability for the mindless violence we have witnessed.

On Sunday, the Supreme Court ordered that the 1971 war veterans' quota be cut to 5% in government jobs. Did we have to see so much bloodshed to arrive at this? The impact on the economy has not been calculated yet, but it is certain to have been heavy, and likely to be prolonged. Garment and textile factories started to reopen after a four-day pause in production. As long as the curfew is in place, we cannot say normalcy has returned, even though there is a downturn in the violence witnessed since the court's verdict.

The verdict itself reflects what should have been the path chosen for reforming the quota system in light of the original movement against it, which led to its abolition in 2018. The complete abolition is what caused some freedom fighters' families to challenge the move through a petition in 2021. This time as well, we fear that leaving out the women's quota entirely is not a timely decision, but let's not forget, the court's verdict is a recommendation to the government. Constitutionally, it still remains within the government's discretion to allocate the quotas in accordance with public interest. Let us hope that after so much suffering, it acts wisely, in the interests of the nation.