League of her own: Sheikh Hasina’s grip on Bangladesh
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over two decades in office, the prime minister and her Awami League party have overseen impressive growth and reforms in a notoriously corrupt country—but that same firm hand may now be limiting Bangladesh’s progress. Our correspondent visits the frontier of a potentially transformative technology for reducing atmospheric carbon: direct air capture. And a listen to the astonishing boom in Spanish-language music.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. |
| 0:08.0 | And I'm Aurea Ogambi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 0:16.0 | When it comes to reducing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide, you could simply release less of it. |
| 0:24.0 | Or you could grab what's already out there. Our correspondent reports from the frontier of that approach, direct air capture. |
| 0:33.0 | And Spanish language music is having a moment. Spreading and streaming across borders, not just in the Spanish-speaking world, but everywhere. |
| 0:43.0 | Our language columnist comes through the Spotify data and has a little listen to what's going on. |
| 0:55.0 | But first. |
| 1:02.0 | Bangladesh's Prime Minister, Sheikh Hacena, is the world's longest-serving female head of state. |
| 1:09.0 | In a country that has faced devastating natural disasters and desperate living standards, she has presided over a historic reduction in poverty. |
| 1:20.0 | But her long role has now become a problem. |
| 1:24.0 | The populist South Asian country is riddled with corruption and its best and brightest are leaving in their droves. |
| 1:32.0 | If Sheikh Hacena loosened her grip on power, a brighter future may beckon for Bangladesh. But she has other plans. |
| 1:42.0 | I went to see Sheikh Hacena in the big five-star hotel in North Virginia just across the Patoma River from Washington, D.C. where she was staying. |
| 1:51.0 | James Astaar is the economist, Asia Editor. |
| 1:54.0 | And it's a kind of anodyne sort of outer city place, but it had become South Asia for the afternoon. |
| 2:01.0 | There was a huge horde of Bangladesh's supporters of her protestors against her, sort of flocking outside this hotel |
| 2:09.0 | to the causing sort of panic and bemusement amongst the Virginia cops who were apparently trying to police them. |
| 2:21.0 | They were chanting, slogans mostly against Sheikh Hacena that had been some scuffling, I think, actually some quite serious violence between the two groups of protestors shortly before I arrived. |
| 2:32.0 | We won, democracy! We won, democracy! |
| 2:34.0 | We won! |
| 2:35.0 | When negotiating away through that crowd in order to get into the hotel to meet Bangladesh's prime minister, |
| 2:40.0 | sort of took me back to South Asia before we even got into the conversation. |
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