When the interim government took office after the fall of the Awami League, expectations ran high that long-neglected structural issues—labour rights, gender equality, healthcare governance, media freedom, and local government dysfunction—would finally receive attention. Eleven reform commissions were formed in phases, each tasked with diagnosing systemic problems and offering a roadmap for change.
Months later, the fate of five of those commissions is mired in uncertainty. Their recommendations—products of months of consultations, expert deliberations and taxpayer-funded research—were neither tabled before political parties nor included in the high-profile “July Charter,” raising concerns that essential reforms may simply evaporate.
Two commission chiefs confirm that National Consensus Commission—the body formed to negotiate reforms with political parties—never approached them for discussion. Their frustration is palpable: without political endorsement, they say, their reports risk becoming mere archived PDFs.
The heads of five commissions wrote letters to the chief adviser, but Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, head of the Labour Reform Commission, says Muhammad Yunus did not reply to their letters.
Shireen Parveen Haque, chair of the Women’s Reform Commission, says she was not surprised at all. “I was not shocked. Many men still believe women have no voice in structural decisions. Some close to the chief adviser think the same,” she told TIMES of Bangladesh, hinting at gendered dismissiveness inside the interim administration.
Labour Reform Commission chief Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed echoes that dismay. His commission held more than 80 consultations across the country—workers, employers, unions, economists—before finalising recommendations. None, he says, were brought to the political negotiation table. “The government had the resources and the mandate. They created the commissions. But they did not prioritise the issues that affect ordinary people the most,” Ahmed says. “They emphasised election and constitutional questions over wages, rights and the lived realities of citizens.”
The government formed six commissions in its first phase—constitutional, judicial, electoral, public administration, anti-corruption, and police reform. Their proposals were taken into consideration. After consultations with political parties, 84 commitments were incorporated into the July Charter. The five later commissions—women’s, media, labour, health, and local government—were excluded. That omission, commission chiefs argue, is not merely bureaucratic negligence; it risks political amnesia. “If women, labour, local government and media reforms are not in the July Charter, political parties can dismiss them anytime,” Haque warns. “This could generate anger because workers, women and journalists made huge sacrifices during the July uprising.”
When asked, Environment Adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan told TIMES that the recommendations of the first six reform commissions were included in the July Charter because many of those proposals were directly or indirectly related to election processes. She insisted, however, that the government is indeed working on the reports of the five commissions. “Though the recommendations of the five committees were not included in the July Charter, the ministry of labour has amended the law on the recommendation of the commission, similarly the ministry of women affairs has started drafting a law on the recommendation of the commission,” she said, suggesting that the work is progressing behind the scenes even if not formally captured in the national political agreement.
Retired Dhaka University professor Hasanuzzaman Chowdhury sees a broader problem: lack of genuine political will. “These were half-hearted reforms,” he says bluntly. “Nothing substantial was done. And the way things are going, I doubt they will be.”
Iftekharuzzaman, head of the Anti-Corruption Reform Commission and a member of the National Consensus Commission, offers a procedural explanation. “We were mandated to negotiate only the six first-phase commissions,” he says. “Not the remaining five.” But he acknowledges the severity of the oversight. “These recommendations are now overshadowed. Whether they will move forward is doubtful,” he admits. “Some of the five commissions were extremely important. Without implementing their proposals, even the reforms agreed for the first six commissions could face obstacles.”
The labour commission’s recommendations, according to Ahmed, were selectively forwarded by the Cabinet Division to relevant ministries. But without political commitment, he believes, critical proposals—like creating a permanent National Minimum Wage Board or Labour Commission—remain unattainable. “These require political decisions. The interim government could not—or would not—take them,” he says.
Ahmed and other commission heads now place their hope in the next elected government. Yet they remain aware that political transitions often bury unfinished reform blueprints. “If the interim government does not at least initiate action now, the reports may end up as forgotten documents,” Ahmed warns.
For many, the stakes are higher than bureaucratic housekeeping. The July uprising—marked by the deaths of workers, women activists, and journalists—had raised hopes that structural reforms would reflect the sacrifices made on the streets. Failing to act on these commissions, critics say, risks betraying those expectations.
The sense of missed opportunity hangs heavily. The nation entered this transitional period with rare momentum: broad public mobilisation, a technocratic interim administration, and international goodwill. Instead, five vital reform agendas have stalled. With the interim government’s clock running down, analysts say it must urgently outline a concrete action plan—otherwise, the next elected administration will inherit not a roadmap but a pile of abandoned files.
For many in the country, that would be yet another chapter in the country’s long history of reform promises unkept.
