Inheritance of a nation: The future we owe its youths

The way we are today - as a nation, as individuals, in our instincts, culture, and coping mechanisms - is not accidental. We are not simply the product of poor governance or appalling politics. We are the sum of centuries of conditioning, of inherited trauma, of civilisational drift. Bangladesh did not arrive at its present through chaos alone. We were programmed this way, and that programming runs deeper than we like to admit. And today, it is the youth who are left to live with its consequences, often without knowing how it began.

From the philosophical humanism of the Pala Empire to the violent extractivism of the East India Company, from the ghost of colonial Bengal to the identity crises of East Pakistan, every era left us altered. Each one stripped something, rearranged something, and re-coded our sense of self. What we call "national character" is often just the accumulation of survival strategies, passed down like heirlooms. And now, those fragments are being inherited by a generation who had nothing to say in making this code, but who must either carry it forward or break it entirely.

And yet, we rarely confront this inheritance. Instead, we pretend the past is buried and the future belongs to the youth. But today's young Bangladeshis are growing up with a present that chokes imagination - a present moulded by corruption as a coping mechanism, historical amnesia that erodes pride, and a cultural submission that has stunted our collective ambition. Their identity is fragmented, their dreams outsourced, and their nation hollowed out by the very forces we refuse to name.

This piece is not just about what's wrong. It is more about why. It traces how corruption thrives not from greed alone, but from environmental and institutional collapse. It examines how forgetting our past has robbed us of pride, how our history of subjugation has capped our dreams to visas and remittances, and how exclusion has fractured our unity. Ultimately, it argues that Bangladesh's most urgent crisis is not economic, but civilisational, a deep-rooted, generational void that demands reckoning. This piece, to its core, will serve the youth. They must know how far back we were broken, in order to imagine a different future. One with the return ticket back home - not just physically, but psychically. A home where dreaming is no longer an act of rebellion, but a rite of passage.

Corruption as a coping mechanism: Take corruption, for instance - a trait we now take as given. It is obviously not just a moral failure. It is also a survival instinct. In a country marked by chronic instability, especially climate-wise, corruption became normalised as a coping mechanism. In areas affected by displacement, whether from poverty or environmental factors, people learnt to survive by whatever means necessary.

The World Bank predicts that by 2050, over 13 million Bangladeshis could become internal climate migrants, many due to river erosion and sea-level rise. When your land disappears beneath your feet, as it has for millions in the delta - stability is not your priority. Security is. And corruption, as ugly as it is, became a system to navigate uncertainty when institutions failed. For young people, this isn't just background noise - it becomes a silent syllabus. They learn early that merit matters less than connections, that dignity comes with a price, and that the system is not broken - it was built this way.

Research by Transparency International Bangladesh has also shown how citizens in disaster-prone areas report significantly higher instances of bribery and informal payments for public services - from land registration to disaster aid. Many young Bangladeshis grow up watching this machinery at work, internalising it before they even understand what public service should ideally look like.

Historical amnesia and the loss of pride: We have also failed to preserve our history - both literally and metaphorically. While neighbouring countries like India and Sri Lanka have invested heavily in protecting historic structures, we have allowed ours to be erased. Bangladesh has only three UNESCO World Heritage sites. For a country with over 2,000 years of civilization, this is a damning number.

Countless ancient monasteries from the Gupta and Pala periods, terracotta temples in North Bengal, and Mughal-era forts have either decayed or been demolished due to neglect. The Archaeological Survey of Bangladesh has identified over 450 endangered heritage sites, many of which lack any meaningful conservation effort.

When memory is lost, so is pride. And without pride, there is no continuity. Without continuity, there is no identity strong enough to hold a nation together. Negligence would be an understatement; it is rather a form of forgetting. And that forgetting has consequences. When we forget who we were, we struggle to define who we are - and youths grow up without anchors, without origin stories that could ground them in purpose.

A culture of submission and diminished aspirations: Somewhere along the way, we also became submissive. We lowered our expectations - of life, and of ourselves. Perhaps it is the residue of being continuously ruled, exploited, and traded. Between the 13th and 20th centuries, Bengal was passed from the hands of the Delhi Sultanate to the Mughals, and from Portuguese and Dutch traders to the British. Each wave of rule left behind fragments - names, garments, foods - but no unified foundation.

The economic historian Tirthankar Roy notes that Bengal, once the richest part of South Asia during the Mughal period, saw its share of global GDP (gross domestic product) collapse under colonialism, leading to institutional weakening and a "culture of compliance."

That history has made us hesitant dreamers. We do not imagine big, incredible futures. We aspire to personal survival more than collective progress. Bangladesh has one of the highest outmigration rates among developing countries, according to the UN. Over 13 million Bangladeshis live abroad, sending remittances home - a sign of economic ambition, yes, but also a reflection of domestic disillusionment. The dream is not to build; it is to escape.

Ask any university student or fresh graduate what they want most - it's often a scholarship, a visa, or a ticket out. Not because they don't love their homeland, but because they feel it won't love them back. Their dreams are framed by borders, not blueprints for building here.

Fragmented identity and exclusion: "Am I Bangladeshi enough?" is not a question a 16-year-old from a minority community should be forced to ask. And yet, many do - daily, silently. There is a broken sense of unity. Bangladesh is ethnically and culturally rich, with no debate. But we have failed to nurture that richness. Tribal and indigenous communities in the hills, tea gardens, and borderlands face regular exclusion. The 2019 Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics report on ethnic minorities showed higher poverty rates, lower education access, and negligible representation in national institutions among indigenous groups.

Even within mainstream Bengali identity, regional dialects and local cultures are often seen as backward or impure. We forgot our plurality - and now we feel unsure of where we belong. For young people from these communities, growing up means constantly negotiating who they are allowed to be - never fully seen, never fully included.

A civilisational void behind economic growth: And here's the hard truth: with these traits - this fractured programming - we are on a path of capped growth. We are not entitled to greatness. Economic growth, flashy GDP numbers, or headlines calling us an "Asian tiger" will not save us from this void. Because the void is not economic; it is civilisational. It is psychological. We have not reckoned with the long-term effects of erasure, subjugation, and neglect.

Even Bangladesh's rapid GDP growth has been criticised by economists for being "jobless growth," failing to improve productivity or citizen well-being meaningfully (World Bank Development Update, 2023).

And the youth know it. They see the internships that lead nowhere, the degrees that don't deliver mobility, and the "digital Bangladesh" slogan that feels increasingly hollow when institutions are brittle and trust is rare.

The case for civilisational reckoning: But this does not have to be our story to own. We must name the ghosts in our bloodstream. We must reckon with our civilisational scars - not to wallow, but to rebuild.

The work is a slow, long enduring process. We must teach real history. Restore what remains of our heritage. Refuse to normalise corruption as tradition. Celebrate culture, not suppress it. And most of all, give our young a reason to believe - not just in escape, but in emergence.

The youth of Bangladesh deserve more than survival. They deserve pride, memory, ambition, and a country that dreams not in spite of them, but with them.

If history programmed us, then the youth must be the coders of what comes next - not with borrowed greatness or slogans, but with one they build, fiercely and freely, as heirs to a nation still becoming.

Mushfiq spends his time asking difficult questions about history, economics, and who we are becoming. He works at the Center for Enterprise and Society at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) as Sr. Manager, where he works at the intersection of research and development projects.
mushfiqur.work@gmail.com