Wangchuk’s protest centred on accountability following examination irregularities and repeated failures in India’s education system that has become far more than a demand for administrative action. It has evolved into a moral question: how many young minds must sacrifice before education itself becomes an image of national priority?

For Bangladesh, this question should sound painfully familiar.

This region often celebrates rising literacy rates, an increasing number of Golden A+, higher enrolment, and new education policies. Yet beneath these encouraging numbers lies a harsher truth. Bangladesh has expanded access to classrooms faster than it has improved the quality and relevance of education itself. Reform has become a mere joke here. It has turned into a repeated political slogan rather than a measurable transformation.

Sonam Wangchuk has spent decades advocating educational innovation through institutions like SECMOL and later promoting alternative learning models suited to Himalayan realities. His recent hunger strike emerged from public outrage over examination paper leaks, declining trust in competitive examinations, and growing frustration among students regarding accountability in the education system. Reports indicate that his health deteriorated significantly during the fast, prompting medical concerns, judicial attention, and nationwide debate over the government’s response. The aid box and saline flowing continuously proved the reality of his health and ultimate determination to make the reform happen.

Yet Wangchuk’s protest is not only about leaked examination papers. It is about broken trust.

When students no longer trust examinations, they begin questioning universities. When universities lose credibility, employers question degrees. Eventually, society questions merit itself. No alternative is found in the reality of Bangladeshi students, educationists, and researchers.

From socials to Shahbagh Centre, in front of government offices to protests, the road to reforming education in Bangladesh has seen everything. But the answer is always the same: “When?” That is perhaps the greatest deterioration any education system can face.

Although India and Bangladesh differ politically and administratively, they increasingly share similar educational dilemmas.

Students continue competing within examination systems that reward memorisation over creativity. Educational institutions still remain excessively centralised. Teacher training frequently lags behind technological and societal changes. Mental health support remains insufficient despite mounting academic pressure.

Meanwhile, policymakers continue introducing reforms that often modify structures without fundamentally changing learning. One of the biggest failures of this reform in Bangladesh was holding the HSC 2026 examination amidst the devastating July flood. Later, a solution came up, but at what cost?

Educational discussions frequently revolve around syllabus changes, examination formats, grading policies, or administrative restructuring. These are important. But they rarely address deeper questions.

What kind of graduate should our education produce? Can our education prepare students for climate disasters? Does it teach ethical leadership? Does it reward curiosity? Can it create innovators rather than examination experts?

Far too often, the answer remains uncertain.

Bangladesh’s floods exposed more than climate vulnerability.

Few events illustrate this contradiction better than Bangladesh’s recent floods. As large parts of the country struggled with submerged roads, damaged educational institutions, displaced families, and disrupted communication, educational continuity became one of the first casualties. The HSC schedule generated confusion. Many students worried less about academic preparation than about whether they could physically reach examination centres.

The debate quickly shifted towards logistical arrangements. Should examinations be postponed?

Should alternative dates be announced? Should institutions remain closed? These questions were undoubtedly necessary. But they also revealed how narrowly educational planning continues to be understood here.

Where was the long-term resilience strategy? Where were nationally coordinated digital alternatives? Where were emergency learning systems capable of ensuring continuity during climate disasters? Where was the reform that recognised Bangladesh as one of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, especially after the 2024 revolution?

Instead, education once again became reactive rather than prepared. The floods did not create Bangladesh’s educational weaknesses. They merely exposed them.

Genuine reform cannot be reduced to changing textbooks or introducing a new version of studying in a new degree for primary or secondary level. Real reform requires transforming the entire educational ecosystem. Because reform is not an event. It is an ecosystem.

Curriculum must encourage critical thinking instead of only memorisation. Teacher development must become continuous rather than an occasional banner seminar. Assessment systems should evaluate understanding, creativity, collaboration, innovation, research interest, and problem-solving, not merely the ability to reproduce memorised information and then vomit it out in exams, then forget it instantly like a CPU, which, upon giving output, refreshes its algorithm.

Universities should function as research institutions rather than degree-distribution centres. Most significantly, students themselves should participate in designing educational policy.

Ironically, those most affected by educational decisions remain the least consulted. South Asia inherited education systems deeply influenced by colonial administrative models.

These systems were remarkably efficient at producing clerks, bureaucrats, and examination candidates. They were never designed to cultivate innovators. Many fields remain unchanged even today, when we are living in the 21st century, the era of globalisation and AI, when the world is looking for skill.

Students continue studying primarily to secure grades. Parents continue measuring success through examination results and ‘A+’ board exams.

Institutions continue ranking achievement numerically. Employers continue filtering applicants through colour-printed certificates. The consequence is predictable. Young people increasingly chase credentials rather than competence. Degrees continue multiplying geometrically while meaningful employment struggles to keep pace and, as a result, increases arithmetically.

The problem is not merely unemployment but educational misalignment.

Why do students continue losing faith?

One of the most worrying developments across the region is the gradual erosion of trust. Students increasingly believe that effort alone may not determine outcomes.

Examination irregularities, administrative inconsistency, delayed recruitment, political interference, and weak institutional accountability collectively weaken confidence. When trust disappears, education loses its social contract.

A classroom functions only because students believe learning will eventually produce fair opportunities. If that belief collapses, education becomes performance rather than progress, which has already arrived.

This explains why Wangchuk’s hunger strike resonates beyond India’s borders and, similarly, why students giving their lives and voices in Bangladesh travelled across.

It symbolises frustration shared by countless students throughout South Asia. Bangladesh needs educational resilience, not cosmetic reform.

Bangladesh often speaks proudly about educational expansion. Primary enrolment has improved significantly. Female participation has increased. Access has widened. These are remarkable achievements.

But access alone cannot define success overall in a country’s education system. The next demand is quality. Bangladesh requires an education system capable of surviving floods, pandemics, technological disruption, and changing labour markets.

Climate adaptation should become part of educational planning rather than disaster response. Artificial intelligence, financial and digital literacy, research skills, civic education, research gaps, innovation, and critical reasoning should no longer remain optional.

Universities should become hubs of innovation capable of addressing Bangladesh’s own developmental challenges instead of merely replicating foreign models or following in the footsteps of Japan.

Education should prepare graduates not simply to seek jobs abroad but to solve problems at home and not to hear comments such as, “What have you earned studying in this field?”

Perhaps the most tragic pattern throughout South Asia is not that students protest. It is that concerned authorities eventually wait for protests to fade.

Movements disappear. Media attention shifts. Committees submit reports. Announcements are made. Then everything quietly returns to normal.

A lesson South Asia cannot ignore

The future of South Asia will not be determined solely by economic growth rates, infrastructure projects, or technological investments.

It will be determined by classrooms. Every engineer, economist, teacher, journalist, scientist, policymaker, entrepreneur, doctor, and citizen begins as a student.

When education fails, every institution eventually inherits that failure, as it is a chain of structure. Wangchuk’s hunger strike therefore carries significance far beyond that country alone.

It challenges every South Asian government to answer a simple but uncomfortable question: if students continuously demand meaningful reform, why then does reform remain perpetually postponed?

Bangladesh, too, must answer that question honestly. Recent floods reminded the nation that climate resilience without educational resilience is incomplete. Curriculum reforms without structural reforms remain symbolic. Examination adjustments without institutional accountability remain temporary.

The region does not suffer from a shortage of intelligent students. It suffers from a shortage of courageous educational policymaking. Real reform begins the moment governments stop asking how to manage student protests and start asking students why they feel compelled to protest in the first place.

Until then, every postponed reform risks producing the next generation convinced that the only way to make power listen is through silence, suffering, and sacrifice. And no education system can truly call itself reformed if its brightest minds believe that voice and protest speak louder than hope.