Big challenges ahead for Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s new interim leader

The Nobel laureate is expected to bring back peace, revive the economy and pave way for free and fair elections.

Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been asked to head the interim government in the wake of the political crisis that saw Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina flee the country on Monday.

Yunus, 84, who hailed the weeks-long student-led protests that brought down the Hasina government as a “Second Victory Day”, has been a critic of Hasina’s 15 years of iron-fisted rule.

The protests began against a job quota, which reserved more than half the posts to particular groups including one-third for the descendants of 1971 war veterans. It was scaled back by the Supreme Court on July 21, but it did not assuage the protesters.

“This is our beautiful country with lots of exciting possibilities. We must protect and make it a wonderful country for us and for our future generations,” Yunus told reporters.

The economist and entrepreneur takes over the reins of the country after one the deadliest protests in its history, which saw more than 300 killed and thousands arrested. Big challenges lie ahead as he has to establish law and order, revive the economy, and pave the way for free and fair elections.

Ahmed Ahsan, a former World Bank economist and a director of the Policy Research Institute in Bangladesh, says Yunus “is the man of the hour, chosen by the students who spearheaded the entire movement”.

“He commands enormous respect both in the country and in the world,” Ahsan told Al Jazeera.

Yunus, the third of nine children, was born in 1940 in a village near the southern port city of Chittagong in what was then East Pakistan.

He graduated from the University of Dhaka in 1961. He joined Vanderbilt University in the