The gangs of Bangladesh: Exploring organized crime, street gangs and ‘illicit child labourers’ in Dhaka

Abstract

This article presents a study of street children's involvement in organized crime in Bangladesh. It is based on an empirical case study conducted in Dhaka and draws on interviews with 22 street children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners, NGO workers and community members and over three years of participant observation of the Bangladeshi criminal justice system and wider society. The article explains how street children work for 'mastaans', Bangladeshi organized crime bosses. These children are hired to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money, commit political violence and conduct contract killings. This article argues that these children are neither victims nor offenders; they are instead 'illicit labourers', doing what they can to survive on the streets.

The Decline of Gangsters and Politicization of Violence in Urban Bangladesh

“…Mastan are understood to play significant roles in the lives of the urban poor, operating as ‘intermediaries’ or ‘brokers’ to the state and wider society (Atkinson‐Sheppard, , ; Banks, ; Khan, ; Wood, ). Banks (: 369) describes one such role: this ‘interaction exchanges a vote bank that is mobilized by the mastaan in return for improved services or other benefits from elected officials’.…”

“…Hence mastan build norms and maintain ‘informal rights’ (ibid.). More recently it has been argued that the mastan operate as representatives for concerned parties in bastee land disputes (Suykens, ), and also that they use street children in their illegal activities (Atkinson‐Sheppard, ). Returning to historic Kolkata, goonda are similarly identified as having ‘dominated life in working‐class bustis … and bazaars’ (Chakrabarty, : 110), running extortion networks and illegal businesses, particularly brothels (Das, ; Ghosh, )…”

“…More recent commentary from Bangladesh portrays diverging understandings about the place of mastan in contemporary urban society. One study argues that ‘mastaans operate in every slum in Dhaka’ (Atkinson‐Sheppard, : 237). By contrast, others have expressed a greater degree of ambiguity.…”

“…It should also be acknowledged, however, that while in radical decline, some of the gangsters who rose to fame during the 1990s and early 2000s still operate in some diminished form. Labourers at Karwan Bazar and journalists pinpoint Mirpur as one area where this form of violence specialist continues to operate, and there is some evidence to support this (Atkinson‐Sheppard, , ). Given that mastan gangs dominated many but not all areas of Dhaka, the degree to which there has been a transition differs.…”

Introduction: Ethnographic perspectives on the state in Bangladesh

“…While we know much about the social dynamics of access to resources for informal settlements (e.g., Hackenbroch and Hossain 2012) or how rural power structures are linked to control over land (e.g., Abu and Gardner 2016; Bertocci 1970; Gardner 1995; Jahangir 1979; Westergaard 1985), we know relatively little about the politics and social life of the more ‘formal’ markets such as real estate markets in the major cities and their interlinkage with governmental offices and regulations. 15 There is comparatively much written on issues such as violent entrepreneurs or mastan- ism and its relation to party politics, patronage, and control of resources (e.g., Atkinson-Sheppard 2016; Jackman 2017; Ruud 2010), but little is known of other interactions with the police. Studies on the NGO sector, and more particularly micro-finance, have explored in detail how several programmes not only construct rural women as potential ‘entrepreneurs’ and failed market subjects along neoliberal ideas of self-reliance, but they also enforce different forms of control, ‘governmentalities’ and shape people’s subjectivities (e.g., Huang 2016; Karim 2011; Salehin 2016).…”