IN hindsight, revolutions are easy to predict. Years, decades and even centuries after such events, scholars will write volumes explaining how prevailing conditions made such violent action inevitable, with the most common preconditions being extreme economic inequality and injustice along with an oppressive state which is not only prone to overreaction but is also so wedded to using force that it has forgotten all other means of conflict reduction and resolution.

What is next to impossible to predict is the single spark that sets off the explosion, the final straw that breaks the back of the ancient regime. And all too often, that spark is so small as to be insignificant and the straw is almost weightless compared to the existing burden accumulated over years.

In Bangladesh, the issue of job reservations led to the swift end of Hasina Wajed’s 15-year reign and resulted in her fleeing the country, but how many jobs were actually reserved this way? According to most calculations, they were no more than 1,000 at most and given Bangladesh’s population and relative economic prosperity one would imagine that this would have been a relatively minor issue. Certainly, Hasina Wajed — with the overconfidence and isolation that absolute........

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