Just over a year ago, after Sheikh Hasina, the autocratic leader of Bangladesh, had unleashed a brutal crackdown on protesting students, Abu Sayed stood defiantly in front of armed police officers in the city of Rangpur, his arms outstretched.

Moments later he was hit by bullets and later died from his injuries, his family said. He was one of almost 1,400 to die in a mass uprising that toppled Ms. Hasina’s 15-year rule.

Ms. Hasina later fled to India. She left behind a country on the brink of anarchy, but one also suffused with hope.

The students wanted to rebuild Bangladesh as a more equitable and less corrupt democracy. They helped install Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, atop an interim government tasked with leading the nation out of chaos into stability.

But many Bangladeshis are frustrated with the slow pace of change, wondering whether protesters like Mr. Sayed sacrificed their lives in vain.

Under Mr. Yunus, Bangladesh has struggled to dislodge systemic problems like corruption, inflation, a paucity of jobs and an entrenched bureaucracy, which partly fed people’s anger against Ms. Hasina.

Students have clamored for democratic reforms to kick in faster. They also want swifter punishment for Ms. Hasina and the perpetrators of last year’s attacks on protesters — including members of her political party and police officials.

“It pains me,” said Romjan Ali, Mr. Sayed’s older brother. “We thought the country would become morally better, inequality would end, there would be fair elections, the killers would be punished, and that punishment would make criminals afraid. But nothing like that has happened.”

Mr. Ali added that without Mr. Yunus, though, it would probably be worse.

A New Beginning

The burden of reforming one of the world’s poorest and most corrupt countries has fallen largely on Mr. Yunus’s shoulders, in a nation still divided and with nearly five dozen political parties.

Mr. Yunus’s first task was to restore law and order. Looting, rioting and attacks on minorities had destabilized the country after the revolution. Although Bangladesh is more stable now, the government has been accused by human rights groups of not doing enough to control bouts of violence against Hindu minorities and supporters of Ms. Hasina, while Islamic hard-liners have tried to get a foothold.

His next goal was to get an extensive reform agenda going. Mr. Yunus appointed 11 commissions to propose reforms, including changes to the electoral system, the judiciary and the police. The overarching goal was to make the country’s democratic institutions, which Ms. Hasina had bent to her will, more resilient against authoritarian rule.

But few of those changes have happened, and hope has turned to defeatism.

“Everything seems messy now,” said Abdullah Shaleheen Oyon, a student at the University of Dhaka. He was shot in the leg during the protests, which were set off by anger over a quota system for government jobs.

“Our dreams remain unfulfilled,” he added, saying that the urgency with which student leaders had launched their plans is petering out.

Last week, Mr. Yunus announced that Bangladesh would hold elections under a reformed voting system in February, though many details need to be resolved before then. In an address for the anniversary of the overthrow of Ms. Hasina, Mr. Yunus said that his government had inherited a “completely broken” country but that it was recovering. He said he was preparing to hand over the running of the country to an elected government.

More than half of his tenure has been dominated by discussions with political parties about the timing of those elections.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which became the country’s largest political party after Ms. Hasina’s Awami League was decimated, has insisted that the interim government should implement only reforms necessary to hold free and fair elections, leaving further changes to an elected government.

But other political parties, including Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, Jamaat e Islami, have backed Mr. Yunus on the need for more extensive reform first.

Some 30 political parties have been engaged on constitutional and governance issues for two months, said Ali Riaz, a political scientist and vice-chair of the National Unity Council, a government body tasked with overseeing the commissions’ reform proposals.

He said they had done so without “any acrimonious exchange,” painting a sanguine picture of progress. The various parties have agreed on issues like the need for an independent judiciary and term limits on the prime ministerial role, he added.

Political Fracturing

Choosing its leaders through a fully democratic process would be a significant step for Bangladesh, a country of 171 million people.

Since Bangladesh became independent in 1971 after a bloody war between India and Pakistan, its course has largely been shaped by two political dynasties. Ms. Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, one of the country’s founders, started the Awami League. Ziaur Rahman, who was a military officer central to the independence war and became president, founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is now led by his son from London.

The two dominant parties regularly passed the baton to each other before Ms. Hasina gripped power. The B.N.P. refused to contest the last election in January 2024, calling it rigged. At the coming election in February, it is the Awami League that may be absent from the ballot because the party’s activities are banned in the country.

Newer political parties have been trying to widen their reach by targeting populations in rural and semi-urban areas. Nahid Islam, a leader of the student uprising, started the National Citizen Party in February after he left Mr. Yunus’s government. To drum up support, he embarked on a “nation-building” walk-athon in July.

Young voters are crucial for all parties: The median age in Bangladesh is around 26, and many of the country’s young people grew up knowing only Ms. Hasina’s rule.

“We, as a generation, have no good understanding of democracy because we haven’t seen it,” said Saeed Khan Shagor, a filmmaker who joined the protests last year. “So the state should make sure that citizens will live in peace, without any kind of fear.”

Thahitun Mariam, a Bangladeshi American who has been working with community groups in Dhaka, said she worried another common problem would not be addressed: the marginalization of women in the deeply traditional society. Without significant social change, she said, elections and reforms would simply recreate a “male-centric, male-dominated political reality.”

Many female students who were highly visible in the 2024 protests, have retreated from their public roles. But Ms. Mariam said she was still hopeful that Bangladesh’s new democracy would prove to be more inclusive.

Conflicted Emotions

As Bangladeshis took a moment on Aug. 5 to note the anniversary of the downfall of the Hasina government, tens of thousands of people gathered in Dhaka, the capital, braving an evening drizzle to listen to Mr. Yunus’s address.

The audience cheered as Mr. Yunus said that those who died in last year’s mass uprising would be deemed national heroes, and Bangladesh would provide “legal protection to the families of the martyrs, the wounded fighters and the student protesters.”

But the celebrations masked growing acrimony from students about an as-yet unfulfilled promise of the revolution: bringing the perpetrators of the July 2024 killings to justice.

Mr. Ali, the brother of Mr. Sayed, said that he had filed a case against those accused of shooting his brother in the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court set up by Ms. Hasina in 2009, but that there had been little movement.

“Abu Sayed is a well-known martyr of this uprising,” Mr. Ali said. “If even his case is not handled properly, then what justice will Bangladesh ever get?”

The tribunal is conducting a trial of Ms. Hasina in absentia for her role in the killings. She put out a statement from India last week in which she called the student revolution a “violent disruption of our hard-fought democracy.”

Bangladesh’s leaders have also elicited harsh criticism from rights activists who say the new Bangladesh lacks direction.

“The interim government appears stuck, juggling an unreformed security sector, sometimes violent religious hard-liners and political groups that seem more focused on extracting vengeance on Hasina’s supporters than protecting Bangladeshis’ rights,” Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a recent report.

For most Bangladeshis, there are more everyday concerns, as the economy has sputtered. Economic growth slowed to 4.2 percent last year, down from 5.8 percent in 2023, according to the World Bank.

Abdul Kader, 37, said income from his air-conditioner and refrigerator repair store in Dhaka has dropped 10 percent since the uprising. Customers are being cautious because of the uncertainty, he said, adding that he hoped an elected government might bring some relief.

“It seems people don’t have enough money,” he said, “or those who have money don’t want to spend.”