This article seeks to better understand political violence in Bangladesh. Analysing the case of student politics, the article enquires into the productive use of violence by student activists and leaders. It argues that student violence should not be considered as a breakdown of order or a sign of state fragility, but as a means of gaining access to party-state resources and patronage. Violence operates to mark out and maintain power relations between student groups and factions. Risk-taking and the performance of self-sacrifice are important to delineate spaces of power and broker connections to potential political patrons. While actively engaging in political violence provides legitimacy within student hierarchies, victimhood provides a powerful means of publicly displaying one's commitment to a political party. Student public authority, while violent, is closely integrated in national political-party authority structures and, as a result, is intrinsically connected to the Bangladesh party-state. While it might seem counter-intuitive, this article argues that the use of political violence helps one to gain protection from the (party-)state.

Through the lens of the 'disappearance' of a piece of land, this article analyses land relations in a Bangladeshi bastee (slum). The author builds an understanding of the local negotiation of ownership in an area where dakhal (forceful occupation) is the main starting point for the assessment of ownership. The property regime in the bastee emerges out of a web of relationships between different landlords, strongmen, elected officials and (local and national) politicians. These relations are not only crucial for maintaining existing dakhal patterns, but also for guaranteeing land sales, negotiating and settling disputes and, in the final instance, for negotiating power relations in the bastee itself.

Hartal, the general strike or total shutdown, is one of the defining features of politics in Bangladesh. While opposition parties proclaim it is one of their only weapons to put pressure on the ruling party, Bangladeshi middle classes and the international (donor) community view hartal as essentially disruptive. Focusing on the local organisation of hartal at the ward level, this article argues that hartal plays a crucial role in the organisation of the local power structure in Bangladesh. By considering hartal as a complex political performance, we are able to show that hartals offer unique opportunities for local party organisers to show, maintain and improve their position in the local power structure. Addressing a multilevelled audience, it enables them to gain access to beneficial patronage relationships with the party (leadership) at the local, regional and national levels. The willingness to take risk and the ability to recruit hartal participants offers important markers to establish and improve these relationships. As such, efforts to move away from hartal to 'less disruptive' forms of protest are misguided.

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Although the Naxalite (Maoist) influence in India stretches from the north of Bihar to the south of Andhra Pradesh, their impact on the political economy of the Indian countryside — and specifically the tribal livelihood economy — remains understudied. This article examines how resource access is mediated in areas where both the state and the Naxalites hold some degree of public authority, using as a case study the trade in tendu leaves, used to make beedi cigarettes. This low‐profile, lootable resource provides the single most important source of income both for the tribals in North Telangana (during the summer season), and for the Maoists. The article presents a commodity chain framework, adapted to the concerns of multiple public authorities, to throw light on the linkages both between tribal procurement and Naxalite taxation and between government and Naxalite authority. The author argues that in a situation of long‐term conflict, relatively stable joint extraction regimes can be organized, by which all parties can benefit from multiple authority over certain resources.