Sheikh Hasina is Asia’s iron lady: The Economist

Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is the world’s longest-serving female head of government, and one of the most significant of either sex.

During two decades in office she has presided over momentous poverty alleviation in her country of 170m, fuelled by average annual GDP growth of 7 percent for much of that time.

The 75-year-old has led her party, the Awami League, to victory in three consecutive polls, and four in all—one more than Indira Gandhi or Margaret Thatcher managed.

With an election due early next year, which she is expected to win, The Economist, a British weekly newspaper, reports on Wednesday.

The Economist asked her, in an interview in her northern Virginia hotel suite, what ambitions she had left.

“I want to make this country a hunger-free, poverty-free developed country,” she says—then abruptly switches tack.

“Can you imagine that they killed my father?” she asks, referring to the grim history that launched and still shadows her career.