The race to reform a country at a crossroads

DHAKA LOOKS REBORN AFTER A FRESH LICK OF PAINT, but this is not your typical municipal spruce-up.

- CHARLIE CAMPBELL

The sprawling Bangladeshi capital has been festooned with garish political murals celebrating August's student-led ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed. Mile upon mile of concrete balustrades are daubed with expletives and caricatures of the deposed autocrat with fangs and devil horns.

Some of the language doesn't sit easily with 84-year-old Muhammad Yunus, though he can forgive the students' exuberance. "These young minds are full of ideas and ambitions and aspirations," he tells TIME with a chuckle. "They depicted their future in those murals, and it's something much greater than Bangladesh has ever seen."

The task of turning those aspirations into reality now falls to Yunus, who was tapped to serve as "chief adviser" to the interim government-for all intents and purposes, Bangladesh's new leader. His job is to shepherd South Asia's second biggest economy, a nation of over 170 million people, toward fresh elections. Meanwhile, a six-pronged reform process is under way, focusing on the election system, police administration, judiciary, anticorruption commission, public administration, and national constitution.