January 19 marks the 90th birth anniversary of Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman, who is often remembered as a figure inseparable from the nation’s struggle to survive and to chart a course in the uncertain aftermath of independence.In March 1971, as confusion and terror engulfed a population facing the threat of annihilation, it was (then Major) Ziaur Rahman who took to the airwaves from Kalurghat in Chattogram to proclaim Bangladesh’s independence.That broadcast became a call to resistance across the region. It reached students, workers, peasants, and villagers – largely unarmed but searching for direction. Leaving his family behind under military occupation, Zia joined the war as a field commander and later led the Z Force, fighting alongside freedom fighters drawn from every region and social stratum of the country.Zia emerged from the Liberation War, which was a revolutionary uprising,as a symbol of civil-military unity – an experience that shaped his lifelong conviction that freedom without economic capacity and institutional order is fragile.The distinction matters, because his life is often reduced to the convenient caricature – a man of the cantonment. However, history suggests that Ziaur Rahman did not derive legitimacy from barracks. He earned it through shared sacrifice and public trust at a moment – particularly after 1975 – when Bangladesh risked political disintegration.When Zia assumed national leadership, the country was facing near-total collapse. The devastation of war, the famine of 1974, global oil shocks and administrative breakdown had left the economy paralysed. Food insecurity was acute. Inflation eroded savings. Confidence in the state had evaporated.What followed under Zia’s leadership was not exactly an economic miracle but something more fundamental – stabilisation. Under Zia, the economy moved from a free fall toward a modest but sustained growth – an achievement often overlooked in a least-developed, post-conflict country operating in an unforgiving global environment.He placed agriculture at the centre of recovery. Policies expanded irrigation, improved fertiliser access, encouraged high-yield seeds, and offered incentives to farmers. Foodgrain production rose significantly by the early 1980s, easing famine risk and reducing dependence on emergency food aid.Zia also recalibrated the role of the state. Moving away from excessive centralisation, he encouraged private initiative and small enterprise, particularly in rural areas. This restored a sense of economic agency to citizens long treated as passive recipients of policy.His most consequential economic decision, however, lay beyond Bangladesh’s borders. Zia recognised that labour migration could be transformed into a national development strategy. As oil-exporting economies in West Asia accumulated surplus capital after the 1970s energy crisis, demand for foreign labour surged. Bangladesh, with abundant manpower and limited domestic absorption, responded deliberately.Through bilateral agreements and active diplomacy, overseas employment expanded rapidly. By the early 1980s, remittances had become a vital source of foreign exchange – laying the foundation for an external lifeline that still sustains millions of Bangladeshi families today.The same strategic instinct appeared in industrial policy. When global textile quotas opened space for new producers, Bangladesh entered the ready-made garment sector. Zia sent young Bangladeshis to train in South Korea, seeding what would later become the country’s largest export industry. Few decisions have had such enduring structural impact.Economic recovery was paired with social mobilisation. Zia championed mass literacy, enlisting students to teach adults across the country. He strengthened family planning programmes, helping slow population growth – an early step in Bangladesh’s demographic transition.Regionally, Zia thought beyond borders. Long before South Asian cooperation became fashionable, he advanced the idea that eventually materialised as SAARC. He understood Bangladesh’s geography as destiny – particularly the Bay of Bengal, which he saw as a space of trade, security, and shared prosperity. That maritime vision remains unfinished, but it was prescient.Politically, Zia sought to restore democratic legitimacy after years of coups and counter-coups. He reopened political space, revived constitutional processes and returned the country to electoral politics – imperfectly, but decisively. Decentralisation initiatives, including local governance reforms, aimed to bring the state closer to citizens beyond Dhaka.On the world stage, Zia repositioned Bangladesh from isolation to engagement. His foreign policy was pragmatic and sovereignty-centred, balancing relations across ideological divides – from Muslim-majority countries to Western states, China, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Bangladesh asserted autonomy during the Cold War, seeking dignity rather than dependency.He elevated water diplomacy with India, securing the 1977 Ganges Water Sharing Agreement – critical for agriculture and ecology in southwestern Bangladesh. In a region defined by power asymmetry, it was an assertion that survival interests could be defended through principled negotiation.Perhaps most strikingly, Bangladesh was elected a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council under his leadership – an extraordinary outcome for a young, resource-poor nation. Zia used that platform to advocate peace, including personal engagement in West Asian diplomacy, grounding foreign policy in solidarity with oppressed peoples.At home, he reopened media space, allowing debate to return to newspapers and television. State broadcasting expanded beyond official pronouncements to include education, culture, sports and discussion – an important shift from silence to dialogue. Sports and culture were encouraged as tools of nation-building, fostering unity and confidence in a young society.Taken together, Ziaur Rahman’s legacy defies reduction. He did not inherit a functioning state; he helped assemble one. He bridged soldier and civilian, village and capital, domestic priorities and global responsibility.To confine his life to institutional origins is to miss its essence. His authority flowed from shared experience and a unifying vision at a time when Bangladesh could easily have fractured.In celebrating him, Bangladesh remembers him as a leader who believed independence must be defended daily – through diplomacy, development, democracy and dignity.Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir is a professor of development studies in University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.