The book is the outcome of five years of painstaking research by the author on the role of the state in Bangladesh’s underdevelopment following the methodology of the political economy of underdevelopment. Theoretically, underdevelopment is conceptualised as ‘retarded development’. The roles of the colonial state of the British East India Company and the direct colonial rule by the British state, the neo-colonial bondage under the Pakistani state and the role of the Bangladesh state in the post-independence forty-five years up to 2016 in the underdevelopment of Bangladesh have been analysed in the nine chapters of the book in the light of appropriate theoretical framework and with the help of elaborate facts and evidences.

The main hypothesis of the book is that Bangladesh state remains neo-colonial, peripheral capitalist, bureaucratic and extractive, which is responsible for the underdevelopment of the country. Therefore, the main task before the people of Bangladesh is to transform the system that runs the country from ‘an agent causing underdevelopment’ to ‘an agent of development’.