ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the social, economic and political characteristics, linkages, worldviews and core beliefs of the educated sections of the middle classes of Dhaka city, including intellectuals, opinion-makers and professionals, in 2005. As professionals, they were generally mediocre, with the best and the brightest gone from the country in continuous flows of international migration. Increasingly, younger people were becoming trade union leaders because they could better motivate the general workers into trade union activities. According to selected respondents, most trade union leaders afforded a lifestyle higher than they had stated. Therefore, it may be said that most trade union leaders led an upper middle class life in Dhaka city. It also seems that the ranks of the opportunist and mediocre section of the educated middle class has swelled in Dhaka city over the two decades, as the number of "external" and "internal" escapists among them increased during the same period.
