With its origins high in the eastern Himalaya Mountains, the Irrawaddy River sweeps down into Burma onto a vast plain. With the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong, it is one of the great rivers of Ssoutheast Asia. From where it comes out of the mountains above Myitkyina, it runs along a valley perhaps 1,500 kilometers long.
The Irrawaddy Valley’s surroundings, a giant ring of mountains, bring to mind California’s Central Valley, with its Coast Range to the west and Sierra Nevada to the east. As hot weather, intensive cultivation and a complex irrigation system have made the interior of California the greatest agricultural producer in the world, the conditions exist to make the Irrawaddy Valley the breadbasket of Asia, rivaling the output of Vietnam, which currently holds that title. It is an unfortunate fact that it isn’t and won’t be, despite the fact that in 1949 the British colonial government bequeathed the most prosperous economy in Asia to Burma’s people on independence.
Hamstrung by a vicious and backward government, Burma’s prosperity has long since vanished. The valley, once the heart of its agricultural prosperity, remains one of the poorest regions in Asia, which has been exploding economically for decades. Burma ranks 23rd in purchasing power parity among the 26 countries that make up East Asia. Only North Korea, Afghanistan and East Timor are below it. Along with Zimbabwe and North Korea, there is no better example in the world of how a government can beggar its people for no other reason than to stay in power.
As an indication of just how wrongheaded government policy can be, Japanese researchers at the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University in a 2004 paper described a household survey conducted in 2001, covering more than 500 households in eight villages with diverse agro-ecological environments. They found that the farther they got from the center of the village, where government authority is stronger, the richer the villagers were. Second, the researchers found, farmers and villages emphasizing a paddy-based, irrigated cropping system had lower incomes than those who didn’t.
“The reasons for these paradoxes are the distortions created by agricultural policies that restrict land use and the marketing of agricultural produce,” the researchers found. “Because of these distortions, the transition to a market economy in (Burma) since the late 1980s is only a partial one. The partial transition, which initially led to an increase in output and income from agriculture, revealed its limit in the survey period.”
In other words, the farther villagers got from the government, the better off they were.
It was the disconnect between the government and the people’s livelihood that resulted in the explosion of discontent that caused hundreds of thousands of protesters to take to Burma’s streets in September and early October after the government, without warning, increased fuel prices five-fold for a people so poor many cannot even afford public transport fares. It was a common sight even before the protests to see lines of automobiles on side streets and some main thoroughfares waiting for petrol, stashed away in black market barrels and openly distributed in full view of the military. Burma’s GDP per person is just US $1,800 annually—compared to neighboring Thailand, which it closely resembles culturally and geographically, with a per capita GDP of $9,200—more than five times as much.
In fact, any comparison between Thailand and Burma points up the miserable impact of the military rule imposed on the country since 1962. Life expectancy in Thailand is 72.5 years, compared to just 62.2 years for the average Burmese. Burma’s infant mortality rate is more than 50 per 1,000 live births, compared to 18.5 for Thailand.
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| Most Burmese farmers grow monsoon paddy as well as summer paddy. Paddy cultivation begins with land preparation. In this photo taken in June 2001 in |
Hamstrung by a vicious and backward government, Burma’s prosperity has long since vanished. The valley, once the heart of its agricultural prosperity, remains one of the poorest regions in Asia, which has been exploding economically for decades. Burma ranks 23rd in purchasing power parity among the 26 countries that make up East Asia. Only North Korea, Afghanistan and East Timor are below it. Along with Zimbabwe and North Korea, there is no better example in the world of how a government can beggar its people for no other reason than to stay in power.
As an indication of just how wrongheaded government policy can be, Japanese researchers at the Institute of Economic Research at Hitotsubashi University in a 2004 paper described a household survey conducted in 2001, covering more than 500 households in eight villages with diverse agro-ecological environments. They found that the farther they got from the center of the village, where government authority is stronger, the richer the villagers were. Second, the researchers found, farmers and villages emphasizing a paddy-based, irrigated cropping system had lower incomes than those who didn’t.
“The reasons for these paradoxes are the distortions created by agricultural policies that restrict land use and the marketing of agricultural produce,” the researchers found. “Because of these distortions, the transition to a market economy in (Burma) since the late 1980s is only a partial one. The partial transition, which initially led to an increase in output and income from agriculture, revealed its limit in the survey period.”
In other words, the farther villagers got from the government, the better off they were.
It was the disconnect between the government and the people’s livelihood that resulted in the explosion of discontent that caused hundreds of thousands of protesters to take to Burma’s streets in September and early October after the government, without warning, increased fuel prices five-fold for a people so poor many cannot even afford public transport fares. It was a common sight even before the protests to see lines of automobiles on side streets and some main thoroughfares waiting for petrol, stashed away in black market barrels and openly distributed in full view of the military. Burma’s GDP per person is just US $1,800 annually—compared to neighboring Thailand, which it closely resembles culturally and geographically, with a per capita GDP of $9,200—more than five times as much.
In fact, any comparison between Thailand and Burma points up the miserable impact of the military rule imposed on the country since 1962. Life expectancy in Thailand is 72.5 years, compared to just 62.2 years for the average Burmese. Burma’s infant mortality rate is more than 50 per 1,000 live births, compared to 18.5 for Thailand.
