After decades of isolation - imposed by major OECD
countries out of concern for the country's human rights violations -
Myanmar is emerging as a new darling of the "West" - judging
by the accelerating succession of visits by senior officials and gurus
- among them the US Secretary of State, the UK Foreign Secretary, and
high-level government officials from France, Norway and other countries.
The UN Secretary General may pay a visit. The World Bank is being urged
to resume work there - which had not been possible due to the international
sanctions policy. And new groups of investors are waiting to enter the
country as soon as possible.
This sudden enthusiasm, after years of ostracising the country and depriving
it of any bi- or multilateral development cooperation save of a humanitarian
nature, is a response to - much welcome - changes introduced by a government
that came into power in 2011 in an orchestrated election process. Recent
reforms include the release of some political prisoners, the re-constitution
of the Myanmar human rights commission, the weakening of censure and
an opening of internet access, the adoption of a law allowing trade
unions and the right to strike, the suspension of an environmentally
damaging hydropower project with China, and other steps. The dissident
leader Aung San Suu Kyi who until 2010 had been under house arrest almost
continuously since she was denied the election victory she had won in
1990 and who accordingly had refused any interaction with the oppressive
government, has adapted her political stance since mid-2011, meeting
with President Thein Sein first quietly and then publicly, and in November
announced that she and her party would be willing to stand in the 2012
by-elections.
One hopes that the about-face of Western powers is owed to a genuine
commitment to support peace and democratic reforms. But one fears that
in reality the change of position is driven as much or more by the sudden
awareness that China in particular, but also Thailand, Singapore, and
India, have been ruthlessly benefiting from the abundant natural resources
of Myanmar - natural gas, hydropower potential, gemstones, real estate
for industrial production zones or tourism, and the country's geostrategic
position with access to the Indian Ocean, while businesses in the US
and Europe were missing out on very lucrative deals and investment opportunities.
Political and economic reform are intermeshed, and past decades have
shown time and again that the important movement to ensure civil liberties,
democracy and most fundamentally the guarantee of human rights are very
often confused and conflated with measures to introduce neoliberal capitalism
and prise open a country to the economic interests of individual and
multinational investors. This was the case in Eastern and Central Europe
after the collapse of the Soviet Union: 20 years later, the populations
in most of these countries are still reeling from the adverse effects
of privatisation - which benefited insiders and created new oligopolies,
and of deregulation - which dismantled core public services in health,
education and infrastructure, cancelled crucial social transfers such
as pension commitments, and in general hollowed out and destroyed government
functions so vital to the delivery or regulation of public goods and
to efficient and transparent public administration. These measures were
sold to the then emerging democracies as the only available remedy to
address statist oppression, corruption, cronyism and inefficiency -
instead of reforming the state, introducing accountability, and preserving
and enhancing public goods and services.
There is a risk that Myanmar will be exposed to the same set of nefarious
policy ideas - especially now that many of the welfare states in Europe
have themselves embarked on a brutal course of fiscal austerity, with
massive public sector cutbacks and a freezing of wages and social transfers.
However, a country as endowed with valuable resources as Myanmar has
the means to use its policy space to innovate, and to create a democratic
developmental welfare state. As a leading Burmese economist, head of
the country's new economic advisory board, has put it: Myanmar is a
rich country with poor people (U Myint 2011). It has the fiscal resources
to upgrade socio-economic policy and macroeconomic policy around objectives
of social justice and economic development. It could introduce proactive
labour policies to create decent work in the public sector - health,
education, social services, civil administration; to build infrastructure
in the rural areas and upgrade public transport; to finance and lead
extension and innovation in the rural economy; and to create centres
of research and development excellence. All these areas have been seriously
neglected for decades - displaced by investment into the military, into
oppressive wars against ethnic minorities, into the police state apparatus,
and most recently into industrial parks which concentrate resources
rather than spreading employment and technology across the country.
Myanmar could consider an enlightened form of government-led "industrial
strategy", building on some of the East and South Asian policy
paths, defining and costing out its economic development options. Such
an approach would, for example, selectively promote sectors and areas
for domestic and international entrepreneurship and investment while
demanding that they ensure employment, decent work, learning and innovation
transfers. The recent introduction of labour standards would fit in
constructively with such a strategy, if the population, now subsisting
on one of the lowest per capita incomes in Southeast Asia, could benefit
from decent employment and work conditions, and enjoy wages and salaries
commensurate with the country's overall economic wealth.
Myanmar also has the means, if it so decides, to universalise social
protection. This is necessary from a social justice point of view and
because currently, only 1% of the population is covered by social security.
Social security benefits for the government sector have recently been
increased, and a few groups receive poverty- or emergency-related income
transfers, but there is no systematic health insurance or income poverty
response (Nishino and Koehler 2011). One interesting idea that is currently
capturing the imagination of global development policy discourse is
the UN's social protection floors initiative, which is a concept that
proposes a guaranteed basic income plus guaranteed access to high-quality,
inclusive social services, and Myanmar could explore a "floor"
specific to its citizens' interests.
A combination of the decent work and the social protection agendas (see
for example Bachelet 2011) with an industrial strategy (see for example
Chang 2005; UN DESA 2008; Nayyer 2011) could help address the country's
dire poverty and income inequality and stark urban-rural disparities,
and perhaps also address the pervasive and even violent forms of social
exclusion based on ethnicity in the country's mountainous regions. The
three agendas could be a tool for social inclusion, as well as facilitate
environmentally sustainable production and a move towards weaning from
the lucrative but pernicious narcotics cultivation.
In short: Myanmar could take the lead in creating a democratic developmental
welfare state, with its citizens emerging from poverty and political
oppression - and thereby also inspire many other countries.