SMALL
children stand in awe of the Japanese TV that floods
the tiny shop with colour and noise. The cars scream,
the bullets fly, but life outside goes on much as
before. Men and women in check sarongs pick their
way through gaping muddy potholes. And moss and weeds
above their heads tumble from the rotting old colonial
facades.
Rangoon,
Burma, cut off from the rest of the world for half
a generation, is now tentatively coming to terms with
what it has missed — endless reruns of The Saint
for one thing.
Burma’s
‘teak curtain’ crashed down in 1964 —
a desperate move by the government of General Ne Win.
Nervous that warring regional tribes would fragment
the country into a patchwork of tiny states, he broke
all ties with the outside world and led everyone off
on the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’.
Self-reliance
was to be the guiding principle — and took its
place alongside Buddhism as the country’s second
religion. Investors like Unilever had their assets
seized and much economic activity came grinding to
a halt — though Burma, self-sufficient in food
and oil, was already in a good position to go it alone.
But
the rebels did not go away. Although the situation
nowadays is fairly stable there are still nearly a
dozen insurgent groups, like the Kachin Independence
Army in the north. Around 30 per cent of the country
is in rebel hands.
In
the cities a powerful influence is the 100,000 strong
Buddhist clergy, whose striking saffron robes brighten
the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay. Ne Win was careful
to keep on good terms with them.
But
he was less successful with his own followers. Corruption
and mismanagement so sapped the administration that
by 1975 he was again looking for outside help. And
the rot hasn’t stopped yet. One of the most
vigorous black markets today is held under the portico
of the Internal Revenue Service.
Most
of the outside aid asked for has been long-term loans
— including one billion dollars from Japan.
But oil-exploration aside, the Burmese still don’t
want direct foreign investment.
The
biggest success of the ‘Burmese Road’
seems now to be in food production. Land belongs to
the state and each farmer is allocated twenty acres.
Today they are reaping the benefits of the green revolution
without the social injustice that it has produced
in other countries. Tight organisation of agriculture
has also enabled them to settle and control some of
the rebel areas close to the Thai border.
A
Burmese oddity is that it is only the older people,
those who remember the British, who speak foreign
languages. But English teaching is now being heavily
promoted — prompted it is said by the failure
of Ne Win’s daughter to pass an entrance examination
to a medical college.
President
San Yu took over from Ne Win in November 1981 but
Burma’s cautious lifting of the curtain looks
set to continue.
new
internationalist 108
