Flowers of freedom

Myanmar's Suu Kyi needs an economic plan too

Myanmar’s great patriot and democracy activist Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s latest bout of freedom — an event far more globally publicised than her previous releases — could provide the Manmohan Singh government with a unique opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of its “Look East” policy. The delicate balancing act South Block has played in realistically maintaining relations with Myanmar’s China-leaning military junta and in securing Suu Kyi’s release (the product of considerable, if unacknowledged, back-room activity) means India can transcend the standard, cliched appeals for democracy to establish itself as a constructive counterweight to China’s aggressive expansion in the region. It is uncertain how much Dr Singh’s unscripted lecture to General Than Shwe on democracy in 2004 influenced the Myanmarese dictator. But the truth is that, warts and all, India has demonstrated how political democracy and economic liberalisation can reduce poverty just as much as Myanmar’s overweening state control of political and economic processes has demonstrated the opposite. Myanmar’s deepening ties with China — now its largest trade partner — without any commensurate gains for its people, only highlight those weaknesses. In a sense, the objective conditions are set for India to play a bigger and more constructive role of political and economic “consultant”, and broaden and deepen its sphere of influence in its eastern neighbourhood at a time when its north-western borders touch new levels of instability.

The fact is that natural resource-rich Myanmar is in dire straits after more than four decades of totalitarian rule. Its GDP growth limps along at a little under 2 per cent and more than a third of its population lives below the poverty line (the condition of the rest isn’t much better), and it remains mostly a producer of commodities (petroleum products, gems) with little or no value addition. Ms Suu Kyi’s political instincts are excellent, as the capture of 82 per cent of parliamentary seats by her National League for Democracy in the 1990 elections showed. The donation of her Nobel Peace Prize money for health and education trusts for the Myanmarese, and her many, real personal sacrifices have established a level of moral power that has obliged the junta to keep her alive (almost anywhere else, she would have been despatched in an “accident”, “encounter” or straight assassination). But her economic agenda is less apparent. Through the years, she has repeatedly exhorted foreign investors to stay away and tourists not to visit Myanmar. When she meets foreign journalists in her simple but comfortable family home on Yangon’s University Avenue, she talks eloquently about how a cup of tea in a five star hotel is equivalent to a policeman’s monthly wages. But there is little in her speeches and utterances yet that suggests a coherent economic programme to put the Myanmarese people on a par with even the countries of the Asean club to which it gained admittance through the cynical calculations of regional geo-politics. For any peoples, political freedom without access to economic opportunity is a prescription for totalitarian rule. This time, though, Ms Suu Kyi has the opportunity to convert the politics of opposition into a concrete agenda for development — and India has a definite role to play in that conversion.