Some Minority Problems in Burma

A LTHOUGH THIS ARTICLE will primarily be concerned with an exami1 ~nation of two increasingly disturbing minority problems now facing the Union of Burma, it seems desirable first to touch upon certain general political and economic trends which are relevant to the flourishing discontents of Arakan and the Shan State. For these two particularist issues cannot be treated merely as local affairs of interest only to students of minority problems; their ramifications involve the very nature of the Union and their outcome may well affect the AFPFL's long-term chances of survival as a regime. The major economic happening of I957 was the speech delivered by U Nu in June in which he announced a drastic cutting back of the Government's economic programme and in effect admitted that the nation was floundering in a morass of ill-conceived plans bearing little relation to Burma's resources.' The New Four Year Plan, which of course he merely adumbrated on this occasion, involves the shelving of all development projects except those that directly earn or save foreign exchange. He also reinstated the profit motive in a position of respectability. The fact that even this plan may tax Burma's resources does not alter its great importance as a clear recognition of the fact that something was going very wrong with Burma's Pyidawtha programme. But U Nu went further than cataloguing past errors and pointing to the strait path which must be trodden in future; he stated that the hitherto grossly neglected problem of law and order was the pre-condition for any further economic progress and that therefore everything else must be subordinated to its solution. Now this is no longer a question of putting down insurrections as such. This has been done but unfortunately the military achievement has reached its limit. As U Ba Swe

Political science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Global Political and Social Dynamics

• Ethnicity and Democratization in Myanmar

  Ian Holliday•Asian Journal of Political Science•2010

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