ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ ႏွစ္၀က္တုန္းက ေက်ာင္းမွာ Politics and Policy in South East Asia ဆိုတဲ့ ဘာသာရပ္ကိုယူေတာ့ အပါတ္စဥ္ႏိုင္ငံတႏိုင္ငံခ်င္းစီေက်ာင္းသားေတြက Presentation လုပ္ၿပီး တဖြဲ႕စီ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေဆြးေႏြး ရပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ကိုယ့္ႏိုင္ငံအေၾကာင္း Presentation လုပ္မယ့္အုပ္စုထဲမွာ ကိုယ္မပါရပါဘူး။ သေဘာက ျမန္မာျပည္ကလူကို ျမန္မာျပည္အေၾကာင္း Presentation ထဲမွာ မထည္႕ဘူးဆိုတဲ့သေဘာပါ။ ၀င္ေျပာလို႕ ေတာ့ရပါတယ္။ အဲဒီမွာျမန္မာျပည္အေၾကာင္း တင္ျပတဲ့အဖြဲ႕က ျမန္မာသံရံုးကသံအမတ္ႀကီးကိုသြားေတြ႕ အင္တာဗ်ဴးလုပ္လာတဲ့အျပင္ ေရႊ၀ါေရာင္ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအတြင္းက စကၤာပူမီဒီယာတခုက (Channel News Asia လား။ Mediacorp နာမည္နဲ႕လား အေသအခ်ာမမွတ္မိပါ။) စကၤာပူမွာအလုပ္လုပ္ေနတဲ့သူတခ်ိဳ႕ကုိ ေတြ႕ဆံုေမးျမန္းထားတာေတြကိုပါ Youtube ေပၚကေနဆြဲၿပီး တြဲတင္ျပလာပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အဲဒီမွာအင္တာဗ်ဴးအလုပ္ခံရတဲ့သူက ဘာေျပာလဲဆိုေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာလူေတြဆင္းရဲလြန္းလို႕ တခ်ိဳ႕လူေတြဟာ တလ US ၂ ေဒၚလာေအာက္၀င္ေငြနဲ႕ ေနထိုင္စား ေသာက္ရပါသတဲ့။ ေျပာတဲ့သူက အမွတ္တမဲ့ ရက္နဲ႕ လကိုမွားေျပာသြားတာလား။ အဂၤလိပ္စာ မကၽြမ္းက်င္မႈေၾကာင့္လားေတြးမိေပမယ့္ တျခားႏို္င္ငံသားေတြရဲ႕အျမင္မွာ အရမ္းကိုဆိုးရြားသြားတဲ့ အေနအထား တခုပါ။ တြက္ၾကည္႕ပါ။ လူတေယာက္ဟာ ဆန္ျပဳတ္ခ်ည္းပဲေန႕တိုင္းေသာက္ေနႏိုင္ရင္ေတာင္ တေန႕ ၂နပ္နဲ႕တြက္၊ တေန႕ ၄၀၀က်ပ္ေလာက္ အၾကမ္းဖ်င္းက်ပါတယ္။ (ဒါေတာင္ဆန္ျပဳတ္ပဲေသာက္ရရင္ လူတေယာက္ ၂နပ္နဲ႕မ၀ႏိုင္ပါဘူး) တလကို ၁၂၀၀၀ က်ပ္။ အျပင္ေပါက္ေစ်းနဲ႕ USD ၁၂ ၀န္းက်င္ကုန္က်ပါတယ္။ ဘယ္လိုလုပ္ လူတေယာက္တလ US ၂ ေဒၚလာနဲ႕ေနမလဲ။
ေနာက္တခါ သူကဘာေျပာသြားလဲဆိုေတာ့ အခုစစ္အစိုးရအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့ ႏွစ္ ၂၀အတြင္းမွာႏိုင္ငံကဘာမွ တိုးတက္မလာပါဘူးတဲ့။ တိုးတက္သင့္သေလာက္မတိုးတက္လာဘူးဆိုတာဟုတ္ပါတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ သယံဇာတေတြ၊ ေျမလြတ္ေျမရိုင္းေတြ၊ တိုးတက္လာတဲ့လူဦးေရေတြနဲ႕တြက္ရင္ ဒီထက္ပိုၿပီးတိုးတက္ေအာင္ လုပ္လို႕ရတာအမွန္ပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ လံုး၀တိုးတက္မလာဘူးဆိုတဲ့ ကိစၥကိုေတာ့ လက္မခံႏိုင္ပါဘူး။ ဒါ့အျပင္အဲဒီ အင္တာဗ်ဴးမွာ ၁၉၉၅ ခုႏွစ္ေလာက္တုန္းက ဘတ္စ္ကားေတြနဲ႕ လူေတြေနထိုင္သြားလာမႈပံုစံေတြကို ျပထားၿပီး အႏွစ္၂၀ေက်ာ္အတြင္းမွာ ကူးသန္းသြားလာေရးကတိုးတက္မလာပါဘူးလို႕ ေျပာထားပါေသးတယ္။ ဒီႏွစ္ ၂၀အတြင္းမွာေဆာက္ထားတဲ့ တံတားေတြ၊ ေဖာက္ထားတဲ့ လမ္းေတြ အေရအတြက္ဘယ္ေလာက္ရိွတယ္လို႕ ေျပာရင္ ကၽြန္မကိုစစ္အစိုးရအလိုေတာ္ရိလို႕ လက္ၫိႈး၀ိုင္းထိုးၾကလိမ့္မယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒါကၽြန္မအေတြ႕အႀကံဳနဲ႕ ယွဥ္ၿပီးေျပာတာပါ။ ကၽြန္မတို႕ပုသိမ္ - ရန္ကုန္လမ္းမွာ အရင္တုန္းက ဗိုလ္ျမတ္ထြန္းတံတားမရိွတဲ့အတြက္ ရန္ကုန္သြားရင္ ကားေတြကဇက္ကူးရပါတယ္။ ကားေတြကိုယ္တိုင္ကူးရင္ကူး။ မဟုတ္ရင္ အမ်ားသံုးဘတ္စ္ ကားေတြဆိုရင္ ဒီဘက္ဆိပ္မွာလူေတြကဆင္း၊ ဇက္နဲ႕ကူးသြားၿပီး ဟိုဘက္ကမ္းမွာအသင့္ေစာင့္ေနတဲ့ကားေပၚ ေျပာင္းတက္ရပါတယ္။ အထုပ္အပိုးမ်ားတဲ့သူဆို အဆင္မေျပတဲ့ခရီးပါ။ ဒါ့အျပင္ အသြားအျပန္ဇက္ ၂စင္းေလာက္ပဲရိွလို႕ေစာင့္ရေတာ့ အခ်ိန္ၾကန္႕ၾကပါတယ္။ တခါတေလဆို ရန္ကုန္-ပုသိမ္ခရီးက ၈နာရီ ၉နာရီ ၾကာပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေတာ့အလ်င္မလိုတဲ့လူအမ်ားစုကေတာ့ သေဘၤာနဲ႕သြားပါတယ္။ ပုသိမ္ကေန ညေန ၅နာရီ ေလာက္သြားရင္ ေနာက္ေန႕မနက္ ၉နာရီ ၁၀ေရာက္ပါတယ္။ ၂၀၀၀ ျပည္႕ႏွစ္ကစၿပီး ဗိုလ္ျမတ္ထြန္းတံတား ဖြင့္ၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ပိုင္း ရန္ကုန္-ပုသိမ္အသြားအျပန္ခရီးဟာ ၄နာရီပဲၾကပါတယ္။ ကိုယ္ပိုင္ကားနဲ႕ပံုမွန္ေမာင္းရင္ ၃နာရီ ခြဲအတြင္းေရာက္ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီလိုအသစ္ေဆာက္တဲ့ လမ္း၊ တံတားေတြေၾကာင့္လမ္းပန္းဆက္သြယ္ေရး လြယ္ကူလာၿပီး အရင္ကထက္စာရင္ က်န္းမာေရး၊ လူမႈေရး၊ ပညာေရး၊ စီးပြားေရး အခြင့္အလမ္းေတြတိုးတက္ လာတဲ့ၿမိဳ႕ေတြအမ်ားႀကီးရိွမွာပါ။ နယ္စပ္ေဒသေတြမဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေသးတာ၊ တိုးတက္ဖုိ႕လိုေနတဲ့ေနရာေတြ က်န္ေနေသးတာလည္း လံုး၀အမွန္ပါပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီႏွစ္၂၀အတြင္းမွာ လံုး၀မတိုးတက္လာပါဘူးလို႕ ေျခကန္ျငင္းရင္ေတာ့ မ်က္စိကန္းေနလို႕ျဖစ္ပါလိမ့္မယ္။ အစိုးရလုပ္လို႕တိုးတက္တာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္၊ ေခတ္ေရစီးေၾကာင္းေၾကာင့္၊ Globalization ေၾကာင့္ ဘာေၾကာင့္ပဲတိုးတက္တိုးတက္။ တိုးတက္လာတဲ့ အေျခအေနကိုေတာ့အသိအမွတ္ျပဳေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ (ဒီတုိးတက္လာတဲ့အေျခအေနေတြေပၚမွာ လာဘ္ေပးလာဘ္ယူမႈေတြရိွေနတာကေတာ့ ေနာက္ထပ္ျပႆနာတခုေပါ့။)
ေနာက္တခုကပိုၿပီးေကာင္းမြန္ပြင့္လင္းလာတဲ့အခြင့္အေရးေတြပါ။ ဆိုရွယ္လစ္စနစ္က ႏိုင္ငံျခားကိုထြက္ခြင့္ရတဲ့ လူအေရအတြက္နဲ႕ အခုစစ္အစုိးရလက္ထက္မွာႏိုင္ငံျခားထြက္တဲ့အေရအတြက္ဘယ္ဟာကပိုမ်ားပါသလဲ။ အဲဒီတုန္းကမတိုးတက္ေသးလို႕၊ လူေတြကအျမင္မက်ယ္ေသးလို႕လို႕ မျငင္းပါနဲ႕။ တံခါးပိတ္၀ါဒေၾကာင့္လည္း အမ်ားႀကီးပါပါေသးတယ္။ ဒီစကားေတြကိုေျပာေနလို႕ စစ္အစိုးရလုပ္သမွ်ေကာင္းေနတာပါလုိ႕ ေျပာေနတာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အရိွကိုအရိွအတိုင္းေတာ့ လက္ခံၾကေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။
အခုေလာေလာဆယ္မွာကၽြန္မတို႕အားကိုးေနတဲ့မီဒီယာ ၂ခုရိွပါတယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာ လက္ခံသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ လက္မခံသည္ျဖစ္ေစ၊ ၾကည္႕ေန၊ နားေထာင္ေနရတဲ့ အစုိးရအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တဲ့မီဒီယာပါ။ ေနာက္ျပည္ပကေနေပါင္းစံုေရးသားေနၾကတဲ့ မီဒီယာေတြပါ။ ၂ဘက္စလံုးကိုအစြန္းေရာက္ေနတယ္လို႕ ျမင္ပါတယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းမွာအမွန္အတိုင္းလြတ္လြတ္ လပ္လပ္မေရးႏိုင္၊ မေျပာႏိုင္ပဲ ဆင္ဆာကိုေၾကာက္ေနရပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာ့ရုပ္ျမင္သံၾကား၊ ျမ၀တီနဲ႕ ျမန္မာ့အလင္းေတြက အစုိးရလုပ္တာမွန္သမွ်အေကာင္းေရးၿပီး သတင္းေတြကိုကြယ္၀ွက္ထားပါတယ္။ တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာပဲ ျပည္ပမီဒီယာေတြက စစ္အစိုးရကမေကာင္းဘူးဆိုတဲ့ရပ္တည္ခ်က္ကိုယူထားၿပီး စစ္အစိုးရလုပ္သမွ်အျပစ္ေတြကိုေစာင့္ၾကည္႕ထုတ္လႊင့္ေပးပါတယ္။ စစ္အစိုးရလုပ္ေနတဲ့အထဲက ဒီတခုကေတာ့မဆိုးဘူးဆိုတဲ့ ေျပာဆိုခ်က္မ်ိဳးကိုမေတြ႕ရသေလာက္ရွားပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မအျမင္ေတာ့ မီဒီယာဆိုတာအျမင္အတုိင္းတင္ျပရမွာပါ။ (သေရာ္စာတို႕၊ သံုးသပ္ခ်က္တို႕က တက႑ေပါ့။) အခုေတာ့ ကၽြန္မတို႕ျပည္သူေတြမွာ ဒီမီဒီယာၾကည္႕ရင္ တမိ်ဳး၊ ဟိုမီဒီယာၾကည္႕ရင္တမ်ဳိး။ အဆိုးဆံုးကေတာ့ ျပည္ပမီဒီယာေတြရဲ႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအေပၚရုပ္လံုးေဖာ္တဲ့အေနအထားဟာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကိုမေရာက္ဖူးတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသားေတြဆိုရင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံကို ေျမာက္ကိုရီးယားေလာက္နီးနီးထင္သြားၾကတာပါ။ ေက်ာင္းမွာ ကၽြန္မတို႕ကို ဥေရာပဘက္ကလာတဲ့ေက်ာင္းသားေတြကေမးၾကပါတယ္။ နင္တို႕ကစစ္တပ္နဲ႕ဘာေတာ္လို႕ အခုလိုအျပင္ထြက္ၿပီး ပညာသင္ခြင့္ရတာလဲတဲ့။ ၿပီးရင္ ျမန္မာျပည္ျပန္လို႕ရရဲ႕လားတဲ့။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံဆိုရင္ လူေတြကဆင္းရဲစုတ္ျပတ္၊ လမ္းေတြကဆိုးဆိုး၀ါး၀ါး၊ လူေတြကက်ီးလန္႕စာစား၊ စစ္တပ္ကေသနတ္ကိုင္ၿပီး ေနရာတိုင္းေလွ်ာက္သြားေန အဲဒီလိုမ်ိဳးကိုထင္ေနၾကတာပါ။ အဲဒါေၾကာင့္ ျပည္တြင္းမွာရိွတဲ့ မီဒီယာေရာ၊ ျပည္ပမွာရိွတဲ့မီဒီယာေရာ အရိွကိုအရိွအတိုင္းတင္ျပေစခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ျပည္တြင္းမီဒီယာအေျခအေနက အခုအခ်ိန္မွာေျပာင္းလဲဖုိ႕မျဖစ္ႏိုင္ေသးတဲ့အခါ ျပည္ပမီဒီယာေတြက တကယ္ကိုျပည္သူေတြစိတ္ခ် ယံုၾကည္အားကိုးရေလာက္တဲ့အေနအထားျဖစ္လာရင္ အရမ္းေကာင္းမွာပါ။
Last semester, I took the module called ‘Politics and Policy in South East Asia’ in which each group of students had to do presentation about a country in SEA. But the native students from a particular country were not assigned for that country. For instance, the Malaysian students were not in the presenting group of Malaysia. On the week of Myanmar presentation, that group went to interview with Myanmar ambassador as well as attached a video from Youtube to their presentation. The video was an interview with some Myanmar workers in Singapore during Saffron Revolution (I don’t remember whether it is from the Channel News Asia or Mediacorp). The interview, a male worker, talking about the poverty of the population inside the country, mentioned that some people were so poor that they were living below the income of USD 2 per month. See, even if a person can only have congee everyday without any side dish, it will cost around 400 Kyats for two times per day and 12,000 Kyats (around USD 12 according the recent black market rate) per month. But it’s highly unlikely that a person can eat congee every day. How can a person live under USD 2 per month?
And then, he said that there had been no infrastructure development under this military government during past 20 years. The video included some snapshots of the buses and people travelling from the year of 1995 and claimed that the present situation remained the same. Okay, it can be acceptable if someone argues that there should have been more developments than there are at present, given the rich natural resources and increasing population. But I cannot accept this sentence of NO development. If I point out the numbers of roads and bridges built after 1988, people may accuse me of allying with the military government (SPDC). But it is the truth that people cannot deny. I have my person experience of having benefited from a bridge which is built on the road to the capital from my hometown, Pathein (Bassein). Previously before the construction of the bridge, it took around 8 or 9 hours to reach to the capital from my hometown. The Irrawaddy River is around the half way. The ferries were used to move people and cars to the other side of river bank. For the people using express buses, one bus had to wait from the other side and picked up the people. But the ones with heavy luggage were not that convenient to travel alone. If the ship journey was taken, it took the whole night from my hometown to the capital. So, only the people who were not that in a hurry could take this route. After the Bo Myat Tun Bridge had constructed at that river crossing, the transportation improved a lot and it took only around 4 hours to travel between two cities. The private car can even make it in 3 hours. It surely improved the education, health, economic and social opportunities of the areas located along the new roads and near the new bridges. It is deniable that there still remains many places including border areas which need a serious care for development. But still, we cannot neglect the fact that we can see quite amount development efforts during these years. (Corruption related to these efforts is another issue.) We need to acknowledge the certain things if they are true.
Another thing is the increasing opportunities. Comparing with the Socialist Era of General Ne Win, there have been more people who can go out of the country for education and economic opportunities. Be there it is globalization or whatever the reason is; we need to know the difference between the closed-economy and open policies.
Myanmar people have basically two kinds of media. The first one is the government-managed media inside the country. This one talks about the government actions from the bright side. Other mistakes, policy errors, corruption and hideous crimes are hidden. The second one, the collective media from outside of the country, talks only about the dark side of the military government. Most of the media from the outside are anti-military regimes and politically biased. Hence, they do not clap even when the government is doing something positive. Both of them are at two extremes. For the common public, it’s very confusing to have two media which have two very different directions. And the foreigners and people who have never been to Myanmar only have access to these foreign and out-country online media. They thought of Myanmar as the second North Korea which closed everything. Some of them even imagined the Myanmar people being so poor, the bad transportation, and the soldiers holding the guns and walking around the streets. In my school, people, especially from Europe and the West, asked me whether I had some relation with the military or whether I came from elite family in Myanmar as I could come out and study in a foreign country. I am not here talking about to say that these media from the outside of the country are bad, or even worse than the one inside the country. BUT, we need the transparency to inject into the media. Please have the balanced news for constructive ideas and views on what the government is doing as well as the mistakes. And please also have the feasible recommendations to the government. Given the current critical situation, the government-managed media will not change in a short while. So, I wish we, Myanmar people, could rely on the out-country media for the sources of the news. I wish that these media can provide the transparent and politically-neutralized news which is also of the real source.
Haymar
A group of young people welcoming different perspectives and willing to have constructive dialogues to contribute better policies for our motherland "Myanmar"
Search This Blog
မိတ္ေဆြမ်ား ခင္ဗ်ား ..
မွတ္ခ်က္မ်ား ကို ယဥ္ေက်းေသာအသံုးအႏႈန္းမ်ားျဖင္႕ လြတ္လပ္စြာေရးသားႏိုင္ပါတယ္..
ရႈေထာင္႕စံုမွ ပါဝင္ေဆြးေႏြးရန္လည္း လႈိက္လွဲစြာ ဖိတ္ေခၚပါတယ္ ..
မတူညီေသာ အေတြးအေခၚမ်ားကို အခ်က္အလက္ ျပည္႕စံုစြာ ေဖၚျပေဆြးေႏြးေပးေစခ်င္ပါတယ္
ေက်းဇူးတင္လ်က္
Myanmar policy thinkers blog ...
ရႈေထာင္႕စံုမွ ပါဝင္ေဆြးေႏြးရန္လည္း လႈိက္လွဲစြာ ဖိတ္ေခၚပါတယ္ ..
မတူညီေသာ အေတြးအေခၚမ်ားကို အခ်က္အလက္ ျပည္႕စံုစြာ ေဖၚျပေဆြးေႏြးေပးေစခ်င္ပါတယ္
ေက်းဇူးတင္လ်က္
Myanmar policy thinkers blog ...
40 comments:
that's so true. thanks for the post *
Thanks for important point to be careful in dealing with foreigneers. My comment to all readres is that -Don't make the impression of our own country so bad. It is easy to say Govermnet is bad. Bad in what areas? We have to elborate a bit. we need more openess to show our beauty to the rest of the world. Wrong information make - the already distorted picture of Myanmar- worse. So, let's try our best to provide better and accurate information.
The miles of road and number of bridges are substantially increased since 1988 indeed. But, their quality is seriously in question. For example, electricity sector is obviously suffering from that kind of statistical misrepresentation (increased power output reported in newspaper vs. daily blackouts).
Perhaps Return on Investment assessment would throw a light on how wisely investment is made on the infrastructure development and what is the real output. (Well, rate of return must be on USD or equivalent, not in inflated Kyats)
I understand that this blog is meant for scholarly discussion. The blogger used "Before and After" Comparison Approach to support her argument that there are some sizeable development since 1988 (or such baseline).
"Before and After" approach is simple and inexpensive and it has a long history in business advertisement, and lately becomes a favourite propaganda tool for our government.
However, it is the duty of each and every government to invest in infrastructure development and it is nothing praiseworthy unless SPDC prove exceptionally well in doing so.
So, any argument should be based on "With and Without Intervention" (or randomization or whatever) approach. i.e. compare the development under SPDC with other scenarios (in theory, under NLD or BSPP) or with our neighbours.
For practical purpose, the development should be compare with peers (neighbouring countries) on key indicators like HDI ranking, per capita income, per capita GDP etc. If our country’s development for a certain time frame, says 1988~2008, is found to be on par with (Laos ..?), then, it is …….disappointing.
Well, thank you very much for your comment, Naing. (Sorry I don't know whether it's a he or she.) I agree with you about the investment and all that. But my argument for the whole post is not about praising govt for doing these infrastructure but just want to request media not to show wrong information. I don't want to say they are giving totally wrong info. But they didn't even give positive side of what's happening. You know, in a way, if you praise or encourage somebody for doing good, that might make him/her to make another good. They don't even know this basic thing. They always make the image worse. And the media inside the country, on other side, is showing only the good part. Seeing the in-country, media, people will think that the country is so rich. But that media is accessible to the citizens and it is not reliable because it is not transparent. So, people usually rely on out-country media and if it is not also credible because they are politically biased. Then who can we turn to? Should we live without any media? No way, right? So I was just saying that the media should improve. In a way, they need to grow up. I am glad that you point out before-after comparison. That's very easy, like you said. But most of the people do not even bother to compare. They are just blaming the present. I am just highlighting that these things are improving at least in order to show that we have hope for further development. We cannot let our heads down. So we need to hold our heads up, hope and work for the future. It's no point blaming in the past. And I just totally do not agree with people saying 'No Development during these years'. I am just showing the developments which is visible and measurable. Thank you very much and hope to hear from you more.
P.S - I am not going to say that the wrong investment in electricity but they are using the wrong strategies to export the electricity to the other countries. We can use it for better purpose inside and get more returns.
Haymar
Heymar's comparison is made before and after the intervention of current regime. It will be nice if we are able to compare with "imaginary change in ruling party form current to NLD- etc"
Meantime, it is more realistic to say- weather we are just - effortess or not? Government is undeniably making efforts, but very weak and somehow in effective way, Let's help to make it better. Thanks for positive comments.
thandar
Okay, sis. Since you started this, I will share my ideas. I am not sure even if NLD wins the election this time and if the party took over the govt. I don't think we will have significant developments in a short period. I am not saying from the negative side. I like Aung San Suu Kyi, Ko Ko Gyi and Min Ko Naing, U Win Tin and many others personally as they sacrifice their lives for the people. BUT, will they become the leaders (Not Aung San Suu Kyi)? Ko Ko Gyi and Min Ko Naing wants to take seats in the parliament? If they don't, who else are the credible? Even if they do, are their views and ideas up-to-date in order to manage the development issues of the countries. They have been in the prison for so long. Setting aside this issue, even the NLD wants to develop the country, they might end up negotiating with the ethnic groups for the early terms of their administration. Think about it. People are saying about the military government is using guns to control people. Then what about the ethnic groups? Don't they hold guns? Will they easily agree to give them up because the NLD becomes the govt. That's what basically the current govt is trying to do. Because the military govt is trying to have a constitutional and legitimate government which will deviate a bit far from the army (even though 25% seat reserved for army), the govt is trying to ask the ethnic rebels to convert to the Border Guard Group. And all the media (outside) is criticizing it. But if you have one army every state, how is the govt going to manage? If the negotiations with the ethnic armies and the new govt are not successful, the country might again in turmoil and the military might come in. The people will suffer. Then, you cannot talk about development anymore. You might even have civil war.
Haymar
nice talk, hearing new things here .. i want to know what is the different between politics and policy. can anyone explain me that?
suddenly I remember the news about the CDMA phones installation in the country.
it is obvious that is an improvement if compare to the past. an outside media broadcast that news so neutral as just a fact (not talking about possible future development of country's situation relating to that news) but then it directly said how the country has fallen behind when compare to india. roughly 20% of the news is about the phone installation but 80% is just tainting the country how miserable to live in it. i think the real fact of an improvement is diluted that way with bad perspectives on the country. i think this example will be relevant with the blogger's main argument. is it?
and yes, i also want to know what is the difference between politic and policy.
Thank you all the comments. It's really nice to see these flowing. I will explain as I understand.
Politics - You can call all the efforts someone make to gain something he/she wants. If we are talking about country, it might be social welfare, power, or wealth. All the efforts especially strategies to win something.
E.g. In a family, there are 4 people_ father, mother, one daughter and one son. If daughter wants to stay late at night, she has to win the agreement from father and mother at least. Then, she will use whatever strategy to win this agreement. She might request first. If it is not successful, she will throw tantrum. She might even strike and go hungry, stop cooking and etc. And again, the father and mother will use their strategy to stop her going out at night. They will lecture nicely to her first. Or, they will beat her. Even they can even lock her up. There will be others from outside who has different views upon this family. Some think daughter is not a good girl to want to go out at night. But some think that her parents are so out-dated. And they will support who they like. These are all politics. Mostly politics is interaction of a group, also responding the outside forces. If you say politics of a country, in America, politics is what you can see among the democrats and republicans and even among themselves. They all are using their own strategies to win public support.
Policy - Policy is a bit similar to law. But it is not a permanent one like law. Policy is a kind-of short-term strategy to solve a problem. You might say, 'No problem, no policy.' Only there is a problem in the countries, the government will start thinking to solve this problem by setting policies.
E.g. Some people might complain that there has been a lot of traffic jam on this particular road. When there are a lot of complaints, the government has to do something. They have to understand the problem first. And then, they have to think how to solve this problem. 1) The govt might want to build a sky bridge so that people can use it and less traffic will become on the road. 2) Or they might want to expand the road to accommodate more cars. 3) Or they might want to reduce the numbers of cars in the towns by imposing yearly tax on car or increasing petrol prices so that people will use public transport more. These are all policy alternatives.
So, you have to choose on policy which is the best for the society. Here the politics come in the policy process. When you want to choose the policy, the relating ministry cannot do it alone. The ministry has to ask the approval from the other ministries as well as main government. Let's assume that the relating ministry calculates and costs and benefits of the policy and decides that No. 2 is most cheaper financially and most effective. Then, what they also have to think about is that they has to think about the communication strategies and show all the ministries that they are not losing because of this policy. Okay, let's say if the ministry choose No.3, and reduces cars, the Ministry of Finance or Treasury Department will say that they will lose their income if they are importing cars. In this case, if the policy is good for most of the ministries, the Ministry of Finance will give up. But if half of the parliment is refusing to accept the policy, you have to think the other policy. That is why sometimes even though one policy is good for society, if the politics win the policy process, you cannot have that policy.
Hope that explains.
Haymar
"But, will they become the leaders (Not Aung San Suu Kyi)? Ko Ko Gyi and Min Ko Naing ......If they don't, who else are the credible? ....They have been in the prison for so long." -->Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years.
Some states like Singapore would insist that leadership must be groomed. But in other countries with well functioning democracy, politicians choose themselves to be politicians and people choose the leaders from among those politicians. It is genuine bottom-up approach.
Democracy won't solve all the problems overnight, and we may get a few succession of shaky governments (like Indonesia). With time, it would become matured and can lay a good political framework for solving chronic problems like ethnic issues.
Looking back, parliamentary democracy in 1950s is not perfect, but if it were giving some more time, things could be settled down. How long does it need to get matured? May be one decades or two, but it won't take 50 years (that we are kept waiting under military which insist that our people are not matured enough to that kind of democracy).
I see. let me sum up what I got from your explanation. thanks for your patience. so, politic is more like how to win majority of people's vote in return to fulfil their preference. Policy is about problem sovling, somewhat technical, skill, scientific and hopefully objective? so, should I say, policy (problem solving) skill is like a tool which governments use to fulfil their promises to their people (in democratic countries, governments become governments by people perference - vote, bottom-up right?)I think you guys got a good knowledge and profession there. keep up good work. lets us read the simple version of policy issues, the real problems of the country through technician eyes and potential ways to solve it. I'd heard enough of politics already and want to know new things.
Dear Naing and lestat,
Thank you very much for your support and comments.
@Naing. I can really understand what you are saying. This also goes in line with most of the people who are talking about democracy in Myanmar. But to me, personally, I have confusion with this issue. As you know, most of our people inside the country are trained to have a low-level education and low-ability to think out of the box. As I finished my high schoool and first degree there, I know a lot. The education system still use rote learning. My point is that, even if they can be given democracy, (like you said, when matured, may be 20 years) I really don't know it is relevant for them. I heard about the problem with democracy in Papua Newguinea from a friend from there. I am also thinking to write about it in the future posts. The thing is if the people are not able to think well yet and if they are given a freedom of choice, can they do a good choice? Another issue is related to culturalist. You can say, I am more inclined to have culturalist perspective on politics. To me, I don't want full-bloomed democracy like America. It's totally different from our culture. When a parent lectures his/her daughter and gets a reply from her like 'It's none of your business. I have freedom of my choice', I think that kind of democracy is not acceptable in our society. That will ruin our values and cultural system. And you know, even nowadays, young people are starting to ignore the good words from the neighbours and old folks. So, I still dare not imagine about the giving the full-fledged democracy to our country. (You can accuse me of looking back.)
But of course, I still agree the fact that the people have the right to choose their own government.
Haymar
just one word.
when we says "Public Policy" rather than just "policy", it can vividly express the ultimate purpose of the subject, "to serve people".
appreciate so much for this splendid discussion. thank you and welcome to you all again.
I agree with you, sis. That's the ultimate goal of policy analysts. But please also remember the professionalism of public policy analyst who has to be client oriented and who always has to look for the best solution for the client . Even though you think the first policy is very effective for society, you cannot choose that policy if it can lose out for the client. Policy never wins politics. Rather policy is a tool for the politicians. That's why we are using this platform which is politically neutral. :D
well said! no offense :D
Hi,
Quote ---
The country’s problems are a man-made disaster; incompetent military rulers are mainly responsible for Burma’s humanitarian crisis. It is the regime that should increase its budget and its spending on health and education rather than buying more jet fighters, military hardware and building a new capital estimated by the International Monetary Fund to cost between $122 million and $244 million.
Than Shwe’s regime has a long shopping list for his country’s 400,000 officers and soldiers. Over the past decade, the regime has bought warships from China, tanks from the Ukraine, MiG-29 jet fighters and a nuclear reactor from Russia, at an estimated cost of more than $3 billion. About 40 percent of the national budget goes on defense.
What if that money were spent instead on health and other areas for the improvement of people’s lives? Just 3 percent of the national budget is now spent on health services.
--- Quote
I have similar view with Naing.
Above three paragraphs are copied from Irrawaddy.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=9942
I doubt that the infrastructure constructions in Burma can be called developments. Naypyidaw development is also the infrastructure development if you want to name it. We have to look at the bigger picture. It is part of the high level mismanagement of budget. In other words, budget policy failure. So from public policy perspective, we can hardly say those as developments.
And I could hardly say that Irrawaddy is politically bias in this article. It is impossible to see such article in Burma media. We should weight which media (inside or outside of country) is more bias. Both sides have their own difficulties. But I believe foreign based media organizations improve very much in a few years.
Thanks...
Dear win, we already mentioned in our "meida article" since the very beginning that both inside and outside media are somehow exterme. we are not arguint that government media is right and irrwawdy is wrong. If evern the richest ans so called democray coutntry has very compolicated problmes regarding - budget for exmaple. Needless to say of our case. But our ambition is what can we help best to be better policy in postitive way, just negative perspective on all is quite pessimistic and we are then bound with no space for progress at all.Thanks.
Hi Win,
Thank you for letting us know your view. I agree with you to some extent. As I metioned in some of my comments, ultimate goal of policy analyst is to maximise the social welfare. But at the same time, policy analysts have to be client-oriented because without clients, they are jobless. And they can not be hired by the whole society but a group of people (may be govt, a ministry or even a small department). So depending on who you are serving, you have to give the best policy option for the client. In our country, the policy advisers are serving military as the military government is ruling the country at present. Then, they have to give the policy advice which will be the best for the military govt and these policies might not always meet the interests of the people. I am not talkint that it's good and acceptable. But I am just stating the facts. As we have the military government, their interests is to show that they are doing something for the country but they might not really know what they are doing is acutally what the people want. We understand that. But then how can you let them know that what they are giving is not what we want, or at least at that moment? Or what they are doing is still small for the whole population to have a large impact and need to do more? We need media for that.
But at the same time, being a media, we need to acknowledge the developments, regardless of significant or not, and then encourage to develop more. I am just advising media to encourage more. I don't know how you understand 'development'. To me, if something is static and not changing over time, there's no development. But regardless of good intention or not, if there's some changes leading to positive effect, we can say that this is development. Thank you very much.
Hi,
As I said in my comment. I accepted that all Burmese media are inferior by international standard. And I understand that there are rooms for improvement. But we should accept that there are different challenges and limitations on each side. Here are some questions.
- Are we paying for the service like buying a newspaper?
- Where does the fund come from to run the media?
- Who are the contributors?
- How much resources they have inside Burma?
So it is better to have alternatives. And we all know how to believe a piece of news. And the most important thing is that they are improving. And I did not say any word about 'right' or 'wrong' or 'black' or 'white'. Accepting that there is no neutral media in the whole world, it is about which one is nearer to neutral.
About 'development', it is the matter of which level you take. I must say that the government could achieve improvements in building infrastructure but failed in socioeconomic front. Like in 'Win the battle but lose the war'. There was a policy failure. This is the fact. It is not politic nor personal opinion nor evaluation of intention.
Here, some dissident media failed to remember about the win of battle as it is.
Thanks..
Hi, Win, I agree with you to have the alternative. Not only in media but also in any other services. If we have alternatives, we have choice. If the alternative is very good and it can completely cover the original one, the people will not go back to the original one. The original service might have to reform.
Media is also the same. We like alternatives. We like choices. That's why I encourage the alternative media (out-of-country media) to improve. Apparently, the media in our country is state-managed media. We cannot expect many true stories. And as I mentioned in the post, we cannot expect it to change in a short while. That's is the reason why I want the out-media to become the real alternative of media which gives us the true source of news which are also politically not biased.
And another point about development, you mentioned that our govt failed to improve the social, health and education. But do you think this is only the problem in our country? You mentioned that the govt is investing in ammunition or arms when it should have invested in social development aspect like education, health and others.
Let's take India as an example. People are talking about the success of ICT sector in India. (especially mobile) But what about education? Only people who cannot afford private education goes for public education which is also divided between province (state) level and country level. State education is not standard education but children from low income families have to depend on it. The government cannot still improve the situation. Now it is doing infrastructure reforms.
And how many countries can provide free public health service which is really good? Look at Singapore. Even Singaporeans have to pay a lot for a good service. And everybody thinks that Singapore health system is very efficient. (service). But I was hospitalized here two times during last year, the service is okay. But of course, the price is very high. And the service is not without errors and mistakes. I was hospitalized twice because they did something wrong in the first time. But because I already signed on the paper that I knew the risks, I couldn't complain. There are also many things. But the point is that the health system in Singapore is good. But that's not public health. (meaning not for public if you can't pay money.) There are many similar examples even in the countries in the West. That's why I am saying to the media to acknowledge if our govt is doing something positive.
Hi Haymar,
I have nothing to argue with you about the main theme. And I also accept that there were some positive outcomes under military gov.
I don't want to demand free service but affordable one. I personally think the quality of Burmese Healthcare system was better before 1988 with enough rules and regulation. Now there is no clear line between private and public sectors. And it is not very clear how they standardize and control private sector.
We can see some indicators about the healthcare in Burma. By looking into life expectancy and infant death, there were some improvements under this regime. These are quantitative indexes.
Life expectancy is 20 years lower than Singapore.
It is not fair to compare Burma with Singapore. Singapore know how to handle private sector. So however the healthcare costs are high, they manage it to be affordable through insurances and medisave. Now Burma is moving to privatize part of healthcare system without any insurance system and saving scheme. One of the best option is to improve current social security infrastructure (have one office in each township) which was forgotten for so long.
Lets see...
Win, I have no objection for your view. And also about the social security infrastructure. I still have to learn a lot in this aspect and know more the existing policies in Myanmar.
But just one point, you mentioned about 'affordability' issue. I admit that our health service available in the govt hospitals in the cities are not capable enough to cure some of the high-technical treatment and also that the service is quite poor. But if you want to compare affordability, the cost for bearing and delivering a child is much more cheaper in Myanmar than the other countries. That's just one aspect. Also in some other minor operations and all that. The price is cheap not because our currency is not as valuable as the other currencies. Say Singapore dollar or Thai baht. But still you can have this kind of service at very cheap cost. One of my friends once mentioned her experience in one of the hospitals where the cost for delivering a child (CS, not normal delivery) is only around 15,000 kyats excluding the food and other travel costs. They only take 7,000 kyats for the anaesthetist and cancel all the other costs if the patients are very poor. But she said that she could understand the poverty of the peopel, but she couldn't understand why people couldn't save up to 15,000 kyats for a nine-month pregnancy.
I know most of the Singaporeans have medisave or something else to cover their health expenses. But please don't forget that they have to pay for it every year.
I also heard a lot about people complaining for the sharing-cost scheme of the govt hospitals. But how can a poor country like Myanmar can provided health service for free or at very low cost? Even if Myanmar suddenly wants to develop further and tries to improve economy and developments, providing free or low-cost service is quite difficult. There must be some cost-bearing policies which differentiate between the rich and the poor.
Thank you. And really nice to hear your opinion.
After seeing the very lively discussion, I can’t help commenting again.
Regarding infrastructure development, some may see it as “Half a loaf is better than none”. But let us look at it a little deeper. Our state budget is always in deficit (at least until gas money fill up the government coffer in recent years). So, how to raise the money for massive infrastructure developments in the past two decades? Issue treasury bonds or borrow from commercial banks or international development agencies? Well, the solution is by increasing money supply (i.e. printing money by central bank), which is accompanied by inflation. CPI increase 10 times between 1989 and 1999. (Well, we experienced it personally. No need to look up data from CSO which may be distorted.) Increased money supply, with improved infrastructures should lead to economic development.
On the other hand, investment in infrastructure development may not yield the desired return due to poor strategic decision, like NPT construction, or poor infrastructure itself, like poor quality, budget overrun, etc. In that case, public does not enjoy the economic development, instead have to bear the cost burden (since the increase money supply to finance the infrastructures come back to the public in the form of inflation). So, should I say that “None is better than Half a Loaf”?
Regarding the public healthcare, the blogger used Singapore for comparison. But, unfortunately, Singapore is not the rule but an exception among first world countries. Instead of the social security and public health care system common in developed countries, Singapore has mandatory CPF saving, (i.e. the government micromanage personal income.) In Japan, another Asian first world country, public have to pay for compulsory health insurance based on their income. In turn, the insurance cover 70% of your medical cost. In Sweden, the state pay all the cost (98%?) which is financed by heavy taxation.
Put it in another way, government healthcare spending per GDP for Singapore is 1.1%, Japan 5.7%, Sweden 6.6%. China 2.1%, Laos 1.2%, while Myanmar is just 0.2% as of 2002. What a Shame!
You may elaborate more on the ratio of healthcare vs. military spending, if u wish. ;)
I think I don't have no objection on this. I said in my last comments about the policy advisers' professionalism which is to be client-oriented. That's also one reason why the policy adviser in Myanmar have to be look out for military rather than the society. The cost for military spending, I know, is high although we don't know much about how they spent.
And I know quite a lot about Myanmar banking system and they are printing money whenever necessary. BUT, I am not sure they are printing money for all the infrastrucutre projects because there are some so-called development assistance from China in terms of concessional loans, low-interest loan as well as debt relief. Most of the loans are tied to the construction projects like industries and infrastructure rather than investing in healthcare or social welfare. May be because infrastructure is visible so Chinese wants the military govt to invest in infrastructure only.
And let's look at the GDP of the countries you mentioned. You compared the percent of health care spending. But what about GDP and GDP per capita for these countries. 3,650,000,000,000 (28611.07) in Japan, 266,000,000,000 (29814.01) in Swedan, 3,970,000,000,000(3104.25) in China and 8,500,000,000 12,600,000,000 (1572.81) in Lao when there is only 33,300,000,000 (711.78) in Myanmar. The figures in the brackets are GDP per capita. Here we can see how the GDP between countries different and how GDP per capita is also different. GDP per capita in Myanmar is the lowest. We can say that the contribution or the spending available for each person in the country is very low relative to what's available in the other countries. We cannot compare only the govt spending alone and say that health spending is low or education spending is low. We need to compare with how much we are able to spend. So, please have a look at what GDPs say. Thank you, Naing again for the comment.
guys and a lovely girl! :)
mind if i step into this lively conversation a bit?
this is just a house keeping stuff about the stand point of Policy advisers/analysts ..
Thanks haymar for all the effort, appreciate your writings and the messages coming out from the lively conversation.
quote from previous ...
" I said in my last comments about the policy advisers' professionalism which is to be client-oriented. That's also one reason why the policy adviser in Myanmar have to be look out for military rather than the society."
I could catch exactly what haymar wanted to say at the very first post and also in this comments.
she didn't want to say who is better in policy making or media running. she just wanted to point out that the true facts of the country and its (possible/potential/small or big) developments over time are still undermined by media under their subjectivity. And she proposed to make a change, she is more wishy than me i guess :) thanks haymar.
let me explain a bit of policy stand point.
Mr. A can say bad about Mr.B, also Mr.B can say stupid to Mr. A, and Mr.C come in and shout how nonsense everything is. That is different with policy subject.
The stand point of "public policy" is not like A, or B,or C nor to advocate any of them.
Policy advisers look at the Problem, take a given situation as status quo and find a proper solution to improve it toward society welfare.
Then, the very important "then"
they design their policies to be acceptable by the key-player(the client).
that is what haymar meant "client oriented"
but for sure the ultimate goal is for all the people in the country, not for any small group of people.
and you might know this is not an easy task. right now the comments are showing that "out-side media are also hard to be assumed as key player" in letting people know about Myanmar with its true images(good and bad equally with all facts and politics adjusted in the news)
yes, it is undeniable for us to accept, like Win pointed out with questions before "challenges and limitations" from both sides.
knowing this as un-easy task, let's keep looking and try to understand things around us more clearly by such lively discussions.
thank you for all the comments. You guys make the issue so colorful, i learn a lot. thanks.
I am well aware that my comments have digressed from the original theme of this blog. But, it is arduous when the blogger(s) take the stand that the discussion should be oriented toward an acceptable solution to the current regime. That is what UN, aid agencies and individuals have been trying for years, yet without success. The main obstacle appears to be the lack of willingness of the regime.
The bloggers’ discussion reminds me of Dr. Zarni’s article “Stiglitz and the Master of Puppets” in which he correctly prophesied outcome of Professor Stiglitz's visit.
Let me quote, “Indeed Burma has become a graveyard of luminous engagers, figuratively speaking. Among them are Wall Street’s John Rockefeller Jr., Professor Jeffrey Sachs, UN’s Ban Ki-Moon, American senators John McCain (Republican) and Jim Webb (Democrat), former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Malaysia’s ambassador Razali, Indonesian president Bambang Yudhoyono, and most recently Nigeria’s Dr. Ibrahim Gambari…There are also locals, dissidents and generals, who got buried in .. ghostly engagement graveyard… I know; I was one of them. General Khin Nyunt was another. I feel we have all run fools’ errands, having opted for the easy route of engagement over a decisive overthrow of what is beyond reform.”
Professor Stiglitz said with optimism that “This is the moment of change for the country” after giving advices to promote access to agricultural financing, seed and fertilizers, as well as spending on healthcare and education. So far, the news of government spending that follow his visit is the purchase of 20 MIG-29 fighters at a cost of 570 million USD.
And let me get back to the healthcare spending. I agreed that per capita spending for Myanmar cannot catch up with other countries. But spending as a %GDP shouldn’t match? Healthcare sector deserve more allocation from the government revenue.
Regarding money supply problem, statistical data show that dramatic increase in money supply (M1, M2) and the inflation (CPI increased) share the same patterns in the post-1988 era.
Yes, China has been providing concessional loans. But the Terms and Conditions that normally follow such loans are, 50% or more of total procurement must be from China, Chinese companies shall be selected as project contractors, etc. With the loan coming from China, how far our decision makers have bargaining power (and necessary competency) to negotiate with them (or just eying for kickback, leading to sort of Cement Armada*)?
(*in which original order of 2.9M ton of cement at a cost of N52 million was inflated to 16M tons at N557 million when Nigeria’s unloading capacity is just 2M tons a year)
Is the quality of materials (and design) comparable to the projects under loan from international financial institutions and development agencies? It is more likely that our country becomes a dumping ground. Is the loan appraisal as stringent as other international financial institutions like World Bank, ADB, and JBIC? After all, we have to pay back the loan one day. (Well, I have no idea on the ratio of debt relief to loan.) We often see only the initial capital cost for development projects. If we consider life cycle cost, are they still viable?
We can only take wild guesses on most of these questions for now. I wonder if our so-called “Discipline-flourishing Democracy” would ever bring Good Governance, Transparency, and Accountability necessary for the country development!!!
Hi,
Naing is right in questioning "But spending as a %GDP shouldn’t match?" It is 6 times lower than Laos in Naing's figures. And it is also questionable about the competence so called professionalism of the advisers.
Actually, I believe most of these figures we used are from outside media including CIA fact book. It is fair to say that the media outside is working up to a considerable level.
When we think about Pakistan, we may see images of war torn nation worse than Burma. This is what the international media did. But in reality Pakistan is a bit superior. They are semi-industrialized, have international businesses and a stock exchange. My point is that the image problem is not only in the case of Burma. It is normal in international journalism.
And one of the limitations for the outside media is the shortage of contributors. Most of us don't feel very free to contribute to them (both international and dissident media). That is how deep fear is rooted inside us. We are in this together and the vicious cycle continues going round.
Thanks..
I have no comments on Naing as my main argument in my post is already clear enough. And like we said earlier, this blog meant to be politically neutral. And about the competence of the policy advisers of the military govt, I cannot comnent as I am just a young scholar on policy studies. And I can also sympathise them as everybody might do the same if they are put under certain risk. For China relations with Myanmar, I know quite a lot as I have been doing research on it and I wrote a paper about it which will be published soon. But thank you again for pointing this. Thank you all for open discussion.
I just want to clarify my recent comment!
Of course, very few people are in a position to question the competency of economic gurus Professor Sachs and Professor Stiglitz! (I am not one of them, sure). I do know that there are a lot of local experts as well.
My comment emphasize on how far advisers can influence on the decision maker! In other words, how far decision makers are willing to take the advise of the experts!
I would appreciate if somebody can show me an example (of current regime.)
To me, the answer is 'depend on the policy advice'. As long as the advice given by the advisers is beneficial to the government, they will think about it. But even if the policy is benefit for them, they will not do it if it is beyond their capacity. That's how I understand.
Haymar
Hi,
I notice some advisors in the light both foreign and locals. But mostly in freelence style.
But there may b a group internally. They may be in bureaucratic positions or retired employees. I guess these group has some kind of influence on the decisions. I know a few retired individuals working for ministers like this internally.
Naing, you can see the current privatization processes as the gov is aware of the internationl advices and trends. But it is arguable about the timing and implementation before any legislative body is in place.
As I understand, a policy should be considered for organization's interest rather than personal. Currently, it is obvious that it is not the case even for military interest.
Thanks, Win. Actually, to me, although I didn't touch upon the competence of the policy advisers that the military govt have, some of the policies or strategies that they are using are not beneficial even for the government. Apparently they used some policies just divert the symptoms of the problem to the other problems so that they don't have to solve the cause of the problem right now. But actually, as the cause of the problem is not settled, the problem keeps propping up.
And some of the policies like exchange rate policy, if we compare benefits and costs of the government, costs are much more higher. And if we had the relevant exchange rate policy, the govt would have reaped more benefits. But obviously, the govt does not have the competent advisers in this field and (or may be they dare not talk about this) the institutional capacity which would be the reform area. If we want to transform the economy into a more competitive and more effective one, there are many necessary reforms_ banking, institutions, public sector, and some other policy reforms. So, to avoid these reforms, the only way is to just continue with the current trend which is not effective. The concern for govt, in my opinion, is that the conflicts or oppositions which might be risen from the public sector as there are many old bureaucrats who usually are afraid of change.
Regarding the policy advices/advisers, I believe we have really competent people in our country. Back in 2000, B-G Zaw Tun, the then Dy. Minister of National Planning, made a speech to a group of scholars in which he frankly assessed the economic situation. Unfortunately, the speech leaked out and it costed him his job.
And, a couple of years ago, I had a small talk with a retired professor of economics , who is doing sort of advisor as Win said. It is understood that even when mid-level decision makers understand some policies are not beneficial, they are helpless when decision comes from above.
Regarding exchange rate policy, govt has very competent advisor. I think, ADB urged govt, a few years ago, to reform it while the govt has enough gas money to cushion any impacts.
Regarding privatization, if I am not mistaken, Privatization Commission was formed in 1995. Back then, it privatized some rice mills and cinemas. A few years later, there was a policy u-turn and many new factories (supposedly under concession loans from China) are constructed by Industry 1 and Trade & Commerce. And now, all of a sudden, while the government is packing to go for election, they are selling off anything and everything in sight, as if it were a clearance sale. Current process lack transparency and worse, most items go into the hands of a few crony businessmen. It might create a handful of oligarchs as in post-Soviet era, but little chance of public benefit.
While privatization is theoretically good, such kind of privatization credible and praiseworthy???
PS. I really enjoy this discussion, but only regulars here.
The bloggers fails to attract more participants (or just waiting to close out this post?) ;)
Naing, yes, you are so true. Privatization seems to be good if it is going to abide by the market discipline. But there needs to be check-and-balance systems for that. We need stronger institutions to have insight over market. And only if we have some thoroughly defined rules and contract, privatization can be managed well. Otherwise, privatization is very dangerous than leaving the resources with uneffective public sector.
I also enjoy the discussion. Yes, if we have more participants, that will surely be great. May be we still need to advertise for publicity of our blog? :) The thing is that we are currently busy with our final papers and so we don't have much time to publicize it. May be after some time.
ဟုတ္ပ ႏုိင္ ေရ..
အဲလိုေျပာလိုက္ေတာ႕ နဲနဲေတာင္အားငယ္ခ်င္သလိုျဖစ္သြားတယ္ ..:)
not really! :D
ပထမဆံုးေျပာခ်င္တာကေတာ႕ ဒီမွာေရးေနသူေတြက ဘေလာဂ္ဂါေတြမဟုတ္ဘူးဆိုတာပါ.. ဒီဘေလာဂ္႕ကေလးေရးျဖစ္ၾကတာကိုက မရည္ရြယ္ပဲနဲ႕႔ပါ။ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ ကိုယ္သန္ရာဘာသာေတြယူျပီး တစ္ေယာက္နဲ႕ တစ္ေယာက္ေတြ႕ခဲတာမို႕ ေတြ႕ခဲ႕ရင္ အျမင္ေတြ အေတြးေတြ ျဖစ္ေစခ်င္တဲ႕ ေစတနာေတြ ဖလွယ္ေလ႕ရွိတာ မနက္ေလးနာရီလည္း တိုင္တတ္တယ္.. တေနလည္းကုန္တတ္တယ္.. ေနာက္ဆံုး မခြဲခ်င္ခြဲခ်င္နဲ႕ ပြဲဆက္ဖို႕ေတးျပီး အေတာ္ႏႈတ္ဆက္ယူၾကရတာလား.. အဲဒါနဲ႕ တစ္ေန႕ေတာ႕ သူငယ္ခ်င္းတစ္ေယာက္ကအၾကံေပးတယ္ ဘာလို႕အင္တာနက္ေပၚမွာ ဆက္မေျပာႏိုင္ရမွာလဲတဲ႕ .. အခန္းတစ္ခုသာဖြင္႕လိုက္ပါ အားတဲ႕သူအားတဲ႕အေလ်ာက္ အေတြးေလးေတြ မွတ္တမ္းတင္ထား ေဝမွ်ထားႏိုင္တာေပါ႕တဲ႕ .. ဒီလိုနဲ႔ပဲ ဒီဘေလာဂ္ဖြင္႕ခဲ႕ရတာပါပဲ။ ေနာက္တစ္ခုက ေရးေနသူေတြအားလံုးက ဒီမွာေရးမယ္႕ေဆြးေႏြးေနက်အေတြးေတြက လက္ရွိ ွိpopular trend နဲ႕တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕ေနရာေတြမွာ ကြာျခားေနမယ္ဆိုတာလဲ သိၾကပါတယ္။ နဲနဲ ေရွ႕ေရာက္ေနတာလို႕ ကၽြန္မကေတာ႕ ဆိုခ်င္ပါတယ္။ ဒါမယ္႕ popularity ကိုလိုက္ခ်င္ရင္ objective နဲ႕ေဝးသြားျပန္ေကာေလ။ ခုပို႕စ္မွာေတာင္ မလြတ္လပ္တဲ႕ မီဒီယာေတြရဲ႕ subjectivity ဆုိတာျမင္ခဲ႕ရျပီမဟုတ္လား။ လက္ေတြ႕မွာ လက္ရွိျဖစ္ေနတဲ႕ trend, popularity ကိုမလြန္ဆန္ႏိုင္တာ မလြန္ဆန္ရဲတာဆိုတာလည္း လူ႕သဘာဝတစ္ခုပါ။ တကယ္ေတာ႕ အဲသည္သဘာဝက လူေတြရဲ႕ အေတြးနယ္ပယ္ကိုက်ဥ္းသြားေစႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒီကအေရးအသားေတြက တစ္ခါတစ္ေလ ဘယ္ဘက္ကေျပာေနမွန္းမသိေလာက္ေအာင္ကို ဇေဝဇဝါျဖစ္စရာေကာင္းပါလိမ္႕မယ္။ အဲဒါအမွန္ပါ ဒီဘေလာဂ္မွာ ဘက္ မရွိပါဘူး။ ဘယ္သူ႕ေနာက္ကိုလိုက္မယ္ဆိုတဲ႕အေတြးမရွိပါဘူး။ ေရးတဲ႕သူအမ်ားစုကလည္း ဘက္ေတြခြဲျပီး မၾကည္႕ၾကဖို႕သေဘာရပါတယ္။ ျမင္သမွ်ကို ေတြးမိသမွ်ကို ျမင္တဲ႕အတိုင္း အရွိအတိုင္းေရးၾကဖို႕ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြသေဘာတူထားၾကပါတယ္..။ ကိုယ္သိသမွ်နဲ႕ အေတြးေတြက နဲနဲ ေစာေနပါေစဦး လက္ရွိအေျခအေနကိုရွင္းလင္းျမင္ႏိုင္ဖို႕ ပိုေကာင္းတဲ႕ အေျခအေနတရပ္ဆီသို႕ အျပဳသေဘာေဆာင္ဖို႕ပဲ ဦးတည္ပါတယ္။ သိသမွ်ကို မွ်ေဝတဲ႕ေနရာမွာ popularity ကိုထည္႕မစဥ္းစားမိၾကပါဘူးရွင္။ ကိုယ္႕အျမင္မွ အဟုတ္ပါလို႕ မေျပာလိုပါဘူး။ အတင္းသေဘာတူလွည္႕ပါလို႕လည္း သေဘာမရွိပါဘူး။ ဘာစက္ကြင္းမွ လႊမ္းမိုးမႈမရွိတဲ႕ အင္တာနက္ေပၚမွာ ဒီမိုကေရစီ သေဘာကိုျပည္႕ျပည္႕ဝဝ အသံုးခ်ခ်င္ပါတယ္။
အျမင္ေတြကို ပြင္႕ပြင္႕လင္းလင္းဖလွယ္ဖို႕ .. ရႈေထာင္႕တမ်ိဳးထဲကေန ၾကည္႕ေနက် ျမင္ေနက် အျဖစ္ေတြကို ရႈေထာင္႕စံုကျပန္သံုးသပ္ၾကဖို႕ သေဘာတူထားၾကပါတယ္။ အေၾကာင္းအရာကိစၥတိုင္းကိုလည္း အေျဖေပးႏိုင္ဖို႕လည္းမရည္ရြယ္ထားပါဘူး။ ရႈေထာင္႕သစ္နဲ႕ အေတြးမွတ္စုေတြပါ။
ေနာက္တစ္ခုက ကိုယ္တိုင္က ဘေလာဂ္ေတြလိုက္ဖတ္ရတာ အလြန္သေဘာက်ေပမယ္႕ မွတ္ခ်က္ဝင္ေပးေလ႕မရွိတာမို႕ ကိုယ္လိုလူေတြရွိမယ္ဆိုတာေတာ႕ မွန္းလို႕ရပါတယ္။
ဒါေၾကာင္႕ ဒီဘေလာဂ္လို႕ေခၚရမယ္႕ ေနရာကေလးကေတာ႕ အေတြးေတြကို အေႏွာင္အဖြဲ႕ကင္းကင္း မက္လံုးကင္းကင္းနဲ႕ ရဲရဲ ဝံ႕ဝံ႕တင္ျပျပီး မွတ္တမ္းထားထားတဲ႕ ေနရာေလးတစ္ခုအျဖစ္ လူတိုင္းအတြက္ ရွိေနပါလိမ္႕မယ္။ ဒီေနရာေလးမ်ိဳးေတြ အင္တာနက္ေပၚမွာ အမ်ားၾကီးရွိၾကဦးမွာပါ။ အဲသည္အတြက္ သည္လိုအခြင္႕အေရးေပးႏိုင္တဲ႕ အင္တာနက္ေခတ္ကို တကယ္ေက်းဇူးတင္မိပါရဲ႕။ ။
ပိုစ္႕ေတြကေတာ႕ ထပ္တက္ေနဦးမွာပါ .. ေတြးဖုိ႕အခ်ိန္ရတိုင္းေပါ႕.. ႏိုင္လည္း ေတြးမိတဲ႕အခါတိုင္း အခုလို ဝင္ေဆြးေႏြးႏိုင္ပါတယ္ .. ၾကိဳဆိုလ်က္ပါ။ ။
The blogger herself is contained herself in a box while she is talking about "think out of the box."
WHy I said that? Simple. She is doing so much research as she claimed and knowing so much as she highlighted but it is like reading books after books and noted down to get the written facts. Gosh! go look around on the ground and feel the real life and the facts.
The whole governing mechanism is no wheere to be seen. So what policy we are talking man!
Is there any policy?
Contradicting is that. This moment she is teaching media to be well-behaved acting like a pro, seasoned head-editor and the next she said she is just a young scholor.
And another fact that why I said she is in the box herself? She claimed that during this Junta's rule, millions of people getting out of the country because we are ready and more opportunities! Goodness.. I wonder if she knows what she is talking. People are leaving because they can't survive. They hardly can put a decent meal on the table. Behead me if 50% of the people leaving said they are leaving because they are more globalized and more opportunities. They lost their lives,. They lost their families. They lost many many things that valueless. Social loss. If the country is prospered and sufficient, who would ant to leave their motherland.
You are the scholor and those people you know are the upper rung of the crops. They wont't suffer much loss becasue they can bring their family along and they have the capabilities. For those who can't and becoming hard labours in the foreign lands, what happened? Thie parents passed away, let's say! They can just cry their heartt-burst and dry. That's it. They can't go back and see their love ones' final count down. That is just a tip of the iceland's broken iceberg. Get real lady.
From what you wrote I dare say that you too, are from the elite group of people that don't know the ground, the real ground in Myanmar. Worry that one day you might become air-conditioned policy maker in Myanmar.
And you mentioned, Poor Nation Myanmar. WHy poor? you know very well that Myanmar is not supposed to be so?
Young lady! I am not tatally out of agreement on whatever you said but get real.. Go down the ground under the hot sun before flipping throgh books after books to do your research. If no. be graduated. Fold your paper and safe-keep to talk about it with your grandchildren one fine day but do not take up any post that has to do with policy making. Let's not fail our beloved Myanmar over and over again. Beg you, please.
The blogger herself is contained herself in a box while she is talking about "think out of the box."
WHy I said that? Simple. She is doing so much research as she claimed and knowing so much as she highlighted but it is like reading books after books and noted down to get the written facts. Gosh! go look around on the ground and feel the real life and the facts.
The whole governing mechanism is no wheere to be seen. So what policy we are talking man!
Is there any policy?
Contradicting is that. This moment she is teaching media to be well-behaved acting like a pro, seasoned head-editor and the next she said she is just a young scholor.
And another fact that why I said she is in the box herself? She claimed that during this Junta's rule, millions of people getting out of the country because we are ready and more opportunities! Goodness.. I wonder if she knows what she is talking. People are leaving because they can't survive. They hardly can put a decent meal on the table. Behead me if 50% of the people leaving said they are leaving because they are more globalized and more opportunities. They lost their lives,. They lost their families. They lost many many things that valueless. Social loss. If the country is prospered and sufficient, who would ant to leave their motherland.
You are the scholor and those people you know are the upper rung of the crops. They wont't suffer much loss becasue they can bring their family along and they have the capabilities. For those who can't and becoming hard labours in the foreign lands, what happened? Thie parents passed away, let's say! They can just cry their heartt-burst and dry. That's it. They can't go back and see their love ones' final count down. That is just a tip of the iceland's broken iceberg. Get real lady.
From what you wrote I dare say that you too, are from the elite group of people that don't know the ground, the real ground in Myanmar. Worry that one day you might become air-conditioned policy maker in Myanmar.
And you mentioned, Poor Nation Myanmar. WHy poor? you know very well that Myanmar is not supposed to be so?
Young lady! I am not tatally out of agreement on whatever you said but get real.. Go down the ground under the hot sun before flipping throgh books after books to do your research. If no. be graduated. Fold your paper and safe-keep to talk about it with your grandchildren one fine day but do not take up any post that has to do with policy making. Let's not fail our beloved Myanmar over and over again. Beg you, please.
ပထမက မေရးေတာ့ဘူးလို႔ပဲ။
အေပၚက "Concerned Citizen of Myanmar" ေရးသားခ်က္ေတြက ပုဂၢိဳလ္ေရး အေတာ္ဆန္လို႔ မႀကိဳက္ေပမယ့္လည္း မွန္တာေလးေတြပါတယ္ ထင္ပါတယ္။ ေဆြးေႏြးစရာလည္းပါပါတယ္။
Policy Making ေခါင္းစဥ္နဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးၾကၿပီး Policy Advisor ေတြကို မေဝဖန္ရဲပါဆိုတာ သတိျပဳမိပါတယ္။ သိပ္ ပုဂိၢဳလ္ေရးဆန္သြားမယ္ ထင္လို႔ပါ။ ဘာပဲျဖစ္ျဖစ္ သူကဘာ ငါကဘာဆိုတာထက္ ေဆြးေႏြးတဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအခ်က္ကို ပိုဂရုျပဳသင့္တယ္ ထင္တာပဲ။ (က်ေနာ့အေနနဲ႔ေတာ့ စတစ္ဂလစ္လာေျပာလည္း မေၾကာက္ဘူးခင္ဗ်။ ရြန္းနီကန္တဲ့ ပင္နယ္တီဖမ္းရသလုိ သေဘာထားပါတယ္။ ဟဲဟဲ။)
ေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔ ေကာင္းတာက "Is there any policy?" ဆိုတာပါ။ က်ေနာ့္အျမင္အရေတာ့ Policy ရွိပါတယ္။ မူဝါဒ ကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ Institutional Capacity အဖြဲ႔အစည္း စြမ္းေဆာင္ရည္ မရွိတာပါ။ ဥပမာေပးရရင္ အစိုးရ စီးပြားေရးဦးတည္ခ်က္ ေတြထဲက "စိုက္ပ်ိဳးေရးကို အေျခခံၿပီး... " ဆိုတာ ေပၚလစီပါ။ စတစ္ဂလစ္ႀကီး လာေတာ့လည္း ဒါပဲေျပာတာပါပဲ။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီမူဝါဒကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ႏိုင္ဖို႔ ဘာေတြျပင္ဆင္ လုပ္ကိုင္ခဲ့သလည္း၊ အခက္အခဲေတြက ဘာလည္း၊ ဆန္႔က်င္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြက ဘာေတြလည္း၊ ဘတ္ဂ်က္ဘယ္ေလာက္သံုးသလည္း၊ အခ်ိန္ကာလနဲ႔ တိုင္းတာလို႔ရတဲ့ ၿပီးေျမာက္မႈ အဆင့္ဆင့္ေတြကဘာေတြလည္း စသည္ျဖင့္ Project Planning နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္တဲ့ ေမးခြန္းေတြကို ေျဖရပါလိမ့္မယ္။
ဒီေရရွည္မူဝါဒက ဆင္းလာတဲ့ ေရနက္ကြင္း၊ ေႏြစပါး စသည္တို႔ကို ဘယ္လို အေကာင္အထည္ ေဖာ္သလည္း စသည္ျဖင့္ ဆက္ေမးခြန္းထုတ္ရပါဦးမယ္။
ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာရင္ အစိုးရရွိေတာ့ Policy ေတြရွိပါတယ္။ Policy ကို အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္သလားဆိုေတာ့ လုပ္ဖို႔ႀကိဳးစားတယ္လို႔ ေျပာရမယ္ထင္တယ္။ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈကေတာ့ သိၾကတဲ့အတိုင္းပါ။ က်ေနာ့အျမင္ကေတာ့ Policy ရွိတယ္။ အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္မဲ့ ဌာနရွိတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ အေကာင္အထည္ေပၚေအာင္လုပ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ စြမ္းရည္မရွိလို႔ပဲ ေျပာရပါမယ္။
Amiable brief and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Gratefulness you for your information.
Post a Comment