Dal, Idli, Sambar and the Myanmar sanctions

Myanmar supplies around one million tonnes half of India’s total imports. This dependence on imports of pulses, vital for protein content in the diet of the millions of vegetarians in India, is set to grow, with Myanmar emerging as the second largest exporter of pulses in the world and its productivity in pulses bettering that of India.

Interestingly, traders in India had upped dal prices in September, in anticipation of a cut-off in supplies from Myanmar something that just did not happen.

Against sanctions

With the Americans and British, (who had been astonishingly generous in their response to the Martial Law imposed in October 2007 by Gen Musharraf), demanding sanctions against Myanmar, the Foreign Ministers of Russia, China and India met at Harbin, in China.

Speaking at the Joint Press Conference on October 25, at the end of the meeting, Pranab Mukherjee said: We believe that the Myanmar authorities should be encouraged to engage in the process of dialogue with the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari. The initiative which he has taken should be encouraged to take it to the logical conclusion and there should not be any sanctions at this stage.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said pressures and sanctions would only aggravate the situation in Myanmar. China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi asserted: We hope the countries concerned will play a helping role instead of applying sanctions and applying pressures.

With Myanmar’s Asean neighbours opposing sanctions, encouraging the process of reconciliation being undertaken by Ibrahim Gambari, is the only way to proceed with the process of bringing in greater democratic governance in Myanmar.

An increasing number of western scholars and diplomats are now coming around to the view that western threats of sanctions have been ineffective and counterproductive. The former British Ambassador to Myanmar, Derek Tonkin, has debunked recent EU sanctions against gems, jewellery and timber from Myanmar, noting that EU accounts for only 3 per cent of Myanmar’s exports.

Tonkin observes that a substantial portion of the gems, jewellery and jade exports of Myanmar goes to China, its rubies are processed in Thailand and its teak wood is in great demand in Thailand and India. Moreover, the ban on Myanmar textile exports has been nothing but a flea-bite as far as the regime is concerned. It has, however, resulted in tens of thousands of Myanmar textile workers being rendered unemployed. Tonkin adds that EU sanctions on Myanmar businesses have only resulted in stifling the emergence of an entrepreneurial class, with the European Parliament being unable to carry out a study of the futility of measures it legislates.

Tonkin has ridiculed the much-hyped sanctions against the State-run Pagan Airlines in Myanmar, noting that while the airlines may have closed services to Singapore (non-viable in any case), it has opened or will be opening services to South Korea, Kunming, Phnom Penh, Chennai and Dakar. Myanmar’s foreign exchange reserves rose from $250 million a decade ago to over $2 billion currently, thanks in large measure, to gas exports to Thailand, facilitated by collaboration with the French Company Total.

Economic trigger

What caused the riots led by some Buddhist monks in August/September 2007? Both the uprisings in 1988 and 2007 in Myanmar were sparked by economic and not political events.

The 1988 uprising was caused by a sudden demonetisation of the currency, rendering millions impoverished. The riots of 2007 were triggered by a sudden rise of petroleum prices from highly subsidised, to near market levels. But less than 5 per cent of Myanmar’s 500,000 monks participated in this manifestation of anger against the regime, triggered by an unimaginative move that made it impossible for ordinary citizens to afford travel by road.

Not a single revered senior Monk (Sayadaw), however, joined the protests. But, for the first time, the relationship between the regime and the monkshood is strained.

Recognising the international outrage it had provoked, the military regime agreed to receive Ibrahim Gambari and permit him to meet Aung San Suu Kyi. A senior military official was nominated for talks with Suu Kyi, though it is evident that the military rulers intend to move ahead on their seven-point roadmap to democracy.

Like Gen Musharraf earlier in Pakistan, Senior General Than Shwe in Myanmar will hold a referendum and elections to give the Government a fade of democracy. In due course, led by China, Myanmar’s neighbours will see this move as progress in a phased move towards more representative Government.

Strategic corridor

In his meeting with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Nyan Win on January 2, Dr Manmohan Singh stressed the need for urgently bringing about a national consensus and political reconciliation in Myanmar. He noted that this process has to be broad based, to include all sections of society, including Aung San Suu Kyi and various ethnic groups.

India is a member of the 14-member contact group set up by the UN Secretary-General to develop international support for Gambari’s efforts. India should actively pursue its agenda for change in Myanmar with members of the contact group, Myanmar’s Asean neighbours and in its trilateral dialogue with China and Russia.

At the same time, with China forcefully reiterating its irredentist territorial claims and moving closer, through Bhutan, to the strategic Chickens neck: and Bangladesh still providing haven and support to separatist groups like ULFA, New Delhi should move ahead expeditiously in signing the agreement to develop the Multi-Modal Kaladan Strategic Corridor, linking India’s landlocked north-eastern states to the port of Sittwe in Myanmar.

China has supplied Myanmar over $1.6 billion of armaments since 1989. Other arms suppliers include Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, Israel and Pakistan. India has been proposing modest supply of arms and helicopters to Myanmar, primarily to facilitate interoperability between the two armed forces, in dealing with cross border insurgencies. There should be no compromise on issues of national security and India should not yield to external pressures on this score.

Given the continuing assistance to Indian insurgent groups by Bangladesh and Pakistan, trans-border co-operation with Myanmar, which has been helpful in the past, should not be weakened. Efforts to facilitate moves for democratisation in Myanmar have to be combined with realism on issues of national security.

India has been negotiating with Myanmar on a 1200 MW hydro-electric Project across the Chindwin river near the Manipur-Myanmar border. The project is now stalled because our wise mandarins in the Ministry of Power actually believe that we don’t need this power, because our North-Eastern States have a surplus of power.

Did these mandarins ever consider how surplus power can be utilised by interlinking power grids? As in the case of our inability to expeditiously devise means to transport off-shore gas from Myanmar to India, we will soon find that the Chinese move in where India blunders.

By G. Parthasarathy