Most people live in the 40,000-odd villages of the country, while the majority of the urban population resides in the capital city of Rangoon. Among the population engaged in agriculture, 37 percent of the people do not have any land or livestock. Poverty and misery have increased in the past 3 decades. In 1997 the CIA World Factbook estimated that 23 percent of the Burmese population had incomes that placed them below the poverty line.
In the countryside, a bullock cart (a 2-wheeled cart drawn by 2 castrated bulls) is the most popular means of transportation. Most farmers own a pair of oxen or water buffalo, a hoe, and a bullock cart for agricultural purposes. The rural houses (actually huts without running water or toilets) are made of bamboo. One portion is used for cooking and the other for sleeping. In the major towns and cities, there are houses made of brick and concrete. They are usually small and overcrowded.
The government's socio-economic policies have not helped the people. Large outlays of money have been spent on the military, while only meager funds have gone to education and health issues. The numbers of children who do not attend school or who have dropped out reportedly increased in the 1990s. According to World Bank estimates, only 46.9 percent of the secondary school-age children were enrolled in schools during 1995. Education beyond the primary age is not compulsory. Burmese authorities boast a literacy rate of 83 percent, though independent observers have suggested that the rate may be as low as 30 percent. Most universities have been closed since December 1996.
Health care in the rural areas was marginal until the 1960s. The government has opened more rural health centers and directed more doctors to the rural areas. As a result, the doctor-patient ratio has decreased considerably, from 1 per 15,560 to 1 per 3,578 in 1986. Health care is provided free of charge.
2. Economic Factor
1. Economy factor (shows statistics and graphs)
2. Find examples and relate to the Great Depression or economic downturn
3. But most importantly, the corruption which leads to how it is.
Once prosperous, Burma was, in 2001, one of the poorest countries of the world.
The major aim of Myanmar's government has been to rehabilitate, modernize, and diversify an economy that was extensively disrupted by World War II and that failed to develop from the 1940s through the 1960s. To this end, all foreign companies, all banks, the entire transport system, all foreign and much domestic trade, and all the main branches of industry have been nationalized. Some nationalized industries initially showed declines in output, while others were hard pressed to hold their own. By 1974, the government had no choice but to modify some of its more rigidly Socialist economic policies. Economic development proceeded slowly under the four-year plan for 1974–78 and the 1978–82 development program, which was allocated 60% more funding than its predecessor and which achieved an annual growth rate exceeding 6%. The four-year plan for 1982–86, costing an estimated $5 billion, set an average annual growth target of 6.2%. The plan stressed infrastructural development, with particular emphasis on agriculture, construction, and energy production. The four-year plan for 1986–90 encouraged foreign investment. Since 1990, private investment has been encouraged as the government attempts to revitalize the economy. As of January 2001, the value of approved investment had reached about $7.4 billion. However, most of this—$6.23 billion or 84%—came before the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Before 1997, foreign investment approvals had averaged close to $900 million a year; from 1997 to 2000, the average was $234 million a year. The economy has not recovered from the effects of the 1997 crisis, and problems have only worsened with the global slowdown in 2001, and the worldwide decline of foreign direct investment in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. In 2001, the government introduced its third five year short-term plan, with a targeted average growth rate of 6%. However, both continued reform and substantial foreign investment would be necessary to meet the goals of the plan. Such needed reforms include dismantling unproductive state-owned enterprises, establishing an independent state bank, making available private sector credit, controlling government spending, and adjusting the official exchange rate. However, in 2002, the gap between the official exchange rate and the market rate had widened to an astounding 100 to 1, and foreign investment has slowed to a trickle. In the first six months of 2002, investment from other ASEAN countries, the source of most of Myanmar's foreign investment to date, was actually zero.
3. Social Factors: Education, Health and Infrastructure
Education
Myanmar’s educational system is in a state of underdevelopment and uncertainty. Although enrollment in primary schools is very high, the completion rate lags behind. Reports indicate that only one third of all primary school children finish the first five years. Many students drop out due to poverty, lack of support, and poor health. Although school attendance is high in urban areas and among male students, however village schools in a largely rural-agrarian country are caught by poor attendance, especially among the female students.
Myanmar's educational system has been suffering from a proportionately declining budget. While there has been a sizable increase in the number of schools, colleges, universities, and teachers during the last five years, the percentage of total education expenditure proved to be in decline.
Health
Myanmar has one of the world's worst health care systems, with tens of thousands dying each year from malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, dysentery, diarrhea and a litany of other illnesses. While there are hospitals in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation also known as Burma, only a few can afford to pay hospital workers the various "fees" in the tightly controlled nation that often face corruption.
According to 70-year-old man from Phyu Township, who journeyed two days by bus to see a doctor at the Thai border town of Mae Sot, he said “Even if you use the toilet in the hospital you have to pay money," He say again that the government never think of improving health care, they only know how to fight and because of them, the citizens have to suffer as a result.
Many patients come too late and die in the clinic, while newborn babies and the elderly are sometimes abandoned by family who seriously cannot afford to care for them.
The situation inside Myanmar is complicated and health data are often not reliable or difficult to gather, especially from areas of the country dominated by ethnic minorities who have been at civil war for decades.
Infrastructure
- Environment factor
- Natural disasters and way of life
Cyclone Nargis swept across Myanmar on May 2 and 3, 2008, triggering a huge sea surge and killing nearly 140,000 people.
Over 2 million affected
Damage estimated at $4 billion
U.N. appeal underfunded
The storm destroyed villages and paddy fields, seriously affecting up to 2.4 million people in Yangon and the Irrawaddy Delta.
One year on, aid workers say at least 500,000 survivors, including 200,000 children, are still living in makeshift shelters cobbled together from tarpaulin and bamboo poles. Their misery is likely to be compounded as this year's monsoon season approaches.
Many farmers are also struggling with crippling debts after the cyclone destroyed their crops and 200,000 farm animals. Rice yields are down nearly a third, mainly due to heavy rains in April and soil salinity after fields were flooded with sea water during the cyclone.
The main aid coordinating body has issued an urgent pre-monsoon appeal for funds to help pay for shelter materials and other assistance. The appeal is part of a three-year, $691 million recovery plan drafted by the Tripartite Core Group (TCG), comprising the United Nations, Myanmar and its Southeast Asian neighbours.
The plan faces serious fund-raising hurdles, including a global economic crisis that is squeezing foreign donor governments. Myanmar already receives far less aid than other poor countries due to its dismal human rights record.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is feeding 350,000 people, which will be scaled back to 250,000 until the end of the year.
JUNTA RESTRICTIONS
Most of those who died were killed by a 3.5 metre (12-foot) wall of water that hit the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta along with 240 kph (150 mph) winds. The dead included 10,000 who perished in just one town, Bogalay, 90 km southwest of Yangon.
The cyclone was the worst to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh.
But the country's ruling generals, who have a deep mistrust of the outside world, were initially reluctant to let foreign aid workers into the country, sparking strong international criticism.
After three weeks, Myanmar's junta finally agreed to admit international aid workers, albeit under tight restrictions. The government accepted relief flights into Yangon but rejected offers of French and American ships delivering aid. The military regime also let WFP airlift supplies into the delta and allowed in medical teams from Southeast Asian neighbours.
Before his breakthrough deal with the junta, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said aid workers had only been able to reach around a quarter of those in need.
Aid workers say much has been achieved since, but it will take years of sustained international support for the worst hit areas to fully recover.
Some had expressed initial optimism that their work in the cyclone area could lead to more humanitarian space elsewhere in the country. But the generals have dashed any hope of that, arresting activists who led private cyclone relief efforts and tightening their grip ahead of scheduled 2010 elections.
The regime said in February it would only extend the TCG's mandate to the middle of 2010, although it was not clear how the decision would affect foreign agencies operating in the delta.
MONKS DELIVER AID
Following the cyclone survivors crammed into monasteries, schools and other buildings after arriving in towns that were on the breadline even before the disaster.
The homeless clamoured to get into privately run shelters rather than government-run camps. In Bogalay, some complained of forced labour and low supplies of food at the state-run centres.
Frustrated by the speed of the official response, ordinary people sent trucks and vans into the delta with clothes, biscuits, dried noodles and rice provided by private companies and individuals. With almost total distrust of the government, private aid was left for distribution by Buddhist monks, who have immense moral authority.
Officials said legal action would be taken against anybody found hoarding or selling relief supplies, amid rumours of local military units expropriating trucks of food, blankets and water.
Some weeks into the aid operation, the United Nations revealed it had suffered significant losses because of distorted official exchange rates. The government later agreed to let outside donors pay local companies directly and in U.S. dollars, rather than via the official, long-winded system involving foreign exchange certificates.
SHELTER
Nargis destroyed 375,000 homes, according to government estimates. The United Nations puts the figure higher at 450,000.
A year on, only 17,000 new homes have been built, according to U.N. estimates, while another 200,000 have been repaired by their owners. But many of these patched-up homes are fragile.
Normally, natural materials such as thatch from palm trees and shrubs are used to make cheap, relatively rainproof roofing, but Nargis destroyed trees along with buildings.
David Evans, acting head of the U.N. housing agency UN-HABITAT, says tens of thousands face the prospect of spending another year living in extremely vulnerable shelter.
Nearly all Nargis survivors received some form of emergency shelter after the storm, including those few allowed into the junta's "model villages" after the generals were criticised for their slow response to the disaster.
But a year on, donor funding for housing has met only 4 percent of the U.N. target. Donors are giving money for education, health care and food, but they consider housing and infrastructure the government's responsibility, says Andrew Kirkwood, country director of aid agency Save The Children.
Agencies are handing out new tarpaulins, while UN-HABITAT has appealed for $10 million to provide temporary roofing materials.
Myanmar is a union of 135 ethnic groups with their own languages and dialects. the races are the Kachin, the Kayah, the Kayin, the Chin, the Mon, the Barnar, the Rakhine, and the Shan. The name Myanmar embraces all the ethnic groups.
The root of hatred:
- Different in religion
- Basic anti foreigner feelings
- Low standard of living of the recent migrants
- Recent migrants willingness to do, dirty, dangerous and difficult jobs
- Indians took over the Burmese lands especially Chittiers
- Indians had already filled up and monopolised the government services when the burmese were ready for those jobs
- Professional competition
- World recession of 1930 aggravated the competition for the reduced economic pie
-09S08
No comments:
Post a Comment