Myanmar scholars have a tough time! The appalling lack of ‘Myanmar consciousness’ of the Indian mainstream media, especially the English print media, is reflected by the near total absence of the coverage of the visit of His Excellency U Win Myint, the 10th President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, at least on Day One of the four day visit to Delhi, Agra and Bodh Gaya. The common citizen can be forgiven for missing out the visit, coming in the post-mortem phase of the Trump’s sojourn to India and amidst the violence in Delhi, but one cannot condone Foreign Affairs Editors of the dailies in the national capital for this blind spot. Myanmar watchers were saved by regular tweets from Embassy of India, Yangon, the Rashtrapati Bhawan and Raveesh Kumar, Spokesperson, Ministry of External Affairs.
This is the second visit by the Myanmar President in a year, the first being from 30 - 31 May 2019 to attend the Swearing-in Ceremony of the Prime Minister Modi for the second term. The 26 member delegation this time includes, apart from the President and the First Lady, U Kyaw Tin, Union Minister for International Cooperation, Thura U Aung Ko, Union Minister for Religious Affairs and Culture, U Thant Sin Maung, Union Minister for Transportation and Communication, U Nyi Pu, Chief Minister of Rakhine State and Director Generals from the Protocol Department, Political Department, Oil and Gas Planning Department amongst others. The visit is a bilateral one initiated by an invitation from Indian President Shri Ram Nath Kovind.
President Win Myint, a geologist by education and a lawyer by profession, has served in both the High Court and the Supreme Court. He was involved in the 8th August 1988 (8888) Revolution and was imprisoned till 1990. A native of Ayeyarwady Region, he was elected from Danyubu Township in 1990 elections in which eventually the results were annulled by the Junta. Winning the 2012 by-elections he entered the Pyithu Hluttaw (Lower House i.e. House of Representatives) from the Pathein constituency. From the Indian perspective, Pathein is significant due to the large Hindi speaking population there and the trade and business potential of the Pathein port. This port is allegedly as good as the Yangon port, however, due to better intra land connectivity to Mandalay and the rest of Myanmar, this port suffers. Currently, due to congestion of the Yangon Port, Pathein is regaining importance.
In the 2015 general elections he was elected as Lower House MP for Tamwe Township in Yangon. From 2016 to 2018, he was Speaker of the Lower House. He was selected as a National League for Democracy (NLD) candidate for Presidency after incumbent U Htin Kyaw resigned due ill health. He defeated Union Solidarity and Development Party's candidate 273 votes to 27 for Vice Presidency, a pre-requisite for Presidency. Finally he was elected President on 28 March 2018, with 403 out of 636 lawmakers voting for him. In one of his first major decisions post elections, he released 8,500 prisoners, including 51 foreigners and 36 political prisoners on 17 April 2018 as a general amnesty.
The official part of the visit has concluded with the release of the Joint Statement and the signing and exchange of ten1 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU):-
These agreements and MoUs cover medical, agriculture, education, wildlife conservation, petroleum, security and electricity sectors. What is significant is that four of these projects are related to the most disturbed Rakhine State where two crises are concurrently under way; the Rohingya Crisis and the ethnic Rakhine Crisis involving the Arakan Army. Of the three townships named, Buthedaung is a Rohingya Township, Mrauk U is the proposed headquarters of the Arakan Army to be established as part of the ‘Arakan Dream 2020’ and both these places have witnessed tremendous violence. Gwa is the southernmost township in Rakhine. In addition, five unnamed townships will have solar lighting systems. Analysing the spread of the projects, one can appreciate the factors for selection of the townships as being the ones most affected by violence, and hence needing maximum assistance. This region has seen the construction of 250 houses funded by India, as also distribution of relief material in keeping with the true spirit of assistance to Myanmar.
Source: (c) Myanmar Information Management Unit Map, modified by author (c) Vivekananda International Foundation
The other projects covered specific areas of assistance required by Myanmar. The QIPs are low cost, small-scale projects to be implemented quickly to meet the needs of locals. These are executed through local administration, NGOs and CSOs. It also helps build their management capacities of the locals.2
The Joint Statement first appeared on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nya Pyi Taw Facebook Page. 3 It made the following points:
The scale, scope and spread of the engagement between the two countries is slowly, but surely, increasing. This suggests that as far as reach goes, India’s quiet diplomacy strategy using soft power is gaining traction in fulfilling the needs of the nascent democracy in those aspects in which it most needs help. These projects, if implemented in a timely manner by the Indian government, will have a far greater positive impact on the Myanmar economy and people than the Chinese economic blitzkrieg and high profile optics the world witnessed in January 2020 during Xi Jinping’s visit4 and the signing of 33 documents, most of which were proposals.
This Joint Statement reveals a rare efficiency and energy in India Myanmar relations and speaks volumes for the Governments on both sides. Rather than trying to match the Chinese largesse dollar for dollar, India seems to have skilfully used its strengths and capabilities to genuinely assist Myanmar and incidentally counter the Chinese influence as an added bonus. The Joint Statement surprisingly does not touch upon the recently started Imphal – Mandalay chartered flight, the proposed film festival and the state level interactions that have commenced in which recently a football team from Manipur played a friendly match at Mandalay.
The recent additions in air connectivity from Kolkata to Yangon via Indigo Airlines and Air KBZ from Imphal to Mandalay need to be supplemented with more flights. Presently the Imphal to Mandalay flight needs to be urgently upgraded from a chartered flight to a regular scheduled flight with flight routing from Imphal directly to Mandalay and not via Aizwal flight path as is presently the case with the chartered flight. Similarly there is a need to enhance the number of cities being connected by air service in both countries.
The mention of BIMSTEC in the Joint Statement is a positive and encouraging step which will hopefully stimulate participation of Myanmar in this regional grouping. Multilateral engagements will go a long way in the normalisation of the situation in Myanmar and enable better people to people contact. Regional cooperation to resolve local issues are culturally, conceptually and contextually more relevant, better acceptable to and more cost effective for the participants. BIMSTEC is the best bet for regional cooperation.
The timing of the visit is significant. Amara Thiha, 5 Senior Research Manager of the Myanmar Institute of Peace and Security, Yangon has termed the visit ‘part of Naypyidaw’s strategic ballet with New Delhi to maintain its strategic autonomy in the Indian Ocean power rivalry’. Hence, within a month of the high profile visit of Xi Jinping to Myanmar, we have the visit from Myanmar to India. And like most facets of India Myanmar relations, the tenor has been quiet, mutually respectful and focussed on a strong desire to engage.
The presence of U Nyi Pu, the Chief Minister of Rakhine, in the delegation, is literally and figuratively a powerful statement. Four of the 10 MoUs signed related to his state. All were people friendly projects planned to directly impact the locals and improve their daily lives. Rakhine State is critical to peace in Western Myanmar and directly impacts Bangladesh, India and Myanmar.
Overall the India Myanmar engagements have been positive and in line with the hearts and minds philosophy for investments. [3] However, the success and future of India Myanmar relations hinges on two major caveats. The first is the timely and efficient delivery of all these projects. India is fighting a running battle on two fronts, one internally and the other externally, to improve its implementation of these projects and jettison the dubious perception it has acquired over non-delivery of bilateral projects, respectively. Till the time the Indian Government machinery does not deliver the projects, the initiative taken our diplomats all across the world, will not fructify. Hence the era of large projects going over decades with innumerable cost and time overruns should be reviewed and the Government of India’s capacity to execute such projects be kept in mind. Concurrently, it should develop the capability to ensure guaranteed execution of the projects agreed upon, bilaterally.
The second requirement is greater people to people contact to make the engagement a truly multi-dimensional and irreversible once. For this, increasing awareness of the Golden Land on our immediate East, is critical. And to increase awareness, the media must play its part in exposing the population to the neighbourhood including Myanmar. By obsessively focussing on the West, the media reveals a colonial mind-set which is best ejected in favour of a pragmatic and considered approach to promoting the North East and Myanmar automatically becomes a logical extension of our east.
Thiha goes on to say that ‘…the strategic military-to-military partnership between New Delhi and the Tatmadaw creates space for Myanmar to adhere to a core principle, an independent and active foreign policy, by giving an alternative to China for Myanmar to engage with.’ This rests on the hope that India lives up to its promise and makes it possible for Myanmar retain its’ independence in matters external and be the preferred and trusted alternative to China that Myanmar is looking for.
(The paper is the author’s individual scholastic articulation. The author certifies that the article/paper is original in content, unpublished and it has not been submitted for publication/web upload elsewhere, and that the facts and figures quoted are duly referenced, as needed, and are believed to be correct). (The paper does not necessarily represent the organisational stance... More >>
Links:
[1] https://www.vifindia.org/article/2020/february/28/raising-myanmar-consciousness-visit-of-the-president-of-myanmar-to-india
[2] https://www.vifindia.org/author/Col-Jaideep-Chanda
[3] https://www.vifindia.org/article/2020/january/22/xi-hajoor-old-wine-in-the-new-era-for-myanmar
[4] https://elevenmyanmar.com/news/myanmar-india-to-sign-six-mous
[5] https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/quick-impact-projects-communities
[6] https://www.facebook.com/513368565530110/posts/1396681807198777/?d=n
[7] https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/myanmars-india-balancing-act/
[8] https://www.narendramodi.in/
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