|
- I, for one, started raising this issue right from the National Seminar held at Guwahati in 1997. References to this paper and other discussions can be found in my most recent papers on this issue. Yumnam, Amar, (2004), Regional Cooperation and Development: Strategy for Development in a Conflict Zone, Paper read at the National Seminar on Towards a New Asia: Transnationalism and Northeast India, organized by the Centre for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia Studies, OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati, 10 - 11 September; (2005) "Indo Myanmar Trade through Moreh: Status and Assessment", in Das, Gurudas, et al., eds, Indo-Myanmar Trade: Status, Problems and Potentials, Akansha Publishing, New Delhi. See also Sarma, Atul, (2005a), "Why the northeastern states continue to decelerate", Man and Society, Spring, pp. 1-20; Sarma, Atul, (2005b), "Northeast as Gateway to Southeast Asia: Big Dream and Home Truths, Presidential Address, Seventh Annual Conference of North Eastern Economic Association, Itanagar, October 21.
- Incidentally, Commerce Minister Jairam Ramesh emphasized categorically in his keynote address at the National Seminar on Towards a New Asia: Transnationalism and Northeast India, organized by the Centre for Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia Studies, OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati, 10 - 11 September, 2004 that the north east should be allowed to integrate economically with the economies of south-east and east Asia. (He was quite appreciative when the present author raised in the seminar certain issues about levels and problems of development in the region.) This is also the view he has expressed in his recent tour of Manipur as evidenced from the various newspaper reports of the trip. The President of India is also reported to have expressed more or less similar opinions in his Convocation Address in Manipur University on 16 October 2006. By the way, the President was in Myanmar very recently.
- Three of the background papers of this conference are available as IMF Working Paper WP/06/196, Cowen, David, Ranil Salgado, Hemant Shah, Leslie Teo, and Alessandro Zanello, (August 2006), Financial Integration in Asia: Recent Developments and Next Steps, Asia and Pacific Department, IMF.
- Ibid. p. 4.
- During the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade - 1948 - 1994) regime only 124 notifications were submitted for regional trading agreements, but after the WTO (World Trade Organization (1995 - onwards) 206 new notifications have been given by July 2005, thereby taking the total number of agreements to 330 as of July 2005. By this date 180 agreements were in force while many un-notified ones too are functional. Also by this date, only Mongolia remains the unattached country.
- That India brings in political considerations rather than economic considerations whenever it comes to the North-Eastern Region has been repeatedly emphasised. Besides the references given in footnote 1, see Yumnam, Amar, (2006), "Development paradigm for the North East: politico-ethnic to economic and scientific", Paper presented at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla National Seminar on Rethinking the Paradigms of Development for the North East India, Gangtok, March 24-25; Yumnam, Amar, (2005), "Development intervention in the Northeast: a critique", Eastern Quarterly, Special Issue on Political Economy: Transformation, Challenges and Prospects, Vol. 3, Issue III, October-December, pp. 196-205.
- Malaysia is now heading the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- I would repeatedly harp on this point to highlight that the approach is fundamentally to serve the larger macro interests rather than the interest of the North eastern Region. It is in this context that we have to work out specific strategies for the North Eastern Region to dovetail into the macro framework and spring-board on that.
- As we are all aware, Burma is the older name of Myanmar before the present regime changed it to the new one in 1989.
- Steinberg, David I, (1997), Myanmar: The Anomalies Of Politics and Economics, Representative of The Asia Foundation in Korea and Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University, Working Paper #5 o November, p.3
- Schumacher, E. F., (1973), Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, Harper and Row, New York.
- See, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, (2006),The Least Developed Countries Report 2006: Developing Productive Capacities, United Nations, New York/Geneva.
- Although China and Myanmar address each other as Paukphaw (a Myanmar word meaning sibling or intimate), the sustainability of the present relationship from economic perspective is doubtful. See, Kudo, Toshihiro, (2006), Myanmar's Economic Relations with China: Can China Support the Myanmar Economy?, Institute of Developing Economies, DISCUSSION PAPER No. 66 Tokyo, July. More on this later.
- Ibid., p. 21
- For a discussion on the present agricultural scenario, see Fujita, Koichi and Ikuko Okamoto, (2006), Agricultural Policies and Development of Myanmar's Agricultural Sector : An Overview, DISCUSSION PAPER No. 63, Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo, June. Despite some of the adverse observations in this paper, the recently acquired relative dynamism of the Myanmar agricultural economy cannot be ignored.
- For an interesting and informative discussion of the Asian middle class, see the papers in the special issue on this The Developing Economies, Vol. XLI, No. 2, June 2003.
- For a discussion of the impact of American sanctions, see Kudo, Toshihiro, (2005), The Impact of United States Sanctions on the Myanmar Garment Industry, DISCUSSION PAPER No. 42, Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo, December.
- On this discussion , see Kuchiki, Akifumi, (2006), An Asian Triangle of Growth and Cluster-to-Cluster Linkages, DISCUSSION PAPER No. 71, Institute of Developing Economies, Tokyo, August.
Read Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
Part 4 |
Part 5 |
Part 6
| Footnotes |
Amar Yumnam, a visiting Scholar at University of Southern California, Los Angeles, contributes regularly to e-pao.net . This article was a seminar presentation on "Indo Myanmar Socio-Economic and Trade Relationships" oragnized by 'Indo Myanmar Fraternal Alliance'. This article was webcasted on December 10th 2006.
|
