Business Standard

Friday, March 14, 2003

ASIA FILE

Democracy versus tourist dollars

Barun Roy

For the world's conscience, it's a real dilemma. Here's Aung San Suu Kyi,
Myanmar's pro-democracy leader and winner of the Nobel peace prize, who
wants the world's tourists not to visit her country as long as its military
rulers don't make up with the opposition and remain adamant in their
coercive ways

And yet, here's a country, one of the world's most beautiful, that's
tottering on the verge of bankruptcy and badly needs tourist dollars, as
much as other investments, to turn itself around and give its long-deprived
people some economic prosperity. What does one do?

By and large, the world has heeded Suu Kyi. It's been some years that the
military government passed a law allowing foreign tourists to visit the
country, in a desperate move to shore up the economy. While this has drawn
some foreign investors to put in an early stake in what could become a big
market, tourists have generally stayed away. The business is nothing more
than a trickle, which, one must admit, is a moral victory for Suu Kyi.

But the trickle is beginning to get bigger. In 1992, only 26,000 foreigners
visited Myanmar. Ten years later, almost half a million did, despite
inadequate facilities and rather restrictive foreign currency regulations.
Two years ago, the government and a private party set up a joint tourism
promotion board, and foreign travel agents and writers are being wooed to
visit the country on heavily discounted image-building trips.

One can already see things happening. International cruises have started to
call at Yangon. The Mergui Archipelago, a cluster of over 800 mostly
uninhabited islands in the Andaman Sea, has emerged as a potential
playground for divers, yachtsmen, naturalists, and other pleasure seekers.
Hot-air balloons are taking visitors on trips to the ancient city of Bagan
(Pagan in the British days). The 102-year-old Strand Hotel in Yangon has
refurbished its 32 spacious, old-worldly guestrooms, ready for top-end
visitors in search of nostalgia. And in the last seven years, the Road to
Mandalay river cruise along the Ayeyarwaddy (Irrawaddy) has established
itself as one of the world's best river trips available anywhere.

And Yangon is no longer the only gateway to what's perhaps the world's last
unexplored Shangri-la. Travel to Myanmar is now allowed through checkpoints
along the Chinese and Thai borders. Mandalay, Bagan, Heho, Kengtung and
Mawlamyaing have been opened to charter flights from Chiang Mai and Chiang
Rai. Air Mandalay links Chiang Mai with Yangon and Mandalay. And plans are
being made to link Myanmar, China, Laos and Thailand as a Golden Quadrangle
tourism network.

Thailand has a big role in all this; in fact, in the entire Greater Mekong
tourism programme. It has been vigorously promoting and positioning itself
as the gateway to the sub-region, and Myanmar, as an important part of it,
has emerged as a natural target for Thai investors.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra visited Myanmar recently and made it
a point to go to Pota-o in the northernmost Kachin state to explore joint
development of tourism in the area that borders China's Yunnan province.
Described as the Switzerland of Myanmar and cool throughout the year, Pota-o
sits in the middle of snowcapped mountains and Thais are interested to
develop it as a ski resort.

What could be a clincher for Myanmar's tourism is a proposal to revive the
"death railway" that served as the basis for the 1957 movie Bridge on the
River Kwai . The railway is still in operation over a short distance near
the Thai town of Kanchanaburi, some 80 miles west of Bangkok, but Myanmar
has asked Thailand to help restore it as a full-fledged tourist railway and
Thaksin has shown an interest in doing so. That, if it gets built, will be
an overwhelming reason for thousands of overseas visitors to come and do a
sentimental journey through one of the most remembered theatres of World War
II.

The pieces are waiting to fall in place. They would have by now, had the
military rulers in Yangon been more pragmatic and begun their long-awaited
dialogue with Suu Kyi. But, undeniably, a momentum has begun to gather and
it may not be possible even for Suu Kyi to stop it entirely. A lot of people
are waiting with their money to tap into a market that everybody agrees is
potentially huge. Some have already made their investments. They may not
just stand aside and let politics stand in their way for long.

Yangon's military dictators know this and may be feeling smug. But the
knowledge shouldn't delude them. Myanmar won't go far with growth coming
only in a trickle. The junta must take steps to make the trickle a stream.
While tourism can give the desired economic push, it will never fully work
in an unstable political environment.

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