It was a rough road in rough buses, but when many amongst our delegation decided to return from Tamu, the border town adjacent to Moreh in Manipur, complaining of bad tour arrangement and poor transport, I decided otherwise, as did 64 others. For one thing, I did not expect any royal treatment in Burma, not that the people would not be willing to welcome visitors, but they just were unlikely to be ready or have the infrastructure to give foreign tourists their worth. We were not tourists, but a delegation to participate in a seminar that was a culmination of the new bilateral understanding between India and Burma, but as it became increasingly clear, not many across the border understood this. For a transit town used to low budget tourists and border traders, we were just another lot of the same economy class. If we had been visa travelers, taking the air route to Mandalay via Calcutta, Bangkok, Rangoon and then Mandalay, maybe the attitude would have been different. But I did not mind it at all for sometimes a lot more of a place is revealed to low budget travelers, than to 5-Star hoppers. As the passenger traffic increase, it is only to be expected that these rough edges would be polished up. Moreover, I just had to be part of the historic opening of the Eastern Door, an event which had always been a matter of extreme interest. The journey in this sense was also very much a time travel back to a period in history when Manipur was a kingdom, very much on its own.
Our buses, beautiful Nissan vehicles, with engines in the back, would have been very comfortable if not for the modifications introduced to cater to the peculiar needs on this route as well as the terrain. The chassis suspensions of the buses have been raised at least two feet so that it needed an extra effort to board them. Midway into the journey we found out the reason why. From Moreh to Kalewa the road had been newly constructed by India so good and all weather, but beyond this point, up to another township called Mongya, a nearly 200 km stretch, there is hardly any road that can be called a road. Numerous rivulets and ravines that furrow the plains are often without bridges so that the vehicles actually have to descend into the riverbeds and climb out the other side. Especially during the wet season, it is quite imaginable that only buses with the kind of modification these buses have would be able to negotiate the terrain.
The inside of the buses are also modified. The seats have been raised a good two feet. This is to make accommodation for freight. About two thirds of the buses, towards their ends are also without seats, again the space is for freight. These buses obviously couple up as passenger as well as freight carriers. It also indicates that the passenger traffic on this rout is less than heavy. On our way up, the buses were loaded with fertilizers. Outraged, we had them removed but soon found out no sooner how uncomfortable it was to perch on raised bus seats on long distance travel with your feet two feet about the floor. On our return journey, the floors below the seats were packed with detergent packets. We allowed this, the journey home was, to say the least, decidedly more comfortable.
Burma is in many ways at odds with itself. This awkwardness becomes evident soon. The buses, so also most other vehicles, are right hand drive just as ours, but the roads are also right hand drive, unlike our. Apart from making driving judgment less accurate, it also left us getting off into the middle of the road every time the buses stopped for a stretch of leg. This would have been inconvenient and even dangerous on a busy highway, but the road to Mandalay from Tamu is far from this. Traffic, both of passenger buses or freight trucks were conspicuous by their absence all along the route right up to Mongya. Beyond Mongya, towards Mandalay some traffic become visible. One other thing which we have come to take so much for granted — high tension electric wires — ware also missing conspicuously. In certain visibly more prosperous townships there was power, but these were from small home generators.
Burma’s currency is the Kyat. It must be one of the most unstable currencies in the world. At the moment it sells at the rate of Rs 100 to Kyat 2000. Four years ago, when I made a trip to Tamu, the rate was Rs 100 to Kyat 750. A few more years earlier it was Rs 100 to Kyat 350. This made it extremely comfortable for India travelers for everything becomes so cheap. Wages are also extremely poor. A senior professor gets about Kyat 20,000, the equivalent of Rs 1000. A doctor gets around Kyat 15,000 or Rs 750. In fact there are many professions with sub Rs 500 salary. Within the country, this is just enough to pull along. But foreign travels, even to India, by the average Burmese national is beset with obvious hurdles.
The plummeting of the Kyat is understandable, for the strength of the country’s currency is linked to the health of the country’s economy. While the Indian economy grew at the rate of 7 percent over the past few years, Burma’s has been more or less stagnant. The status of the Kyat also provides an interesting contrast to the Nepalese rupees or the Bhutanese Nu, two economies which are doing no better, or even worse than the Burma. The currencies of these two countries have been virtually de-linked from their national GDPs and instead have come to take a piggy back ride on the strengthening Indian economy. As for instance, between 2001 and now, the Nepali rupee has gained against the Indian rupee. It was Rs 100 (INC) to Rs 170 (NC) in 2001, against Rs 100 (INC) to Rs 160 (NC) now. This is despite the fact the Indian rupees gain considerably against the dollar over the same period. The benefits Bhutan and Nepal are reaping of being a surrogate of a larger economy I suppose.
The status of the Kyat also makes you reflect on some aspects of the Indian economy. Although there is justifiable criticism against it for not fostering equitable development in all its varied regions, there are visibly other mechanisms for some semblance of an equitable distribution of national wealth. Government salaries of employees in the most prosperous state in the country, say Maharashtra, would be more or less the equivalent of those of very poor deficit economies like Manipur. It is bad that the states are not taught to fish so that all can eat forever, but the consolation is, at least the states are provided the fish if they do not have it. If the real health of Manipur’s economy were to be the deciding factor of the place’s salary structure, government employees would not be earning more than their counterparts in the state’s fledgling private sector.