Recent events in Burma seem to have galvanised the international community. Everybody from Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore to Laura Bush in the US agrees that something has to done to punish our ''brutal regime''. The problem is that nobody has the same answer.
The pro-sanctions camp threatens harsher sanctions, while those in the other camp, who have either ''engaged'' with the military junta or are about to become engaged with it, argue that sanctions would bring more hardship to an already poor population and further isolate a regime that has already entrenched itself in a remote new capital city.
The real question now is not how to punish the regime, but how to bring about real change in the country.
Some 50 million people live in Burma and 30% of them are already living well below the poverty line, barely surviving on less than US$1 a day.
Even more alarming is the fact that more people are slipping below the poverty line each day, each week, each month.
I know. I'm here, watching it happen.
As each of the polarised camps tries to come up with effective ways to deal with the recalcitrant generals that rule our poor country, some have begun to mull over the idea of offering ''carrots'' (enticement) instead of just ''sticks'' (punishment).
Following are some facts and figures I've collected from inside Burma that I hope can provide a rough picture of what those carrots could be.
The United Nations Security Council is looking for ways to encourage the reconciliation process between the regime and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League Democracy (NLD), but nobody is talking about the other critical reconciliation process that needs to be considered _ the reconciliation of the dual exchange rate for the kyat, or Burmese currency. The official exchange has been around six kyat to the dollar for the past 20 or so years, but the market rate has eroded from 30 kyat to the dollar in 1988 to around 1300 kyat to the dollar today.
What does this mean for the general public in my country?
It means that we paid just 16 kyat for a pyi (the most common measurement for rice in Burma _ one pyi is approximately 250 millilitres) of rice in 1988, and we now pay around 800 kyat for the same amount of very low-quality rice.
It means that we paid 11,000 kyat for a tical [Burmese measurement] of gold in 1988, and that we now pay well over half a million kyat for the same amount of gold.
These are staggering inflation rates by anyone's reckoning.
The central bank of Burma has never been fully independent under the military regime. When the central bank receives orders to print paper money, it has to print it _ the orders are said to come from the very top.
In 1988, there was 20 billion kyat circulating in the country. By 1997, just under 10 years later, the amount of money in circulation had reached almost 200 billion kyat.
After 1997, however, the regime stopped publishing these figures in their annual Statistical Reports. Now, when I open the report to the page where I used to collect data on money in circulation, I can find only the final figure for the year 1997 _ the data for all the following years is marked N/A, not available.
Of course, this doesn't mean that the regime stopped printing more money. In Burma, we often have to be cunning about where and how we get our information. In this case, I looked to another set of numbers _ the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This index, printed annually in the Statistical Reports, also reveals evidence of the regime's money-printing fetish. The first base year for the Burmese CPI was 1986 with a 100 point index. The index had reached 1180 after 10 years, and so the current regime set a new base year, 1997, during which the base index was again set at 100.
The latest figure available for the month of February 2007 is 650. Combined with other sources, we are able to estimate that total money in circulation is now around 1.3 trillion kyat.
With figures like this, it's clear to see that our economy is functioning on fool's gold. There is nothing stable or sustainable about Burma's current economic situation.
So, back to the carrots. Can the international community come up with something that would entice the generals to the dialogue table?
The United Nations Security Council could offer an economic rescue plan that would reconcile the two polarised exchange rates. If the IMF and the World Bank could draw up an economic plan to restore the value of the kyat (or at least retain its current value and prevent it from plummeting deeper into the economic abyss), the Western powers could withhold their sticks for a while and the so-called ''friendly nations of Burma'', such as China, Russia and Asean members, could lend a helping hand in the rescue of Burma, from whose plight they have benefitted so much for years.
There is one proviso: this plan would have to be tied into the reconciliation process already initiated by the United Nations Security Council. As dialogue takes place between the Lady and the Senior General, the kyat sitting in my pocket and in the pockets of every single Burmese person in this blighted land could be worth something again.
Unless the process of national reconciliation (between the people and the army) and the reconciliation of our two exchange rates go hand-in-hand, there can only be more hardship for the Burmese people, and more bloodshed in the days and months ahead.
The author, writing under a pseudonym, is a journalist living in Rangoon.