The times, they are a'changing, Burma, 2010

This is the seventh part of our 2010 Burma Crusade. Click here for the index.

Change generally comes slowly in Burma, if at all. Since I started visiting regularly in 1996, apart from an invasion of motorcycles and mobile phones and the retirement of the last steam locomotives, I find it difficult to see any significant difference in the country. Of course, it's not as simple as that, even discounting the events of 2007/8. Consumer goods are more readily available and the towns look a little less scruffy. Internet access has become quite widespread and although it is heavily censored and suffers from lack of bandwidth, it and the mobile phone revolution has made it much more difficult for the government to control the spread of news.

I was as dubious as any about the validity of the November 'election', but returning to the country just afterwards, we could sense a big change in the atmosphere, both economically and socially. I never thought I would see a sign like this in a petrol station, let alone an orderly queue to fill up - for as long as I can remember, the only ready supply of fuel has been through 'bottle stalls' on the road side:

Of course, this is mainly an efficiency gain, the various new owners are, not surprisingly, cronies of the current government. And the demand for petrol outstrips supply, a 2 gallon ration is normal and there are long, long queues in Yangon and the bottle stalls still reign in many rural areas..

Compared to 2009, the electricity supply is hugely improved and in the rice growing areas, technology marches on apace. In some areas the bullocks are already spectators, I counted no less than 8 full sized tractors at work in 5 minutes on the train near Bago. The mills with smaller steam engines are busy junking them in the rice heartland of Irrawaddy Division for gasifiers or electric motors and my guess is that within 5 years steam will paradoxically be confined to the largest mills, but even these will be changing unless electricity prices are raised towards world levels..

Until now, Burma's press had been even more turgid and boring than its Chinese equivalent and the last place one should look for any real news apart from the scores in England's Premier League. However, look how First Eleven's headlines covered the results for the weekend of November 13th, 2010. On the left is the original and in case you are colour blind, I have made a small colour adjustment on the right.

Boarding a bus in Moulmein later in the week, I could hardly miss the front page splash on one newspaper. Certainly, there was no editorial on the subject, but the inner pages report what she said, almost exactly as also reported by external news bodies like the BBC. I am told that other papers had similar splashes, but of course you won't see her face on TV right now. The coverage above earned First Eleven a two week suspension, the other papers below one week. You won't find quotes from Liu Xiao Bo in the Chinese press...

The BBC is still denounced on the radio in a shameless mimicry of the sound track of the film of '1984' but its Burmese service is not jammed. In internet cafes, its English language pages are freely available including their coverage of the country although in Mon State where we spent much of the trip and which is considered sensitive at the moment, the internet is routinely blocked for days on end. We even saw people openly watching Burmese language DVB TV (the external satellite Democratic Voice of Burma). The government sometimes (actually quite frequently) feels the need for an empty gesture, because the peoples of the country are amazingly well informed on what is going on in it. I would like to think that this suggests a power struggle is going on in the background but I rather suspect it reflects total incompetence ('cock up' rather than 'conspiracy'). These are early days yet, it is hardly even a minor version of the 'Prague Spring'.

In the generals' best friend China, there is no widespread desire for change to a freer system, just greed. Anyone who has been to Burma will tell you that the reverse is true there. It may just be that the genie is out of the bottle; in the last few weeks, I have been happy to point out to friends that not so long ago Indonesia was labouring under a constitution similar to that just introduced in Burma. Now, just over 10 years later, it is arguably the most democratic, free, tolerant and open society in South East Asia, notwithstanding a significant bigotted minority who are not afraid to resort to violence.