Furnivall (1957) in his reflection on pre-colonial Burma said that ‘a man did not live in a village because he owned land there, but he owned land because he lived in the village’ (p.85). From the time around Cyclone Nargis till the current situation in Myanmar, landlessness has been a major feature in the Delta as well as in broader parts of Myanmar. The only national household survey ever conducted under the military rule, called the Integrated Household Living Condition (IHLC II) survey (2009˗10) showed that 24% of the population who earned income from agriculture were landless (UNDP 2011). Later, the World Bank revised the IHLC II survey, as it was based on the outdated population census of 1983. In the revised figure of the World Bank, rural landlessness is around 40% (two-fifths of the total population) (World Bank 2014, p.24). Save the Children (2009) also noted that the number of landless households in the Delta was estimated at 60 to 65% of the total population, which is significantly higher than the national landless ratio. A rapid rate of land loss around the time before Cyclone Nargis was recorded as follows:
I was working for the Ministry of Forest for 35 years before I retired in 2006. At that time, we had about 500 landowners in Hlaingbongyi village tract listed in the ministry’s statistic yearbook. When I looked at the same book published in 2008, there were only some 300 landowners left. Many of them had to sell the land because they were struggling to pay debts. (Interview with a resident of Halingbongyi Village Tract, Labutta Township)
Landlessness pushed the people to marginal places and to a higher level of vulnerability. In focus group discussions for this research, there were people who became landless in pre-Cyclone Nargis time. These participants stated that debt due to long-term decline in productivity and government procurements policy for years (which stopped in 2003) was a major reason. A generational dimension of debt incurred over time and gradual loss of land was a dominant pattern described in discussions when they referred to the time before Cyclone Nargis (Focus group discussion in Zone I and II).
112
Since the first military coup of 1962, the government’s rice procurement policy put a heavy burden on the farmers of the Delta and all over Myanmar. Around 1987, the farmers were forced to sell around 10 to 12 tin of paddy (1 tin or basket is equal to 20.9 kg) per acre to the government at a fixed price. But in the 1990s, under the second military government, a new policy set the amount of rice procurement up to 30 to 40 tins per acre which was equivalent to the average amount of total rice production per acre. At that time, the government’s fixed price was only 31% of the market price (Young et al. 1998). The procurement policy was stopped in 2003, but 70% of national poverty was already located in rural areas of the country (Steinberg 2001).
When farming was under pressure under the government procurement policy and a gradual decline in productivity, subsistence fishing was no longer a cheap option used to provide a safety net for local people because of a new scheme of privatization of many common fishing grounds in the Delta (GFDRR 2014). Extensive marketization and privatization started in the early 1990s under a scheme operated by the Department of Fisheries. At the township level, the Department of Fisheries controlled inland fishery resources and introduced finishing leases and licenses by allowing those who could offer a competitive price to own fishing grounds (Save the Children 2009). As most of the licenses were sub-leased by the primary bidder to smaller fishermen with a higher price, small-scale fishermen who had to rely on the income from daily fishing consequently suffered. Quite often, even fishing grounds in small creeks fell into the hands of bidders and livelihood options for the rest became fewer.
In a study of poverty and mangrove deforestation in the Delta, Htay (2016) stated that local people were often incapable of paying market price for fishing licenses even though the creeks and rivers are located beside them. Therefore, these villagers ‘hide and catch marine animals in the small creeks at night’ (p.82) but they do not usually get a good catch. Their income was shrinking while the supposed safety net rarely helped. Htay (2016) also describes a circle of deprivation among the Delta fishermen; the villagers at the margin need to borrow the money for food, then they go fishing at night. Due to a lower quality of fish catch, they cannot pay back the debt. Then they sometimes sneak into the mangrove forest to get something to make some money for debt repayment and daily food. Poverty forces them to make illegal extractions
113
although they know that depleted mangroves are part of the reason for declining fish stocks. When mangroves which serve as fish spawning grounds lose ecosystem services, they cannot find fish and poverty continues to grow.
In this context of government policy negatively impacting on local livelihoods, local communities in the Delta faced an increase in vulnerability. When the local participants in this research shared their life story under the military regime prior to Cyclone Nargis, they usually referred to two factors in the name of vulnerability: powerlessness and feeling neglected. ‘Powerlessness’ in the face of oppression, corruption and injustice and ‘neglect’ by the government policy and administrative structures to crucial issues which impact on society and community.
Powerlessness was profoundly expressed in Zone II of this research when participants recounted confrontational situations involving fishing license holders and ordinary fishermen in which local police or authorities usually protect the interest of licensees (discussions in Aye Yar village of Zone II). Lack of protection for local people and its impact on livelihoods at village level was observed not only in fishing rights and but also in the land rights issue stated in Chapter 7 which featured at the root of acute vulnerability before Cyclone Nargis and its continuation in the recovery phase. The following observation of Steinberg (2001) on the rule of law in Myanmar can also be applied at the small village level:
Law is not the protection of rights but arbitrary set of regulations promulgated to support the state establishment and to prevent dissidence. Law is thus personal, not contractual, opening avenues for corruption…. In provincial areas, local military commanders have virtual dictatorial powers to enforce (or ignore) regulations that serve what they regard as state (or personal) interests. (p.41)
In the three research zones of the Delta, landlessness and limited livelihood options pushed more people to the lowest category of the wealth ranking. Doan (2008), described local households in four categories of wealth rankings, namely Very Poor, Poor, Better-Off and the Middle. In this study, which encompasses 45 villages of the Delta area, the conditions of landless farmers and manual laborers of fishing boats largely resembled the conditions of the very poor category of the Save the Children’s
114
report description. The state of very poor villagers in Save the Children’s livelihoods rapid needs assessment prepared by Doan (2008) is described as follows:
The households in this wealth group are characterized by their lack of major productive assets, i.e., they do not have paddy land and cattle; a small number of them do not even have land to build their own houses and have to rent from others. Many of these households, typically about less than half of them do not even have boats; if they do, their boats are often of small size and low quality. Their fishing nets are small and for subsistence fishing of about US$10 or less; they may have crab traps that they can use without having to pay fishing license fee. Their crab traps are very simple and usually made by themselves with purchase of key materials such as small fishing nets and some bamboo sticks. Many of them cannot afford to have livestock, particularly pigs that can serve as meaningful buffer during hunger season. Thus, they must borrow in the form
of ‘advance’ either in cash or in-kind from those households who provide access to casual labor opportunities; their loans are usually a few to ten dollars and to be repaid during the high labor season.
If they are hired by landowners for both planting and harvesting season, they may typically get kyat 270,000 a year from this job. Without having land, all their income must go in to food, essentially rice and these households are extremely vulnerable to food price fluctuation. The income of these landless from working as casual labor in farm was sufficient to buy rice for their family
consumption for 8˗10 months only. They must seek additional income sources to cover their other expenses.
Among poor households, there are extremely poor and vulnerable households that are often described by the locals in their own words as those in ‘worst condition’. In addition to their lack of major productive assets, they are
constrained by limited number of income earners in the family, having family member(s) chronically ill or disabled, etc. Some of them are elderly including widows who live alone and their capacity to work is very limited. They usually have modest income and have to rely on support from their neighbors and extended family members who live close by. They typically live far from the village center and drinking water pond. These households are extremely vulnerable to shocks and stress happening to them as well as their neighbors and family members. (Doan 2008, p.27)
115
In the post-Cyclone Nargis period of this research, it was discovered that 60 to 70 per cent of the households in all villages of Zone II are in a similar state to the above description. In contrast, Zone I and Zone III villages showed a mixture of all four categories of the stated survey. Yet, the proporation of landless and casual laborers there also ranged from 35 per cent to 45 per cent among the selected villages. These numbers indicate the continuing struggle of the people in the post-Cyclone Nargis period. Nevertheless, a new development in the pre-cyclone Nargis period is a space for local people to engage with issues that affect their life.