The socio-economic impacts of rice policies implementation in rural Burma/Myanmar

This paper, focusing on two rice-farming villages where the Burmese government has experimented with a variety of agricultural programmes, explores the problems associated with rice implementation processes. In particular it looks at the basic structure and operation of agricultural administration — salary and income of government officials, the predominance of military officers in civilian ministries and departments, the creation of departments with overlapping responsibilities, and the hierarchical structure of the Agricultural Ministry — and highlight their limitations. It provides another aspect to evaluating the roots of poverty among average rice farmers.