Myanmar Land tidbits: The Making of the Land and Revenue Act, 1876

In “Housing, Land And Property Rights In Burma: The Current Legal Framework”, a compilation over twelve-hundred pages long and published in 2009 by the Displacement Solutions and The HLP Institute we are presented with a most comprehensive collection of HLP laws. Thanks to the generosity of the publishers anyone could get the entire book (Burma_HLP_book.pdf) in digital form here.

The Land and Revenue Act (India Act II, 1876) was the first major land law enacted on our land after the annexation of “Lower Burma”. Page 22 of the HLP_book says:

Through the adoption of progressive land and revenue laws the British created, for the first time, a legal arrangement recognising private ownership of land as well as a system of land revenue tax collection. Due to the separate annexation of Lower and Upper Burma42 separate legislation was passed to suit these different jurisdictions. The Land and Revenue Act (1879) was the first major land law enacted in Burma and governed the acquisition of land rights for private persons as well as the procedures for assessment and collection of land revenue taxes. Following this legislation, the Upper Burma Land and Revenue Regulation (1889) was adopted and applied similar principles of land ownership and land revenue tax collection.

But when I started reading the this Act on page-54, I didn't feel comfortable as reading its text in the “Lower Burma Land Revenue Manual” or other old law books that were standard references for us and other Government Agencies. Why would the opening sentence of this law on page-54 says “ … rights in land in the Union of Burma” or in paragraph-2 of part I of the act says “... The President of the Union may ...” while the title says “THE LAND AND REVENUE ACT; India Act II, 1876; 1 February 1879” without mentioning any amendments. May be it is their style and that was the flavor throughout this compilation.

On the lighter side, I would joke that this is reminiscent of the heydays of the press scrutiny office. We Myanmars have a way of writing one way and reading it another way and this reminds me of possibly being the handiwork of former press scrutiny people. Once I read a magazine article by our late Thu-Maung, a successful actor, singer, and writer. By chance my eyes were drawn to a phrase containing the words “myeik-kyar” (မြိတ်ကြား). Through its context, it clearly should be “phate-kyar” (ဖိတ်ကြား) as we write and pronounce, meaning “invite”. I was completely baffled. But then I realized that Thu-Maung must have spelled “beik-kyar” (ဘိတ်ကြား) as written sometimes, which would have been corrected by someone as “myeik-kyar” (မြိတ်ကြား) because Beik a city in Tanintharyi Division is written Myeik (မြိတ်)! Lest I angered the traditionally sensitive groups, I would need to add that the magazine editor or even the typist may have, in fact, been responsible for this slip.

To continue with my story, I have been fascinated like others in the real meaning and intention behind the laws. The language of the laws doesn't help the laymen much. But if you have behind the scene access like sitting through the parliamentary debates that would be really helpful. So when I chanced to read the debates that led to the Land and Revenue Act, 1876, despite my meager knowledge of law in general and Myanmar land laws in particular, it struck me as something close to a missing link for Myanmar Land Laws.

The debate I am mentioning was recounted in full in chapter-VIII (pages 85-154) of the “Burma Settlement Manual, Volume-I” by T C Wilson, The Commissioner of Settlements and Land Records. It was printed at the British Burma Press in Rangoon in 1908. Though I don't have enough knowledge to claim that the whole work is relatively unknown, I can say definitely that my fellow junior officers didn't know about it at all. As for my close seniors, I doubt if they were any better.

My first encounter with this work, I guess, was in the mid-eighties at the headquarters of the Settlements and Land Records Department in Yangon. Of the fond memories of those days, I remembered my seniors regarding me a hard-headed youngster (relatively) and an upstart of some sort, nevertheless tolerating my (relatively) radical ideas and leaving me alone to browse the contents of such old books, for example.

Well, as it happened, I was really impressed with this work, which I vaguely remembered as having picked it up either from our dusty library or from the Lower Burma Settlements Office. I introduced it to one of my seniors at our headquarter with much enthusiasm. Afterward there was no communication between us about this book so far as I can remember. Much later, after I've left my job, I asked my friends about this book and came to know that the book had been given away by my senior officer to someone at the BSPP (Burmese Socialist Programme Party) headquarter and it was the last thing I heard about it.

Fortunately, I few months ago I happened to mention this book to one of my younger retirees from the same government agency I had worked for. Then my friend recalled picking up some old books many years ago from a friend of his who was packing up to move his office to the new headquarters. Checking this collection out, my friend miraculously recovered another copy of the Settlement Manual by Mr. Wilson.

The following shows the scanned first and last pages of chapter-VIII of the book.

It seems too precious to keep contents of the book between my friend and myself, so for a start I've shared the entire chapter-VIII here in three parts:

TCW_LRA1876_pp85-107.pdf - available here

TCW_LRA1876_pp108-131.pdf - available here

TCW_LRA1876_pp132-154.pdf - available here

As if people mattered

When someone talks about governance with metta, I felt a bit uneasy. Jealous perhaps—why should cronies for example get metta as a bonus when they took everything and got everything? But, I guess, a share of metta is unlike a share of the pie. Here everyone gets the whole of it and it will be something like the realization of win-win and level playing field dreams.

Before being rudely awakened from the day dream like the young glass-ware hawker of “building a brick house in the air” when he has just kicked his basket in his sleep and broken all his glass, I felt I should look for and try to understand some venture a bit modest. In no way it's a rejection of the metta idea, or was I taken somewhat aback by the lofty implications—rather, an inspiration to think about some humble building blocks for it.

Project-gurus warned us of the folly of setting up our objectives as the negation of current undesirable conditions. Yet that is exactly what we may like to do in this situation. First, just heap everyone or every groups we would like to deny—cronies and others and get their negation—the people. Then do everything “... as if people mattered”.

Obviously that is not so easy! Yet people has been thinking along this line for considerable time in the past. Personally this phrase has been laying dormant in my heart for a long time … . And yet I've never bothered to look up on it!

I don't know if it fits, but now I am hearing these lines from a Pulitzer winning poet:

Bad penny pendulum

You kept my constant time

To bob in blue July

Where gold finches fly

Over the glittering fecund reach of our growing land

Once more now, this second

I hold you in my hands

Well, you would have guessed that you in my mind's eye is no other than “as if people mattered”.

As last minute check I did look up that phrase on the web and the first result from Google gave all 10 entries on Shumacher's “Small is Beautiful” except the one on “Teaching Economics As If People Mattered”. What a surprise! I have completely forgotten that Sumacher's book carry the sub-heading “Economic as if People Mattered”!

The beauty of search engines is that they return short descriptions relating to what you are looking for and most of the time they are relevant and quite illuminating even for someone completely new to the subject. The second page of results for my search on “as if people mattered” gives:

• TechnoScience as if People Mattered
• Small is Beautiful
• Housing as if People Mattered
• Programming as if People Mattered
• Global Politics as if People Mattered
• Smart is Beautiful: low carbon cities as if people mattered
• Distributism: Economics as if People Mattered
• Law Reform as if People Mattered

To me it seems all of them could be useful to us now, some of them more urgent than others. Indeed, as we have so much to work on to straighten our society and our endowments, it would not be an exaggeration to think that everything you find with aiming for “... as if people mattered” will be desirable and applicable, may be with some prioritization thrown in.

The third page of results carries:

• Letters: Alternative economics – as if people mattered
• Economic Development as if People Mattered

Here, the entry on the description of the first bullet Political economy can be thought of, in EF Schumacher's phrase, as "economics as if people mattered" that appeared in the Guardian caught my eye. Well, the first and last thing I'd read about political economy was one on Burma by Furnival a long time ago and now completely forgotten. Until now it was a mystery to me why my Myanmar friend in Down Under has changed his specialization from agricultural economics to political economy. Now I can see his reason: he must have taken the vow afresh to practice economics as if people mattered! Please allow my respect and admiration for you, my friend.

And if you go on with your search results you are sure to find something that you are specifically interested in, such as these and more from about three million results Google could find.

• Writing about art as if people mattered
• Urban planning as if people mattered
• Housing as if people mattered
• Economic History as if People Mattered
• Capitalism: An economy as if people mattered
• Green Building Design as if People Mattered
• Employment Law as if People Mattered
• Social Business: Business as if People Mattered

The following result appeared on page-6 and it is of special significance to me because I have a friend running a local research unit who is obsessed with making government budgets fit people's needs:

• Budgets as if People Mattered.

Well, my findings here are surely amateurish and could even be dismissed as nothing more than sneers at the politicians, professionals, bureaucrats, cronies and others. At the same time adversaries to “as if people mattered” may already have antidotes and tricks up their sleeves. Beware.

Well, to my dumb fellows I say: you are (close to being) delivered; go and multiply!