Another Left Turn

Come you hack to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay:

Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin'

from Rangoon to Mandalay?

Not anymore, you can't. The side-wheel riverboats that Rudyard Kipling wrote about in the far-off days of the Empire are disappearing fast. At least a third of the ancient riverboats of Rangoon's nationalized Irrawaddy Flotilla Co. is laid up for lack of parts. The rest operate with dismaying irregularity. Like just about everything else in Burma, they have suffered in the grip of economic and political paralysis that strongman Ne Win calls "the Burmese Way to Socialism."

In the nearly eight years since his army-supported coup ousted from power U Nu, the ascetic contemplative former premier, Ne Win has led the country, which was once the world's largest exporter of rice, into a calamitous decline. For years he has effectively closed it off from the outside world, granting visas to tourists and journalists for stays of only 24 hours. Lately, in a general relaxation that included the release of most of his 2,000 political prisoners, he has allowed visitors to remain in Burma for three days instead of only one. After such a visit, TIME Correspondent David Greenway sent this report:

In Rangoon, queues of would-be shoppers form in the dingy light of false dawn, long before the rising sun has set the golden stupa of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda aglow. For hours, as crows caw mournfully above the dirty streets, they stand in line at "people's stores," ration cards in hand, waiting for a chance to buy rice, bread, soap or a bit of cloth to make a longyi, the Burmese sarong. But when the doors open, the shelves, as often as not, are bare.

So severe are the shortages that a standard joke in Rangoon, which averages 100 inches of rain a year, is that if the government decided to nationalize water, there would be a drought. Rice exports continue to decline, dropping from 1,800,000 tons in 1962 to an expected 600,000 tons this year.

Four-Legged Economy. The mood is all the gloomier in Rangoon because many people had felt Ne Win was on the verge of making some overdue changes. Last year, in what seemed to be an effort to broaden his political base, he set up an "internal unity advisory board" composed of 33 old politicians, including former Premier U Nu.

Six months ago, the board's majority recommended a return to parliamentary democracy and a "four-legged" economic system that would include a private sector, cooperatives and joint private-public ventures, as well as state-run enterprises. It also recommended more autonomy for Burma's hill tribes and other minorities, which constitute 25% of the population.

Like their counterparts in other Southeast-Asian states, Burma's hill people resent being ruled by a lowland majority. Rebel organizations operate in the mountainous regions, and China has exploited discontent among the hill people as an inexpensive way of making mischief for the Rangoon government. Ne Win himself earlier this month admitted that his army had lost 133 men during the first eight months of this year in skirmishes provoked, he said, by "Burmese Communists." In the Pegu Yoma mountains north of Rangoon, on the other hand, the Burmese army has scored heavy gains against the "White Flag" Communists and virtually controls the region for the first time in 20 years.

Two weeks ago, Ne Win finally handed down his decision about the advisory board's advice. "I am not interested in any economic system, with four legs or otherwise, which does not put the people's interests first," he said. "We must go the way of true socialism."

Sensing perhaps that the climate was not really changing, U Nu managed to go into exile early this year. After feigning illness and fainting spells, he convinced the government that he needed medical attention abroad. Once out of Burma, he set off on a world tour denouncing the Ne Win regime, then retired to Bangkok to contemplate a return to power. But Ne Win's position with the army appears secure. If he chooses to take Burma farther left, no matter how disastrous the course, he seems strong enough to do so.

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