Mapping Land and Resources in Myanmar: New Data Infrastructures for New Development?

• In Event: The Politics of Science and Technology in International Development 2

Abstract

Once a military-ruled black box of internet connectivity, Myanmar opened to international investment in 2010, formerly transitioned to democracy in 2014, and has since undergone a transformation in digital infrastructure. Prior to 2013, there was little to no internet and mobile phone access across the country but as of 2017, over two-thirds of households own at least one mobile phone and 80% of the country has access to internet or 3G networks. Lacking much of the brick-and-mortar infrastructure traditionally assumed to be the foundation of economic development, some government officials, international consultants, and NGOs are advocating for Myanmar to “leapfrog” over tangible infrastructure in the education, health, and agricultural sectors and instead adopt digital infrastructure as the basis for development. Yet there are tensions between global data infrastructure that seeks to make open data and data transparency ubiquitous and a newly democratic country with still-entrenched military norms that advocated secrecy for many decades, particularly over resource and land control—the backbone of Myanmar’s development strategy. Drawing on qualitative research in Yangon, we assess how new digital infrastructures in land and resource mapping are being implemented as part of an effort to liberalize Myanmar’s political and economic institutions. We argue that, despite the rapid introduction of new digital infrastructures that presume increased accuracy and transparency of data used by the resource-based development sector, such infrastructure does not necessarily alter the power structures that have left the majority of Myanmar’s population out of traditional development pathways in the past.

Authors

• Jenny Elaine Goldstein, Cornell University

• Hilary Faxon, Dept of Development Sociology, Cornell University