Naypyidaw: An Elite Vision for Burma’s Future?

Abstract

The new Myanmar capital of Naypyidaw embodies the dominant vision held by post-junta civilian politicians and the military elite, who see the country’s development in terms of top-down “nation-building” assisted by foreign capital and expertise. The new capital represents the elite’s blueprint for a “new” Myanmar, in which the historical slate with all its tumults is wiped clean and modernity, with one important exception, is wholly embraced. Naypyidaw and a new headquarters for the armed forces are located in the center of the country, poised to take advantage of new infrastructure integrating continental Asian economies and strategic proximity to restive ethnic armed groups such as the Kachin Independence Army. However, in the centre of the capital region, Gen. Than Shwe sponsored the construction of the Upattasanti Pagoda, an assertion of Myanmar’s traditional identity (“to be Burmese is to be Buddhist”), symbolically creating a nation of Buddhist “insiders” and non-Buddhist “outsiders”.