The spectacular commodity and land rush in Myanmar: its extent and consequences

The frenzy created by spectacles, and lubricated by the capital’s ability to rapidly circulate across national boundaries, drives the engine of commodity and land rush. There are three manifestations of land grabs in Myanmar: operational and non-operational land deals, and pin prick land grabs. In Myanmar, when the enterprises projected to arise from large-scale land deals are not fully operationalized, it generates an implicit misconception that land grabs might not have been consummated. This is caused by and leads to the two overlapping but different concepts of ‘land rush and land grab’ being conflated. The spectacular land rush in Myanmar that peaked during the period of 2007–2015 was long gone, but land grabbing continues with wider scale and scope.