India Act XIII, 1898 4th November, 1898...."...5. The President of the Union may, for administrative including revenue purposes,-
(q) divide Upper Burma into divisions and each of these divisions into districts, and vary the
limits of those divisions and districts, and
(b) divide each of those districts into sub-divisions, each of those sub-divisions into townships
and each of those townships into circles, and vary the limits of these sub-divisions, townships
and circles.

Burma's dramatic turn-around from 'axis of evil' to western darling in the past year has been imagined as Asia's 'final frontier' for global finance institutions, markets and capital. Burma's agrarian landscape is home to three-fourths of the country's total population which is now being constructed as a potential prime investment sink for domestic and international agribusiness.

movable material

INDIA Act IV, 1893 9th March, 1893....."...Whenever in any suit for partition in which, if instituted prior to the commencement of this
Act, a decree for partition might have been made, it appears to the Court that, by reason of the
nature of the property to which the suit relates, or of the number of the shareholders therein or of
any other special circumstance, a division of the property cannot reasonably or conveniently be
made, and that a sale of the property and distribution of the proceeds would be more beneficial

The people of Myanmar do not hold absolute property rights – a fact which has remained true, though meant different things, through the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras.

INDIA Act III, 1874....."Whereas it is expedient to make such provision as hereinafter appears for the enjoyment of
wages and earnings by women married before the first day of January, 1866, and for insurances
on lives by persons married before or after that day:
And whereas by the Indian Succession Act, 1865, section 4,1 it is enacted that no person shall by
marriage acquire any interest in the property of the person whom he or she marries, nor become
incapable of doing any act in respect of his or her own property, which he or she could have

Policy Briefing Paper..."Since Myanmar’s 1995 Community Forestry Instruction, forests have gradually been handed over to community management across the country. How are Forest User Groups performing? Are the Community Forests improving in condition? And are there improved livelihood benefits? This paper summarises findings of an assessment of 16 randomly selected Forest User Groups across 4 key regions.

Under support from the DFID PyoePin programme, Dr Kyaw Tint, the head of ECCDI, a leading Yangon based NGO led a research project to understand the current status of Community Forestry in the country, with technical support from Dr. Oliver Springate-Baginski. Field study was conducted in October – December 2010, and we presented our findings at a national workshop.

The three main outputs of the project are available to download here:

Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest
people—the 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than two dollars
a day. Landesa partners with developing country governments to design
and implement laws, policies, and programs concerning land that provide
opportunity, further sustainable economic growth, and promote social
justice...

The Union of Myanmar -
The State Law and Order Restoration Council -
Notification No. 44/91 -
7th Waxing Day of Tazaungmon, 1353 M.E. -
(13th November, 1991)

Customary Tenure and Land Alienation in Myanmar:
"Customary communal tenure is characteristic of many local upland communities in S.E. Asia. These
communities have strong ancestral relationships to their land, which has never been held under
individual rights, but considered common property of the village. Communal tenure has been the
norm and land has never been a commodity. This is an age-old characteristic of many societies
globally. Prior to the publication in 1861 of Ancient Law by the English jurist Henry Sumner Maine,

...[O]n 19th June, 2012, the President of the Union guided on the
following land reform matters to draw and implement the national
development long term and short term plans:
(a) To manage, calculate, use and carry out systematically the
Sustainable Development of natural resources such as land, water,
forest, mines to enable to use them future generations;
(b)To manage and carry out systematically the land use policy and land
use management not to cause land problems such as land use, land
fluctuation and land trespass;