The second part of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nehru Lecture that interests me again plays off an episode from the life of the legendary Indian statesman. The time is the early 1960s. The place is Delhi Railway Station, where various dignitaries have assembled to greet a train bearing Burmese Prime Minister U Nu on an official visit. Among them are Aung San Suu Kyi, aged roughly 16, her mother Khin Kyi, then Burmese Ambassador to India, and Nehru, still both Prime Minister and Minister of External Affairs. It is the earliest recollection Aung San Suu Kyi has of seeing him. Noting that cheers went up as soon as the teeming crowd spotted the Indian premier entering the cordoned area, she reports his reaction.

“His lower lip protruding in that famous petulant look, Nehru ignored all the plaudits and all the people (including me) and walked up and down the empty platform with my mother and talked to her exclusively. His aristocratic disdain for public approbation filled me with both astonishment and admiration. I wondered if Nehru’s public liked his cool arrogance or whether there was a bond between them that made exchanges of mutual courtesies unnecessary. Then I remembered that my father had been notorious for his stern, almost scowling expression and for his lack of social graces. Our people loved him for these very defects, which they saw as proof of his honest, open nature. I should add that towards the end of his life my father acknowledged that as a national leader, he could not continue with the rough diamond manners of a young revolutionary.”

Like Nehru, Aung San Suu Kyi is of course a political aristocrat. Clearly she has none of the disdain for popular acclaim that she marveled at in him. Nor does she follow her father in lacking social graces or, as she put it in her short 1984 biography of him, in displaying “altogether angular behavior”. Nevertheless, there is an element of nobility and aloofness to her bearing and, as with Aung San, her people appear to read into that a basic honesty for which they love her.

Equally, though, such qualities surely contribute to a certain deficiency when it comes to institution building. This is something that has been noted of her role as party leader, and that could become an issue if ever she were to assume a senior position in government.

There are three other aspects of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nehru Lecture that fascinate me. I’ll address them in successive posts starting today. The first is what she has to say about the choice she made to dedicate her life to politics – a term the BBC placed in the title of its excellent September 2012 documentary, and that she then used in her lecture a couple of months later.

She begins by describing a very difficult personal dilemma faced by Nehru in 1934 during one of his many terms of imprisonment, and subsequently reported in his autobiography. His wife Kamala was sick, and would in fact die less than two years later at the age of 36. This is how Aung San Suu Kyi captures the situation: “it was suggested to him ‘through various intermediaries’ that if he were to give an assurance, even an informal one, that he would keep away from politics for the rest of the term to which he had been sentenced, he would be released to tend to his ailing wife.” He refused to do so, and Kamala later affirmed his decision: “What is this about your giving an assurance to Government? Do not give it!”

Aung San Suu Kyi then discloses her fascination with Nehru’s action and reasoning, placing herself entirely on his side: “I have to confess that I wholly endorsed his stand on the matter.” She also spells out the moral she took from the story: “The lesson I really learnt however was not to deceive myself, or others, with the claim that we are making self-sacrifices when we follow our conscience; we are simply making a choice and possibly an egoistic one at that. When we give up what is dear to our hearts is it not sometimes to make ourselves less vulnerable? The ones who make the real sacrifices are those who let us go free to keep our secret trysts with destiny.”

There’s little new in this passage, and I’ve certainly encountered pithier versions. In The Lady, for instance, her character explains by phone to younger son Kim why she’s not present in Oxford with dying husband Michael: “But I can’t! My hands are tied!” What is valuable in the Nehru Lecture is the striking honesty with which Aung San Suu Kyi dissects perhaps the most famous aspect of her persona.

Returning to The Lady, there’s one scene where Aung San Suu Kyi, held under house arrest, paints a series of big character posters. Among slogans for democracy and human rights is a comment from Jawaharlal Nehru: “The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds.”

I have no way of knowing whether this scene is factual. When Aung San Suu Kyi delivered the Nehru Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on November 14, 2012, 123 years on from his birth and 17 years on from her own receipt of the Nehru Memorial Prize, she revealed that just before the great man’s centenary in 1989 she copied a long paragraph from his autobiography onto a large sheet of paper. She then hung the sheet in the entrance hall of her house so that security personnel, her only visitors, would have no choice but to see it. That paragraph, though, does not contain the sentence cited in the film.

As depicted, then, the scene may or may not have taken place. Still it’s a neat touch because it effortlessly signals the significance of Nehru for Aung San Suu Kyi, stemming from close family ties built after Panditji, as he was widely called, became known to Aung San in the 1930s. In her lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi tells a nice story from the final months of her father’s life.

In January 1947, Aung San travelled to London via Delhi for independence negotiations with British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. In the two days he spent in India, Nehru insisted on having two thick winter uniforms made for him, and also gave him a British Army greatcoat. It was in that coat, in the garden of 10 Downing Street, that the most famous photograph of Aung San was taken.

I like this historical footnote. From time to time, Yangon artist Zwe Yan Naing uses defunct Aung San banknotes to make collages of major national and international figures. His images of Aung San replicate the Downing Street photo. I also like the Nehru comment from The Lady. The belief it expresses is the foundation on which thukhuma is built.

It must be time to dust off elite theory and use it to structure analysis of Myanmar politics. Parallel exercises have already been undertaken in many other East Asian states, and there’s no reason whatsoever for this part of the region to be left out of the picture. At Murdoch University at the end of May, I participated in a workshop with Dr Htwe Htwe Thein from Curtin University, and discovered that she’s doing great research on Myanmar’s 11 major crony families. However, I don’t know whether elite theory frames her study.

The classic statement was made by C Wright Mills in The Power Elite, published in 1956. This passage is from the opening two pages of his book: “The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences… They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.”

Mills was describing America in the mid-1950s. It takes zero imagination to see that his work is directly relevant to Myanmar in the mid-2010s.

At the end of last week, Myanmar Development Resource Institute’s Centre for Economic and Social Development and Asia Foundation jointly released a report by Hamish Nixon and Cindy Joelene entitled “Fiscal Decentralization in Myanmar: Towards a Roadmap for Reform”. Not the most gripping topic, you might think. Nevertheless, as the country seeks to deconstruct a strongly unionist system put in place by successive military and military-backed regimes, it’s important to find ways to allocate to sub-central tiers of government not only public functions, but also public money. Aware both of the difficulties inherent in any financial reform programme, and of relevant international experience, the report proposes a dual strategy of deconcentration within policy sectors, and decentralization across government layers. It claims to build incrementally on three recent developments. First, line ministries have started to assign enhanced activities and budgets to their regional and state offices. Second, regional and state assemblies have gained a greater share of the national budget. Third, several essentially ad hoc initiatives have together fed funds to sub-central levels. At the same time, however, the report looks beyond anything implicit in the drift of fiscal policy since 2011 to argue for a central oversight body tasked with driving further decentralization. It opts for a high-level political body such as a national commission or secretariat. This is from page 48: “The most important recommendations of this paper, therefore, are not just about a specific decentralization proposal, but rather the need to form coordinating institutions and a policy process to manage these evolving fiscal decentralization reforms.” In a state long characterized by woeful governance, that would be a major innovation moving well beyond incrementalism.

Just a few words about an academic initiative currently taking place at Central Philippine University. “Learning from Yolanda: Disaster Response, Community Resilience and the Role of Asian Universities” is both a three-day international conference, and a 12-day service learning project jointly organized by CPU, the University of St La Salle and Stillman University, in full partnership with the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia. It’s taking place in and around Iloilo City because the wider Visayas region found itself in the eye of Super Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda when it hit the Philippines in mid-November last year.

This excellent event draws in Myanmar participants, and deepens the United Board’s contribution to higher education across the country. Earlier this year, on February 4-7, the Board partnered with Dagon University and the Ministry of Education to convene a higher education leadership programme entitled “Education Reform in Myanmar: Extending a Helping Hand”. All power to my buddies Glenn Shive and Robert (Bob) Winter, who are right at the heart of the action.

This week’s Economist has a terrific article on MOOCs in Brazil, plus a leader explaining how fundamental economic, social and technological change is reshaping higher education the world over. The two pieces are essential reading for anyone interested in building a twenty-first century higher education system in Myanmar. I’m grateful to my friend James Greenbury for bringing them to my attention.

The leader notes that three key drivers are transforming higher education globally. The first is rising cost, experienced notably in the developed world. The second is shifting demand, as the traditional mode of university attendance at 18-21 gives way to a more variegated pattern of lifelong learning. The third is disruptive technology, in the guise of the internet and especially the MOOCs it spawned in 2008. “The internet, which has turned businesses from newspapers through music to book retailing upside down, will upend higher education.”

I’ve written before about MOOCs, looking both at their enormous potential, and at difficulties in delivering on it. What I didn’t know is that one of the world champions in pushing the technological envelope is Brazil. The Economist focuses on two for-profit firms in its higher education sector: Kroton and Anhanguera, the company Kroton is in the process of buying. “‘Quality [in education] is easy,’ says Rodrigo Galindo, Kroton’s energetic young boss. ‘And so is quantity. What’s difficult is combining the two.’ The trick, he explains, is to abandon ‘handcrafted’ teaching methods for scalable ones: online course materials and tutors; star teachers’ lessons broadcast by satellite; tightly specified franchise agreements with hundreds of local teaching centres staffed by moderators.”

This is the winning formula: top-notch online courses complemented by frequent class meetings designed to facilitate robust student discussion and strong completion rates. Important elements of quality maintenance in Brazil are a common accreditation standard, and a national exam set by the education ministry. Each helps to ensure that a sector dominated by private providers performs to a high level.

Making the most of MOOCs is critical to revitalization of Myanmar’s universities. Used to generate a structured system of outstanding online courses supported by regular face-to-face tuition, they can play a major role in reanimating campuses throughout the country.

At dusk on Saturday I went to TS1 Gallery by Yangon River’s Lanthit Jetty to attend an evening of performance art. Attention Please! was dedicated to ten female Myanmar artists. Largely unfamiliar with such work, I found it all fairly bemusing, and at the same time energizing and inspiring. The venue was also terrific – the kind of white cube often encountered in great world cities, but uncommon in Yangon. It’s set within the regular daily life of the port, making it nicely atmospheric. “Berlin inside, Burma outside” – my friend Nathalie Johnston’s description.

Nathalie is Director of Exhibitions for Pun + Projects, which runs TS1. The gallery launched on April 5, and in three months since then has sought to build a platform notably for visual arts. Solo shows are currently scheduled for two leading contemporary painters: Soe Naing, opening on July 12, and Aung Myint, opening on August 9. Saturday’s event brought together established stars such as Phyu Mon, born in 1960, and young artists such as Thwe Thwe, born in 1991.

One feature of the event was its exclusivity. Among close to 100 people present an hour or two in, there were as many foreigners as locals, and I doubt that any of the locals had much of a link to the port. Media figures were present in great numbers. There we all were, then, in an artistic bubble watched, from a safe distance, by people who for years have worked in Yangon River transit sheds, and taken Yangon River ferries.

I asked Nathalie about TS1’s plans for bridging the Berlin/Burma divide. She told me the gallery has every intention of reaching out to kids congregating on the jetties while their parents scrape together a living, and to adults employed in the port or using it as a transportation hub.

I hope something will come of that, and of other initiatives to connect this exciting new project with ongoing port activities. It would be a shame if Berlin were to edge out Burma in this corner of Yangon. That’s already happening in several other parts of the city.

I missed a story in last week’s Irrawaddy about the resumption of citizenship verification in Rakhine State. The process was triggered towards the end of 2012 by the outburst of sectarian violence, and stalled in 2013 by disagreement about Rohingya/Bengali terminology. In a limited and tentative way, it’s now back on track.

“As a pilot project in Myebon Township, immigration officials are accepting citizenship applications from anyone who identifies as Bengali, according to Maung Maung Than, director-general of the Department of Immigration and National Registration.” Out of a township Muslim cohort of 3042, 47 people have thus far done so. That’s clearly not much of an advance when the total Rohingya population across the state is around one million.

Nevertheless, it’s important that practical steps be taken to address the citizenship problem, which hangs over everything else in Rakhine State. Indeed, for some time now Buddhist nationalist groups have pressed for full verification, believing it will result in only a small number of successful claims – and exclusion for everyone else.

In fact, however, things may not turn out that way. Building on recent experience in Myanmar’s eastern borderlands, applicants are not required to produce a paper trail stretching back to 1823. Rather, pragmatic efforts are being made to consult community leaders in determining which families really do have residence reaching at least a couple of generations into the past. Currently, whether to come forward and claim citizenship is an entirely voluntary matter.

The name to be given to the new citizens remains an issue of deep contention. This is Mohamed Salim, cited by the Irrawaddy as a Rohingya spokesman: “We do not accept the term ‘Bengalis’. The Muslim people in Arakan State are Rohingya. If they want to conduct an examination based on the 1982 law, they need to first amend the law in accordance with international standards, since it currently includes much discrimination, and after that they can exam us.”

That’s a fair point, and one day it too will need to be confronted. For now, though, it’s good to see something being done to tackle a damaging political question by moving people into the ranks of Myanmar citizens.

I’ve written before about MOOCs’ great potential to boost higher education in Myanmar, and figured I should find out how they’re faring in places where they’ve been given a fair trial. The most recent MOOC Research Conference, held at the University of Texas, Arlington in December 2013, brought together key figures in the field. It was organized by the MOOC Research Initiative, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

One clear message was that MOOCs are often oversold in the media – it’s time to look beyond the hype. The most compelling evidence came from a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, who sought to understand the movement of a million users through Coursera courses offered by U Penn in a single year: June 2012 to June 2013. What they found was quite disturbing. In brief, many apply, but few are active, participation falls off dramatically after the first couple of weeks, and only very small numbers persist to the end. Moreover, users do not come from demographic groups typically excluded from traditional universities. Overwhelmingly for these online courses, they were wealthy, educated, male Americans.

Maybe, then, there’s not much promise here after all? Looking through the evidence presented at the conference, it’s certainly too early to draw that conclusion. Summarizing the main themes, George Siemens had this to say: “While prominent media promotes grand narratives of MOOCs as disruptive, transformative, and sure to end the current model of higher education, MRI grantees, keynote speakers, and panels offered a vision of MOOCs as supplementing and enlarging the role of the university.”

That evaluation in fact offers great hope for MOOCs in Myanmar – not as a volley of silver bullets capable of solving the many problems that afflict the higher education system, but rather as part of a structured package designed to help enhance teaching and learning across the sector. Provided they are fully integrated into a larger vision for university reform and renewal, MOOCs still have an enormous amount to offer.