Talking with Vicky Bowman reminded me of a briefing paper circulated by the Burma Campaign UK last month. It seemed way off the mark at the time, and seems still more so now. Entitled “Trade, Development and the Smokescreen of CSR”, it was written by David Baulk and released on April 11. It can be downloaded from the BCUK website.

Baulk makes fair points about the restricted nature of the current transition, real problems generated by land grabs and ongoing human rights violations, and limited gains currently registered by ordinary people. On this basis, he castigates the international community for relinquishing “almost every lever of economic and political pressure”, and argues that it has made “an unequivocal commitment to prioritise trade and investment over human rights – under the name of ‘corporate social responsibility’”. But is that what is really happening?

Another way to view things is to start with an insight provided by Kofi Annan, as secretary-general in 2005, when reviewing the contribution of business to the UN Millennium Development Goals: “It is the absence of broad-based business activity, not its presence, which condemns much of humanity to suffering. Indeed, what is utopian is the notion that poverty can be overcome without the active engagement of business.” Myanmar is a perfect illustration of this. Its 50 years of economic catastrophe were triggered by a state socialist regime that was hostile to business, and a military junta that was incapable of creating conditions in which it might flourish.

Acknowledging this, the international community has decided to grasp the best chance of meaningful change offered in the past two generations and work with the grain of reform. As part of that, it now endorses corporate engagement with Myanmar. At the same time, though, it seeks to infuse business activity with CSR principles so as to boost welfare gains across the entire society. MCRB is taking concrete steps to deliver on that. So too are many international organizations, donor agencies from leading states, and INGOs. The Myanmar government is also moving in that direction.

Just about everyone involved in these initiatives accepts that progress is often slow, and much remains to be done. But there are also benefits in the emergence of responsible business practice, and its gradual spread to key parts of the economy. There is, then, no “smokescreen” of CSR in Myanmar, but rather a committed attempt to build a new corporate culture. The idea that the country would have a better shot at a decent transition if broad-based business activity were absent rather than present makes little sense.