Burma: battered and bruised

This Saturday, Burma's reclusive generals are gearing up for a national referendum on a new constitution that would legitimise military rule. The Burmese people, buffeted by a cyclone last weekend that killed at least 22,000 people and left 41,000 missing, may feel there is more to worry about.

Although there is a paucity of information on the ground, a symptom of the country's hermetic junta and bad infrastructure, Cyclone Nargis threatens another crisis for the Burmese people: one of hunger. Food prices, particularly rice, have surged this year, fuelling inflation and increasing political tensions across the region; now Nargis has disrupted the harvest in one of Asia's richest rice-growing areas, which could send world rice prices even higher.

Rice prices in Burma have increased 40% in the past year, rubbing brine into the burden from rising prices for other basics such as cooking oil. Low productivity, inadequate investment and land encroachment are also creating supply bottlenecks.

As for the referendum, more elections are planned in 2010, which suggests that the junta is outwardly sure of its position and of its ability to secure a 'yes' vote for its new charter. It can count on the support of its 20 million-strong mass support group and plenty of others it has coerced and threatened.