In the northern highlands, fighting between the army and armed ethnic groups has sent tens of thousands fleeing, raising questions about the sustainability of a peace conference launched with much fanfare last August.
"Reform takes time," says 18-year-old Yangon University student Win Lwin Aung, echoing the sentiment of several others interviewed by The Straits Times.
"We'll be patient. But the government has to try harder than this."
NLD leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent years under house arrest, has had to walk a tightrope under a power-sharing arrangement with the military after she took over the reins of government on March 30 last year.
With the military guaranteed a quarter of parliamentary seats and controlling key security portfolios, the government has had to fit new leadership within the framework of existing institutions conditioned by some 50 years of junta rule.
There is some impatience at a civilian administration that has few tangible changes to show for its first year in power.
"There was a lot more continuity from the previous transition government than many expected," notes University College London's South Asia expert Marie Lall.
But she argues that this is an achievement too.
Rather than throwing out old initiatives and starting anew, the NLD government, for example, last month launched a national education strategic plan produced through a consultation process that began under the previous government led by former president Thein Sein.
A new investment law to be implemented from April 1 was borne out under the same circumstances.
Yet many were at the same time disappointed last year when the government outlined an economic policy. It was big on the broad strokes, like inclusive growth and cutting red tape, but short on details which have kept investors on the sidelines even though US sanctions against Myanmar have been lifted after two decades.
"The business community as a whole is concerned that the changes have not been implemented fast enough and clear enough," says Mr Aung Htun, managing director of a Yangon-based investment company.
He points out, however, that Ms Suu Kyi has a tougher job compared to former president Thein Sein.
While his government enjoyed spikes in foreign investment helped by oil and gas exploration projects, her administration has a far trickier task of diversifying a resource-dependent economy hit by weak oil and commodity prices.
This is a country full of potholes and potential, where poverty, a weak bureaucracy, simmering ethnic and religious tensions, and presence of crony capitalists are counter-balanced by abundant natural wealth, a strategic location and a young population eager to make up for the lost decades under military rule.
"We do understand that it's pretty hard for the civilian government," former political prisoner and Info Digest journal editor Ma Thida tells The Straits Times.
"But we all want to be informed.
"We want to be told what problems it is facing."