It is often hard for urban Thai perceptions of the rural to strike an appropriate middle ground. On the one hand there is the romantic imagery of honest and hard working agriculturalists living simple and sufficient lives, in harmony with the environment and each other. On the other hand there are images of a money hungry rabble casting aside cultural traditions in pursuit of easy cash and exotic coyote dancers. Both images are politically disempowering. The former suggests that rural folk have little interest in modern politics except in the form of “resistance” when traditional ways are threatened. The later suggests that their interest in politics is exhausted once sufficient money has been paid for their votes.
It is the disempowerment of the rural that is at the heart of Sondhi Limthongkul’s current political campaign. Sondhi’s elitist vision has been the subject of considerable New Mandala discussion (here, here and here for example). Today, there is another interesting addition to the emerging field of Sondhi-suksa from The Nation’s Chang Noi:
Sondhi is appealing to a deep vein of middle-class fear. Bangkokians no longer have to worry about rural revolution, and have even been spared the sight of rural protesters cluttering up the Bangkok pavements (an unappreciated benefit of the Thaksin era). But they understand that, deep down, electoral politics is a battle over the command of resources, and that Thaksin’s populism showed the rural mass was starting to gain a larger share.
Nicely put!
15 responses so far ↓
1 fall // Nov 28, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Even God cast out Eve and Adam after they tasted the apple.
Is it possible to put the rural back in their place once they have tasted the fruit?
Did I hear a time bomb that ticking?
2 Naphat // Nov 29, 2006 at 4:56 am
I don’t know, fall – why have a negative image of a ticking time bomb hanging over all this rural empowerment? After 70 or so years of ‘democracy’ it seems like we still are repeating the People’s Party’s line that the rural population is not yet ready for democracy.
3 Johpa // Nov 29, 2006 at 5:37 am
It is often hard for rural Thai perceptions of the urban folks to strike an appropriate middle ground. On the one hand there is the romantic imagery of honest and hard working city workers living a modern life surrounded by the fruits of development, in harmony with the invisible hand of the omniscient market. On the other hand there are images of a money hungry rabble casting aside cultural traditions in pursuit of easy cash and exotic mia nois. Both images are politically disempowering. The former suggests that urban folk have little interest in modern politics except in the form of “resistance” when rural concerns are discussed. The later suggests that their interest in politics is exhausted once sufficient money has been spent for votes.
I hope I am not accused of lese majeste, but methinks HRM forgets the long history of dancing girls at local Thai cultural and religious festivities. I just see these “dancers” as the modern day version of the ramwong girls; the attire (a tad more scanty) and the music (much different) have changed, but the charges of overly risque dancers transcend time and place. As for these “coyote” girls, it usually takes either a corporate sponsor or a wealthy patron to enable such entertainment to take place. I daresay most rural temple fairs I’ve visited in the past, well l had no such luck in finding such ahaan taa (eye candy) although entertainment, such as attractive singers and a band, were common .
4 patiwat // Nov 29, 2006 at 7:40 am
Prawase Wasi has made comments that support this “fear of the rural” idea in his recent proposals for the next constitution. He suggests that the power and number of MPs should be reduced, and that the central bureaucracy be independent from politicians.
90% of MPs come from rural provinces. MPs are directly elected by the public.
“They neither have the knowledge nor the competency. They are only interested in making connections in order to get into the House. It is more suitable to call them election winners,” he said about MPs.
“I propose that bureaucrats should be independent from politicians, who can no longer be removed or transferred from the post, because if the bureaucrats are strong, they can keep a check on politicians.”
See http://nationmultimedia.com/2006/11/29/politics/politics_30020243.php
5 fall // Nov 29, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I am not so sure either, Naphat. As you say, 70 yrs ago, it might be OK to strip rural their power in influencing politic. But today, with instant communication and widespread news. Frankly, I hope the time bomb is NOT ticking. If it does, then admittedly Marxist is probably right(in a way).
6 Jon Fernquest // Nov 29, 2006 at 2:16 pm
“Thaksin’s populism does not show, as Sondhi claims, that the rural electorate is stupid, but rather that it is becoming more politicised and more astute in getting what it wants.”
Yes. Yes. What is incomprehensible is that the post-coup powers that be are completely ignoring the income redistributions and new focus on the rural that Thaksin initiated.
Cleaning up the books and fiscal integrity is fine. Obviously, the new benefits of the rural poor need to be made more transparent, unlike the hidden rice support subsidies, for instance, but the rural is not going to go away, they’ll have to deal with it sooner or later.
Furthermore, the much touted decentralisation more often than not will end in predatory rent-seeking provincial elites (for example sent out from Bangkok after corruption problems there) absconding with the little guy’s, teacher in the province, accumulated benefits and pension, or for instance in province X not using Rajaphat for the new university there, because rents can only be extracted from new virgin land without value, and so on. Decentralised provincial police, for instance, will be free to collect all the rents that they currently do and more. Local rentseeking curiously disappears for a time when the Bangkok police make their show appearance in a provincial city.
There’s no subsitute for developing stronger links between the provinces and Bangkok, in both directions. Farmers are the lifeblood of the country.
7 nganadeeleg // Nov 29, 2006 at 7:40 pm
Yes, maybe some good will come from Thaksin and his demise – the elite might realise that the rural poor are more important than just getting their votes as a means to feathering their own nest.
It seems most succesful politicians use their position as a licence to print money for themselves, and Thaksin took it to a new level.
8 Vichai N. // Nov 30, 2006 at 1:54 am
Who fears the rurals? Such an exagerration coming from Andrew Walker suggesting that there exists a great divide between the Thai rurals and the cities is far from the truth! The cities depend on the rurals and vice-versa and such a symbiotic relationship do create some tugs of conflicts but their mutual dependency naturally gravitate to immediate amicable resolution.
Compared with many other countries, Thailand had always been fortunate because the Kingdom under its revered King Bhumibhol had always been united and stably harmonious. But the Kingdom’s moments of harmony were do disturbed by monsters with corrupt agendas, like Suchinda and Thaksin, who created the rifts and disharmony that Andrew Walker now hypes as a rural-against-urban pervasive distrust of each other.
The problem of the rurals: How to raise their incomes and their living standards? Thaksin’s fault was NOT that he had grandiose ideas how to raise the rural’s income. Thaksin’s fault was that his grandiosity hide a corrupt personal agenda to enrich himself, his family and cronies and THAT corrupted any virtue of all these village get-rich schemes he was rapidly pulling out of his magician’s populist hat to get the VILLAGE votes, whatever.
Thailand do need some HONEST champion for the villagers. Those many corrupt rural MP’s are much too corruptly preoccupied with personal interests to really matter to these villagers and the impoverished. Hopefully not a Chavez-clone. A Thai village champion who is more like that nobel-laureate Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh who was sincerely inpired to solve his country’s poverty.
9 Jon Fernquest // Nov 30, 2006 at 5:00 pm
As someone who laboured for two years at a Thai university teaching macroeconomics and supervising the business English program with 20+ teachers, everyone of the 600+ sophomores at the university attending, writing the syllabus, curriculum, and assessment plans, writing every midterm and final exam, grading 200 to 350 students every semester, I can honestly say that **there is a radical rural-urban divide in terms of academic performance and sophistication**, and that this probably has an effect on the jobs they can get, this was also evidenced in the oral presentations from their senior year internships, but the divide is improving, and as urban students seek the comforts of the countryside for their university education, the mixing of rural and urban in rurally placed (and centrally funded) universities has beneficial effects.
I didn\’t realise the significance at the time, but a rice miller told me about the rice subsidies at a dinner party in northern Thailand in 2004. The abnormally above market prices were negatively affecting business for him, but they were putting above normal amounts of money in the hands of rice growers, which is good as far as I am concerned, because all my neighbors, who I love dearly, are rice farmers.
10 Bystander // Nov 30, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Vichai N, has you really spent any meaningful amount of time in the Thai rural countryside as AW did? I think the rural/urban divide is very real, but things have been rather quiet on the surface because of the complete domination by the urban interest. This is starting to change.
11 Vichai N. // Dec 1, 2006 at 2:49 am
Bystander if you can easily be smitten by a flamboyant deceiver like Andrew Walker, then I won’t get in the way.
Andrew Walker had already concluded months ago that HMK’s Sufficiency Economy was crafted to keep the Thai village poor in poverty limbo.(To this day, Andrew Walker had not articulated to me how he arrived at that conclusion). Now he wants to hypnotize you with his convoluted prose that rurals and urbans are BATTLING for scarce resources that is causing this deep divide in Thai society. Bah!
I sense malice in this Aussie Andrew Walker’s repeating thread about elites against villagers, us against them, urbans intent on disenfranchising the rurals. Bah!
Bystander if all your source of truth is from the internet and Andrew Walker, then your guillibility is beyond cure. Take a walk man, go to the villages and smell the flowers! There is a serenity, peace and harmony among the Thais that even a mega-thief like Thaksin won’t be able to corrupt.
12 Bystander // Dec 1, 2006 at 3:32 am
Well, Vichai N, you’re really judging people from stereotypes and your preconceived notion. I didn’t really tell anything much about myself but you already draw a picture of what kind of people I’m supposed to be.
I don’t take any pleasure from being proved right or won the debate or whatever. If what we’re talking about in this post is really a problem, you can keep believing otherwise and yelling at everyone but the problem won’t go away. All I care is for this problem to be addressed while it’s still at an addressable state. That’s not likely to happen unfortunately.
Vichai N, I don’t believe there’s anything magical or exceptional about Thai society, and we’re not immune from the problems other societies experience. All societies in history go through period of prosperity and decline when they become decadent (not just morally but in a broader sense), Invariably, this always has to do with resources (mis)allocation. Siam/Thailand has been fortunate for two centuries (btw, the longest stretch of relative peace in the history of the Tai race?) but there’s a lot of strain right now. It’s about time for a reform.
, or bust.
13 Johpa // Dec 1, 2006 at 11:14 am
Achaan Jon wrote: “As someone who laboured for two years at a Thai university teaching macroeconomics and supervising the business English program with 20+ teachers, everyone of the 600+ sophomores at the university attending, writing the syllabus, curriculum, and assessment plans, writing every midterm and final exam, grading 200 to 350 students every semester, I can honestly say that **there is a radical rural-urban divide in terms of academic performance and sophistication**, and that this probably has an effect on the jobs they can get”
I dare say that when I was teaching back in the late 1980s the divide was perhaps greater than even today. One early rainy season class day (early summer) I walked into the classroom rather bent over in discomfort as I had helped my in-laws with the rice planting the day before and I was living and painful proof that Farangs have little business trying to plant rice. My students were in absolute disbelief that I had spent the day in the padi fields and so I asked how many of them had ever helped relatives plant rice. The sad fact was not a single student had ever planted rice. Later I found a few minority kids at Mae Jo who had planted rice, but not a single Thai student.
14 New Mandala » Middle class-military alliance // Dec 1, 2006 at 12:57 pm
[...] No, it’s not about Thailand’s 2006 coup but the coup of 1991. The quote comes from Anek Laothamatas’ 1996 “A tale of two democracies” in The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia edited by R. H. Taylor. Those who think that a sense of rural-urban divide is a product of Thaksin’s populist manipulation would do well to read the article in full. You don’t have to agree with everything in Anek’s portrayal of voting behaviour to appreciate that he is pointing to a fundamentally important dynamic in Thai political life. [...]
15 patiwat // Dec 1, 2006 at 4:01 pm
John, two questions:
1) Did you teach at a public or private university? I’ve found that even though public universities are much cheaper than private universities, it is much harder for kids who didn’t graduate from a top high-school/cram-school to get in. The ironic result is that the only choice that most rural kids had for a university education was Ram/Mor Sor Thor or one of the expensive private universities. This has changed a bit with the transformation of the Teaching Colleges into Rajabhat Universities.
2) Do you think that the Thaksin-era reforms of the university entrance system will have any effect on the rural/urban divide in universities? What do you think of the argument that this will reduce educational standards? Thaksin forced high-school results to be used as part of the entrance criteria, rather than purely the entrance exam. The goal was to even the playing field. But it was criticized, by letting too many (rural) students who did well in high-school but didn’t do so well in the national entrance system into the elite public universities.
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