Saturday, February 17, 2007

Watch this space for the future of Thailand: Hypocrite's Development Policy

After I have been thinking about Thailand's future, something comes up to my mind.

I think the future of Thai's development policy will have the following characteristics;

1) Promoting "cultural values" (of-course, Thai cultural values of Buddhism), and if things continue like this: ความพอเพียง will dominates.

2) Nationalism: รักชาติ คนไทยหรือเปล่า.... ไม่เห็นด้วยกับเราคุณก็ไม่รักชาติ โย่วๆๆๆ, this really support the development policy based on cultural values, moral values, to dominate.

3) Populism: populist policies based on promoting Nationalism and cultural values (don't get confuse by those discourse which say populist policies are only those of Thaksin, I don't see any reason what "เศรษฐกิจพอเพียง" cannot be called "populism", it also uses lot of propraganda to a mobilise support from mass.

......and finally, the most important......

4) Neo-liberalism: Of-course Thai economy in too much integrated with the world economy, we can't stop our journey on "Neo-liberalism" path. Thailand has to continue its liberalisation, relying heavily as ever on the forieign investors.

If four major characteristics of development policy continue, I'd say the future of Thai development can be best described by this word "HYPOCRITE'S".

Think about it like this, we focuses on our cultural values -- to shift our attention from any redistribution policy, from the structural problems of our economy. But liberalise -- to protect the benefits accrues to the middle and upper class.

All I can see, if we have the development policy like this, is the more "inequality", the persistent of "poverty" problems, the "widening gap" between rich and poor.

Sustainable? well, with countinue inequality..sustainability is pretty much in doubt.

Development? can we say these type of policies actually solve any "poverty" problems (poverty, at least, should be the target of any development policy).

I expect that the real effect of these development policy is certainly in doubt. Saying one thing, but actually doing another thing....isn't it "hypocrite's"?

Watch this space for the future of Thailand: Hypocrite's Development Policy!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

couldn't agree more with what you wrote!

David Ginola said...

หรือว่าเมืองไทยกำลังจะกลายเป็น... เศรษฐกิจพอเพียงสำหรับสังคมรากหญ้า แต่เป็นทุนนิยมสำหรับสังคมคนชั้นกลางและสูง ???

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