[asia-apec 1217] Excellent book on Thai politics/economy

[Anuradha Mittal]

A Siamese Tragedy:
Development & Disintegration in Modern Thailand
By Walden Bello,
Shea Cunningham and Li Kheng Poh
) 1998,  267 pages
Food First Books and Zed Press
ISBN 0-935028-74-9
$19.95
Order a copy at www.foodfirst.org
or at 1-800-243-0138

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R E V I E W

Copyright 1999, Inter Press Service

DEVELOPMENT-BOOK: Pitfalls of Thailand's Economic Prosperity

By Boonthan Sakanond
BANGKOK, Feb 16 (IPS) - Throughout the early 1990s, Thai policy makers
were convinced Thailand was on the verge of joining Taiwan, South Korea
and Singapore as a newly industrialised country.

 But with the economic and social crises besetting the country not
showing any significant signs of abating, policy activist and
sociologist Walden Bello warns Thailand may fast be heading into the
ranks of the Third World.

 In a new book 'A Siamese Tragedy: Development and Disintegration in
Modern Thailand', Bello bats for a radical shift in Thai development
policy to make it more people and community-oriented, reduce deep-rooted
income inequalities and tread a path somewhere between the state and
market economies.

 While such a change in direction is unlikely to come from government,
the sociologist predicts an outbreak of grassroots movements aimed at
forcing the country's elites to put the people's interests before their
own or face ouster.

 A long-time critic of the East Asian model of development, Bello is
best known for his classic 1991 book titled `Dragons in Distress' which
showed that the ''tiger'' economies of Korea, Taiwan and Singapore had
achieved impressive growth rates only on the back of systematic
exploitation of labour, the environment and the agricultural sector.

 Further, despite their flashy image as manufacturing centres of cars
and electronic goods, these countries, he argued, had little investments
in developing human and technological resources - a factor affecting
their future growth.

 Bello has also been a prominent opponent of World Bank and
International Monetary Fund policies in the region which he says have
been ideologically inspired by the ''dubious'' US agenda of ''rolling
back the state's role in developing economies'' and prying open their
markets to US capital.

 `A Siamese Tragedy', authored by Bello along with researchers Shea
Cunningham and Li Kheng Poh, also dwells on what they call a misguided
development path for agriculture adopted by Thai policymakers.

 This, the book claims, impoverished the agricultural sector to pay for
industrial development, enriched the elite at the expense of workers and
ordinary citizens and finally failed to develop skilled human resources.

 The first phase of development of the modern Thai economy, according to
the book, was of a strip-mine type which emphasised the export of
natural resources like wood to raise revenue necessary to finance
industrial growth.

 This began in the late fifties when under World Bank guidance the
military-led government of Sarit Thanarat replaced strong government
control with private sector initiative as the guiding force in the
economy.

 The second phase, occurring in the mid-80s, was that of export-
oriented industrialisation which created an international image of
Thailand as the next tiger economy in the region. With growth rates
averaging 8.0 percent annually the country indeed was a ''gold rush''
economy and the darling of foreign investors.

 Bello points out that these high growth rates, while enriching
political and business elites, was deeply detrimental to Thailand's
long-term interests. The most obvious damage of course was on the
environmental front due to lax implementation of controls in a bid to
appease foreign investors.

 The eighties and early nineties were also a time of frenzied
construction, the automobile boom and over consumption of consumer goods
in urban Bangkok leading to a poisoning of the city's air and water
systems.

 In the countryside, village-folk bore the brunt of a mega dam building
spree by state-run electricity generation agencies catering to the
growing energy needs of the newly rich urbanites.

 Over the years, Bangkok-based elites through their tax and industrial
policies, Bello says, have also been guilty of deliberately neglecting
and indeed impoverishing Thailand's agricultural sector to pay for urban
growth and maintain political stability by keeping food prices low.

 Everytime farmers sought to organize themselves to demand land- reform,
better farm prices or assert their democratic rights, they have been
brutally crushed by various military juntas under the pretext of
suppressing ''communist insurgency''.

 The marginalisation of this sector is clearly shown by the fact that
while agriculture's contribution to GDP fell from 26.9 per cent in 1975
to 10.4 percent in 1995, it still absorbed over 64 percent of the
country's workforce in the mid-nineties. A poorer countryside also meant
the creation of a vast reservoir of cheap labour that could be tapped by
the industrial sector.

 But labour in the country's burgeoning industries did not fare better
than farmers when it came to incomes or quality of life.

 One of the biggest disservices done by the Thai elite to the long- term
interests of the Thai people, Bello says, was their failure to improve
skills and develop technological capabilities of their human resources.

 Despite the presence of a large number of foreign car and electronics
companies in Thailand, Bello argues that there had been very little
transfer of technology and the country has become a `technological
dependency' of Japanese firms.

 Thailand has also one of the lowest investments in research and
development activities in both the state and private sector, another
reason why it has not been able to develop skilled manpower in any
important
industrial sector.

 Though Bello does touch upon the subject several times in his book,
what is missing is a deeper analysis of the political and cultural
context in which all these economic policies were being carried out.

 While Thailand is a relatively more developed democracy than many of
its neighbours or other nations in south-east Asia it is still an
extremely elite-oriented, authoritarian society especially in its
cultural and political spheres.

 Repeated suppression of democratic movements over the decades has
produced a culture of impunity among the elites who consider themelves
above all laws.

 Bello places a lot of faith in the ability of Thailand's vigorous
grassroots NGO movements to challenge these elites and pursue their
dream of a community-based, ecologically sustainable and equitable
society.

(END/IPS/ap-dv/ss/ral/99)

Anuradha Mittal
Policy Director
Institute for Food and Development Policy - Food First
398 60th Street, Oakland, CA 94618 USA
Phone: (510) 654-4400  Fax: (510) 654-4551
http://www.foodfirst.org