Overnight, the modest police officer, son of a vendor in Sukhothai province, broke through class barriers to become a national hero and is now set to become a millionaire thanks to cash rewards.

Unfortunately, most rural people do not have the opportunity to hit the jackpot like Wijan. For decades, top-down development has ruined the rural sector, robbing it of the necessary resources to sustain livelihoods.

"The government's policy of industrialisation and export-led agriculture has resulted in the rapid growth of the urban sector but has left farmers bankrupt.

"Chemical-intensive monoculture destroys the soil and pollutes the water. The degradation of natural resources and the resulting poverty will eventually lead to the collapse of the rural sector," said Prof Saneh Chamarik, respected scholar and president of the Local Development Institute (LDI). He was speaking during the seminar entitled "The People's Agenda and National Agenda Towards Reform" organised by the Bangkok Post.

He added that the ruling elite also suffered from "intellectual bankruptcy". They jumped on the corporate-led globalisation bandwagon without realising how it could harm the economy and communities of Thailand.

Lost in poverty and hardship, some villagers have resorted to endless protests, which often are met with violent retaliation from the government. Young people migrate to the cities in search of better lives. Many simply drown in accumulated debt.

THE FORMATION OF THE PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT

"The wounds of the country and the pain of the people are evident everywhere," said Seksan Prasertkul, former student leader during the popular uprising on October 14, 1973. He is also a leader of the Por Khun Por, or People's Democratic Society, which is campaigning for empowerment of the people through civic mobilisation.

Seksan said that, ironically, most of the damage to the environment and communities was being inflicted by the government itself. A product of electoral politics mired with money and power, the Thai government has acted as an independent interest group, unaccountable to people at the grassroots level, he said.

"The National Development Plans exemplify these ill-conceived policies, because they allocate resources without local consultation," he said, referring to the five-year economic and social development plans which lay out the country's development direction.

Prof Pasuk Phongpaichit, prominent economist from Chulalongkorn University, agrees that bad governance is one of the causes of unequal development-the allocation of resources to one group of people at the expense of another.

The process spreads seeds of discontent among those who are forced to sacrifice in the name of development.

"The people's movement used to be concentrated among members of the middle class and students, as was evident in the October 14 uprising. At present, the conflict has shifted to competition over access to limited and dwindling natural resources. The unjust framework of development, pushed forward by the government under the influence of business and the mafia, has brought grassroots people, farmers and labourers, who are affected by the resulting policies and projects, into the movement," Prof Pasuk said. The Assembly of the Poor (AOP), an umbrella network of grassroots movements, is a distillation of years of dissatisfaction on the ground.

"The network was formed naturally," Wanida Tantiwithayapitak, an AOP adviser, said. "People who are affected by development projects have no choice but to get together to expose the unfair treatment."Although the network is currently problem-based and focused more on relieving the immediate effects of development, Wanida pointed out that financial compensation was not the group's ultimate goal. Essentially, what the villagers were demanding was a say in policies that affect them and control over the use of natural resources which they depend on for their livelihood.

"The Pak Moon villagers took a vote several times, as to whether they would opt for financial compensation or for the opening of the dam's gateway to let the river run free. The villagers definitely want money because they have lost their livelihood and occupations, but they need a healthy natural environment even more. They want their river back as a base to sustain their lives," Wanida said. The activist added that mass demonstrations featuring hundreds of thousands of protesters would become a thing of the past. These days, protest groups are smaller but protests occur more frequently. Protesters are willing to stay longer, refusing to budge until their demands are met. Acts of civil disobedience, such as the Pak Moon villagers' scaling the fence at Government House, will be on the rise too, she added. Prof Pasuk warned that unless policy makers respond to the growing dissatisfaction of grassroots people in time, a clash between different interest groups would be inevitable. The torching of a police station in Nakhon Si Thammarat, and the burning of hill tribe orchards by angry lowland farmers over a water dispute in Nan province, are just two recent examples of how tension has erupted, resulting in violent unrest.

PARTICIPATION FROM BELOW

While academics generally agree that a move towards a more egalitarian development requires a paradigm shift, when it comes to strategies, the ideas vary. Prof Saneh suggested that citizen networks should address the unequal social and political structure, and develop an alternative model of development that is based on the country's comparative advantage in agriculture and the well-being of rural people. Proposing concrete action, Dr Seksan said the civil society movement must try to reduce the role of the state. "People must get organised and build a network, not only among the poor who are affected by development projects, but also among members of the middle class. Once well-connected, the civil society movement can compensate in areas where the state's power is pushed back. In short, Thai society has to proceed beyond electoral politics to direct democracy," Seksan said.

His idea was in line with Prof Pasuk, who recommended decentralisation of resource management.

"A big question now is what will the new government do for the millions of people who live in degraded forest areas. One proposal concerns whether it would be possible for the government to allow villagers who are affected by government projects to rent forest lands, just as businesses can, to work on ecological recovery." She added that, initially, the government might have to establish a special fund to subsidise the task.

Pibhop Dhongchai, secretary-general of the Campaign for Popular Democracy, commented that while the people on the ground were pushing for participatory democracy, the bureaucracy and power structures remained unchanged.

"The people-centred movements are about competition to control public space, be it the law, politics or the mass media. The problem is that there is little room for the people's movement at this point in time. Each kind of space is controlled by the ruling elite. Even the much-anticipated new constitution is largely a space for bureaucrats. It provides little space for the civil society movement," Pibhop said. He added that although the new constitution allows 50,000 people to censure government officials, in practice such a move would be stymied by many obstacles. (See sidebar.) Pibhop believes that in order to turn the people's needs into the country's development agenda, the people's movement must set up a political party of its own. "Establishing a political party may sound like giving too much importance to electoral politics, but the truth is we can't turn our backs on representative democracy yet, at least not for the foreseeable future. The process of social change must be triggered by several mechanisms simultaneously. Protesting and pressuring the government to do what we want are necessary, but not enough. We have to develop other tools to put forward our interests in the system," Pibhop said. Paiboon Wattanasiritham, veteran development worker and director of the Government Leg 1Savings Bank, stressed the need for comprehensive social reform. He noted, however, that while the political and bureaucratic systems have learned to facilitate the growth of the people's movement somewhat, other powerful sectors including the legal system, the economic sector and the media, still lag behind. While empowering community-based organisations are an important strategy for rural development, making local adminstrations transparent and accountable is also crucial, he added.

"We still need to map out how the local state agencies can cooperate with community organisations or other interest groups, so that the people have access to the government's decision-making processes and the formation of macroeconomic policies."

ALLIANCE BUILDING

In Jonathan Swift's fable Gulliver's Travels, the tiny Liliputians capture Gulliver, who is many times their size, by tying him down with hundreds of threads while he sleeps. Prof Chai-anan Samudavanijja, an internationally-respected political scientist and educator, proposed a similar strategy. "The people's movement should build a grand alliance. We need to determine who has the potential to be allies of the people. Can the AOP link up with the Luangta Maha Bua group? What is the common ground? How far should people go with civil disobedience? And for what purpose? An act of civil disobedience should be used as a means to find a solution. It is not an end in itself," the former judge of the Constitutional Court said.

Prof Chai-anan urged the grassroots movement to be proactive by tackling the problem while harmful policies are being formulated.

"We have to work on the policy level as well. And it is not only the government that the people's network has to keep a watch on, but also government's private enterprises, which are relatively unaccountable," Prof Chai-anan said.

On a global level, economic superpowers and multinational corporations are pressing developing countries to adopt their agenda of unfettered free-trade capitalism. As evident in the summer of 1997, the free and fast flow of speculative capital brought down Thailand's economy, inducing a state of recession and unemployment from which the country has yet to recover.

"The situation is rather worrisome. Since the financial crisis three years ago, the government has issued more than 30 bills to ensure the unrestricted flow of goods and capital. On the side of mechanisms to ensure social fairness, however, not much has been done. The Community Forest Bill, which recognises the role of communities in forest management, has not been passed," he said. The greatest challenge for non-governmental organisations and people's networks was to determine an area where the increasingly prevalent free-market rules and fair society can coexist. "Sovereignty management will be an important strategy," Dr Chai-anan pointed out. "The phrase 'good governance' has become a tool of corporations (to push governments away and let market forces run free). We have to reposition Thailand. We can't open the country selectively. We have to point out where the two systems overlap and try to survive there," he remarked. Prof Saneh added that this does not mean we have to shut ourselves off. "We can't stop economic globalisation. But we have to limit its adverse impact on our people. We can promote auto-making or electronic industries but we have to ensure that they do not impair the rural sector. Industrial growth should not demand so much energy that we have to build more dams."

CONCLUSION

While admitting that a movement on the policy level was important, Pibhop maintained that attempts to protest and relieve the immediate effects of development problems must go on, too. Street protests are good sources of education, he said. The people's movement will be strong when it has a chance to learn. Since formal education remains very much in the hands of the state, these seemingly "end-of-pipe activities" are chances to build critical mass. On alliance building, he commented that one obstacle to the expansion of the people's movement was the fact that other groups in society were still unorganised.

"Our strategic allies are too few and too weak. While the grassroots organisations are strong, members of the middle class have just begun to form a network. Students are very weak. So are academics," Pibhop said.

But that will not stop grassroots groups from building an alliance themselves. Wanida said feedback on the AOP attempt to link with other citizen groups, including senators, urban slum-dwellers and prominent figures, had been very positive. "Our alliance has no borders," Wanida said, referring to the growth of transnational citizen action linking local struggles with global support. "Up to 90 percent of visitors to our protest site are foreigners. Many international media outlets are covering our fight. The international organisation World Commission on Dams also released a report on the effect of the Pak Moon dam," Wanida said. Prof Saneh is optimistic, too. From the seeds of discontent, a movement demanding democratic self-government has sprouted, he said. It may be young and weak, yet it is gathering knowledge and expanding. The people, he said, want to have control over their lives. And no one can stop them from struggling to achieve that.