THAILAND: Govt Displays Fruits of Populist Village Scheme

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, May 22 2002 (IPS) - The Thai government is laying out the first fruits of a high-profile economic programme to help villages, a key pledge that helped it win office last year, but experts say the sustainability and the quality of its benefits bear close watching.

On Saturday, the government will begin showcasing this initial harvest at an exhibition in Nonthaburi, a province just north of the Thai capital. The exhibits include brass bowls, cotton tablecloths, hand-woven silk fabric, wooden statues of the Buddha and rattan baskets.

In all, some 159 products made from cottage industries in as many “tambons” (sub-districts) across rural Thailand will be displayed at the trade fair, says Pravat Utamote, advisor to the interior ministry. “They meet our quality requirements. Product quality is important at this stage, and quantity will come later.”

“We want these to promote the local use of Thai products and to get others to follow,” he adds. “It is a way of creating more jobs, increasing incomes in the tambons.”

This initiative, called the “One Tambon, One Product” (OTOP) programme, got underway in October 2001, in the first year of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s government.

Under it, the government encourages rural communities to identify a product they have the knack for and produce it to meet a high quality. Thereafter, officials help with the marketing and nationwide sales of the products.

On Monday, the government drew attention to the early success of this initiative by releasing a sunny appraisal at a press conference here. “From January to April 2002, earnings under the programme across the country came to almost 3.66 billion baht (84.2 million U.S. dollars), representing a profit of 32.5 percent,” states a government media release distributed at the conference.

Earnings are expected to reach 10.9 billion baht (251 million dollars) by the end of the year, it adds. At end-April, 6,719 spots were reported to be selling products under the One Tambon, One Product programme.

The OTOP programme is one among the populist measures implemented by Thaksin since his four-year-old party, Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thai), triumphed at the January 2001 parliamentary elections with the largest victory margin ever.

The other initiatives of Thaksin, a wealthy business tycoon, include a village fund scheme — where a one million baht (23,250 dollars) loan was assured to each of Thailand’s 78,000 villages for income generating activities — and a deferred farm debt repayment scheme for rural farmers saddled with huge loans.

And both rural and urban poor also gain from a medical programme that requires them to pay only 30 baht (70 cents) for every hospital visit.

Such populist measures designed to help the rural poor can be understood in light of the nature of poverty in Thailand. Poverty has a rural face in the country, the World Bank states in one study, ‘Thailand Social Monitor: Poverty and Public Policy’.

“Between 1996 and 1999, the incidence of poverty increased sharply in the North-east, somewhat in the South and Central regions, and actually declined in Bangkok and the north,” the study adds. “In 1998, for instance, nearly one-half (48 percent) of all North-easterners were poor as compared to only 6 percent of Bangkok residents.”

To some degree, the government’s OTOP programme is receiving nods of support from some independent quarters, who say this attempt to help the rural poor is more focused siimilar ones by previous governments.

“This government made this programme one of its main areas to help the poor in the tambons,” says Bantorn Ondam, a sociologist with the Assembly of the Poor, a national lobby group. “The Chuan government (which ran Thailand prior to the Thaksin administration under Chuan Lekpai) did some work in this area, but did not recognise it and promote it like this government, he adds.

“The present attempt is theoretically better prepared than previous attempts,” adds a senior research specialist at the independent Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). “The major strength is that the attempt is government policy with high-level supervision.”

Similar ventures are evident in other parts of South-east Asia, like Vietnam and Laos, says Shalmali Guttal of Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based research body. “Cottage industries are important for rural economies. They help in the livelihood of the rural poor, providing alternate sources of income.”

However, there are concerns, too, about the longevity of the OTOP programme and its sustainability.

Guttal wonders how the Thai government will respond to the cottage industry products when they face the pinch of economic liberalism, a policy that the Thaksin administration is supporting to boost Thailand’s economy.

“Will the government protect the products if they are undermined by cheap imports?” she asks. “How sustainable will such a programme be in the long run?”

“It is too early to share the government’s view that this effort will be a success,” says Bantorn, the sociologist. “There is a high risk in getting one tambon to concentrate on one product.”

Also at issue is the success of one of the key aims of the OTOP initiative: to create sufficient jobs in the rural economy to dramatically reduce rural migration into the cities.

Currently, such migration takes place during five to six months of the year, when the villagers from the mainly agriculture-based economies have no work between harvesting the rice fields and planting paddy seeds for the new season.

In the northern areas, that period falls between January, after the rice is harvested, and May, when planting begins with the onset of the monsoon. In southern Thailand, the interval when migration occurs is later in the year, beginning around November.

According to the TDRI expert, the OTOB programme thus far has little going to achieve such retention in the grassroots economies: “The project does not show a high degree of success enough to hold back the rural people in need of employment.”