The Oxford-man's Vision
The Prime Minister's Visit to Bang Bua Cooperative
July 24, 2009

It's noon time at a pleasant canal-side park. Several hundred people are sprawling around under the sun on an open grass lawn; they are having a cocktail-style lunch to the tune of Mo Lum dance music.

The park and the surrounding houses used to be a slum with an enormous concrete wall around it. It was branded as a place of crime, drugs, and cheap sex.

A fat lady, with squinting eyes, tells me that many years ago, state officials came to erect a concrete wall around the entire community. They don't want anyone outside the community to see that there was a slum here. The canal water was pitch black; drenched in a chemical soup released from the factories up river. The stench was so pronounced that state officials could only hope that sealing the place off with a high wall would, at least, minimize the effect.

"There was a small hole underneath the wall," says the fat lady as she slurps her Coca Cola. "It's where the residents could slip through the cracks and enter their homes within the compound,"

"The hole was situated next to my house," she shakes her head, "and at one time, a fat man was shot dead as he was crawling through the hole," she says with squinted eyes. "He was too big to escape in time."

Today, this canal-side community is so pleasant that one needs to squint one's eyes - like the fat lady - to see that it's actually real. A passerby might mistakenly takes it for a public park had it not been for the large entry gate which reads: WELCOME TO BANG BUA CO-OP.

The high walls had been demolished and the new 2-story houses were leisurely placed alongside paved walkways and vegetation. The canal water is regularly treated by the residents here; and it all happens not through government funding and donation, but through their own organizational efforts.

The Mo Lum music continues as people gossip about the rumor that the Prime Minister of Thailand is actually going to come and visit the place today. Some teenage girls were holding flowers in anticipation.

Suddenly the radio and the music stops. Young men pounded their long drums wildly. It's the roaring sound of village drums that were traditionally used during the harvesting season. The Prime Minister's caravan is arriving. In the middle of the caravan is a young man name Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Abhisit Vejjajiva, at the age of 43, is the youngest Prime Minster in Thai history. A son of a well-do-to physician family, Abhisit was sent abroad to study at Eton and Oxford. Although not a Fabian socialist like Nehru and other British educated Third World leaders, Abhisit does seem to have a particular interest in collectivism. It's an interest that seems to run counter to his own political party.

His political party - the Democratic Party - is traditionally the most conservative party in Thailand. Now, it's slowly changing as a more progressive younger generation takes control of the party's apparatus.

It's not usual for at all for a political party to move from one end of the spectrum to another. After all, in the US, it was the Democratic Party who had opposed Abraham Lincoln's Republican bid to end slavery. The change in political philosophy could not have been more pronounced in America and in Thailand today.

Abhisit positioned himself conveniently on the grass lawn and starts to speak to the residents. Next to him is Apirak, another young man who was elected twice as the Bangkok governor. He was instrumental in helping this particular community cut through bureaucratic red tapes and get things done.

"In CODI's work, the success usually comes from the people," says Abhisit. "Most of the squatter communities already has good organizational asset; each member of the community started out knowing one another very well. This is an important starting point. So when folks come together, whether in the form of co-op or others, CODI can just step in to help on the issue of organizational management." (1)

Abhisit pauses to see if there is any question, then he continues.

"The main issue that our administration plans to solve is the issue of land use - the land for living and working. We should change the way we use to think about this problem. In the past, each affected individual must appear before a local state office to exert his rights to the land. He must present - and argue - his case to the state officials."

"Then he would run into many problems such as law and regulations that are not really compatible with his way of life. And then there is also this classic scenario: once the state office has finally issued the land title to him, the land would suddenly change hand. So we have this unending problem."

"So now, in the villages and in urban area, we're trying to push for the concept of collective land title or land co-op instead. After the collective land title is issued, the people would be managing the land themselves."

"In this way, we would achieve our goal in making the land belongs to the people who are actually living there. We can't just give land titles to individual households because then the titles could easily change hands; and the land speculators could come in and buy away the land again… after that, those individuals who had just received the land titles would become landless and they would go on to become squatters elsewhere."

"So we have to stop this kind of a vicious cycle by promoting this new concept; it's the concept that recognized the community as the owner of the land. And the people in community should be the one who manage the land themselves."

"Currently, what's needed is capital or loan… and the administration has already considered this and we came to a fundamental agreement that we should increase the funding to CODI. But now we are facing this global financial crisis which also affects our fiscal department. So the first chunk of money will have to come from the Thai Chem Kang ("Thai Strength") initiative. After 3-4 years from now, we would reconsider the budget to CODI. But since we've talk earlier and found that there very little default on loans, we could rest assured that it would be fine. But if there's a lot of loan defaults then it would be a problem that will come back to haunt us."

An old bespectacle man stood up slowly from the grass lawn and asks for the microphone.

"What happens when the people start to initiate things on their own…. and run into rigid legal structures," asks the old man; his hands trembles in Parkinsonian fashion.

"What happens when our legal structure is not designed for such participatory approach?" he continues.

"Actually, this is within the umbrella of our land reform policies as well," answers Abhisit. "For those folks who had come to see us about their land problems; we told them that we would look at things from the reference point of their problems first. We use their objective as the main reference point."

"For example, if the people really need land to live and work on, then we must find ways to provide that - even if it means changing some laws and regulations. We would have to reconsider those regulations. We can't just say: well, the law says this so we can't do anything about it - case closed. We shouldn't do that."

"On the other hand, we can't just change every laws and regulations to suit the needs of all those who have problems either. We have to understand the intention and the origin of those laws and regulations before making changes to them."

"As with CODI, there are no problems in the urban communities so far. However, in other specific cases - such as the Treasury Department's or the National Park Department's (land) - we'd have discreet committees looking after them. These committees would report back to us when they find problems. Frankly, during the past 6 months, we have very little problems if at all. The biggest problem right now is in the National Park Department and the Natural Resource Ministry. So I invited the minister who is in charge of the park to come talk to me; I believe that we would soon see some progress in these areas."

"Anyone else wants to make comments?" asks the facilitator in a loud speaker.

"We folks have initiate many things in many provinces," says a tall thin man. "We build more than 700 collective housing projects; covering 75,000 families throughout the country; we have our networking structure; and we say that the most important aspect of it is our saving groups. If we have a strong network of saving groups, the poor people movements will have more strength - and independence…if we're able to connect all these saving groups throughout the country into one large network, I think we'd have over 600 million baht worth of financial muscle!" the thin man smiles.

"Yes, in many ways, the people are much more ahead of the state," says Abhisit. "Actually, I will go to Songkla next week to study this particular social innovation - the saving groups."

"The Minister of Social Development is planning to promote this idea of saving group networks," says the Abhisit.

"It's really a form of Social Insurance for the informal sector, you know. This way, people who work independently outside the formal sector can also have their own social securities. Now, if we manage to have the support of the municipalities too, things will move along very smoothly," says the Abhisit.

At the rear end of the grass lawn, I overheard Prateep Sangpradap - the community's very own Che Guevara - whispers something mysterious to an old lady.

"You know, we don't even have to wait for the government's support," he says.

"Let's create our own network of community saving groups throughout the nation. If each community has at least 1 million baht in saving - which I believe they do - we would end up with a very strong financial base."

"Think about it," he whispers. "Just take a small coalition of 10 communities; we'd have well over 10 million baht already. The money flowing in the informal sector is huge; we probably end up having more money than the formal sector!"

The old lady coolly brushes him aside like she would an obnoxious boy; she still prefers government.

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1. An excerpt from Prime Minister Abhisit's speech at Bang Bua Co-op, July 24, 2009