Royal development projects: Hope for Thailand's poor?

By Ati Nurbaiti

SAKON NAKHON, Thailand (JP): Thailand is facing hard times. Prosperous urban folk are urged towards thrift by eschewing boutique brands in favor of second hand clothes.

Parents are scolded for spoiling their children with the toys of affluence -- such as pagers and mobile phones.

And then there are people for whom such temptations are a mystery, those intimate with poverty since long before the recent plummet of the baht.

Such people are to be the beneficiaries of Royal Development Projects under the auspices of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, and the Support Foundation for Thai folk arts and crafts under Queen Sirikit.

Amongst areas targeted include the northeast Isan region where rain is scarce, and poor crop yields lead to mass migration to major cities.

Officials say the project was driven by King Bhumibol's concern with poverty. Study centers were set up with the long- term goal of improving the local quality of life.

Many residents say the compassion of the royal couple, who visit and monitor project areas, has earned them the adoration of their subjects. "We don't love them just because they are royal," one resident said. Thais celebrated the Queen's 65th anniversary on Aug. 12.

Sakon Nakhon province in northeast Thailand houses the Puparn Royal Development Study Center, set up in 1982, to coordinate rural development projects in the region. Five other centers were also established to find ways of stimulating local entrepreneurship.

Near the center, visitors are shown a part of the project, including mushroom cultivation. Locals can go to the centers for demonstrations, material supplies, seeds, and information.

Other projects include irrigation works, cash crop farming and attempts to improve farm produce.

Under the project remote minorities receive help from border patrol police officers, who teach skills ranging from agriculture to reading.

"Many of their children can finish school (elementary/high school) now," said Police Col. Phongsak Sophai in Sakon Nakhon. In the past, it was hard for them even to get enough food, he added.

Hunting and wood cutting, he said, must give way to rice cultivation given the country's dwindling forest cover.

Women at a handicrafts center near Nong Khai province, also a part of a development project, say they can now earn 3,000 baht (about US$100) a month in comparison to periods of insecurity between harvests.

Through local committees the Support training centers select the poor and landless from across Thailand for free training in the arts and crafts.

"In 17 years we have catered to some 10,000 people," said a Bangsai representative.

Khwan Yuen, 36, a former food vendor who now teaches basketry at the center, says she enjoys her work. "The income is similar to selling food (1,500 baht a month) but I enjoy this better," she said.

Models on international catwalks are now parading designs based on mudmee, a traditional silk of the northeast produced by Support trainees, according to the August edition of Thai International Airline's Sawadee magazine.

Some students study Thai classical dancing, music and drawing, whilst others take up carpentry, decorative arts and others.

Gratitude

A measure of appreciation for the Support's services is indicated by trainees' painstaking preparations of a replica of a royal teak-dominated, Victorian architecture resort -- King Rama V's Blue Apartment -- for Queen Sirikit's birthday, a manager of the Blue Apartment museum said.

Meanwhile projects of the revered couple are apparently insulated from much-criticized government policy which affects the poor.

On Aug. 3 The Bangkok Post lashed out at ministers visiting the north to being "deaf, dumb and blind" to poor residents' problems -- including the destruction of local communities by state projects, skyrocketing land prices, leading to land sales and displacement of farmers, and careless industrialization.

At least 400,000 northerners infected with HIV have no money for medicine, and women from the north have long been sold into prostitution. Visiting ministers were greeted by protest banners by hill-tribe people in eye-catching costumes.

But a tribesman said the only thing they demanded of the government was the grant of citizenship to most of 800,000 stateless tribe members. Without citizenship they cannot send their children to school, and health, job security and stable residence are harder to obtain.

From the short visits it was not clear to what extent projects under royal patronage have been successful in attacking these immense problems.

Child prostitution is likely to be growing in the northeast and Burma said Sompong Jitradab of the Chulalongkorn University, as quoted by The Bangkok Post on Aug. 1. He said this was because of the initial success of the anti-child prostitution campaigns and the fear of AIDS in northern areas, which have led to less northern girls entering the flesh trade and more staying in school, and flesh traders to look elsewhere.

A survey last year by Mahidol University failed to find young girls from the north at 40 brothels in 18 provinces.

The royal projects seems to affect only a small number of people -- the Study Center's director of field crops, Prapas Chooluck in Sakon Nakhon, said 15 villages or some 15,000 people were involved, while the project aims to cover all poor areas in the northeast.

That would be no small feat. The consistency and dedication of volunteers may be the only source of hope for those who cannot depend on tourist's currency.