From: ssg9328@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Samart Srijumnong)
Subject: Re: The Reservior, The Army, and The Peasants.
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 17:47:25 GMT

Talkig about the reservoir reminds me of my childhood life. Actually, we
lived in a big city of the Northeast but my father, as a carpenter, had 
to rush to the area where part of our property, a heritage from the grand 
parents, was used by the government to build a reservoir. This dated back
in pre-B.E. 2500 and early 2500's decade. The remaining land was splited
among three brothers. The government took a substantial part of it to build
what we knew as Sa'Ha'korn (some plots for demonstrating agricultural
production). We didn't know what the heck it was anyway. Such communal
space was somehow later owned by an invididual. The reservoir itself had
enough water during rainy season though the water level was a bit low during
drying season. The problem occured when the forest along the creek that 
supplied water the reservior was cut clear to cultivate topioka, a cash
crop promoted by the government at the time. I remember we had to walk from
the main road on a dusty road to the village. Note that we, children, had
to stay in the town's house to go to school and spend time during vacation
with our parents. In the beginning, both sides of the road (the dusty one)
was still green by trees. We say the sign Paa'Sa'Gnuan+ every other hundred
meters. Later most of the trees were cut down including those on which the
signs were put. The land was used to grow topioka. At one time, we saw a 
sign on a hugh piece of land saying it was for sale. My sister who was 
close to the provincial land bureau told us that according to some of 
the sources there the land was owned by the NaiAmPher (district head) of
the district the land was located. About ten years after the project was
constructed, the reservior ceased to become the reservoirIt is simply a
hugh swamp without water and, like the one Khun Tawit saw, was full of
hard to kill weed like MaiYaRaap"Yak". The water is seen here and there 
in small ponds. No more birds that used to migrated from thdistant 
countries. No more green. Everything is brown including face, eyes and
skin of the villagers. The reservoir ceases to reflect sky just like
the people's eyes cease to reflect hope....Yet they are persuaded and in
many cases even forced to participate in the process to elect the Repre-
sentative to sit in the Parliament in the distant Bangkok. If they are
lucky enough they could see their representatives, who come every four
year, in person. The MP is in fact the law maker. But in Thailand, the
slogan to persuade the people to turn out to vote is to have MP for the
benefit of their areas (Pat"Tha"Naa). This line of slogan sets good pretext
for vote buying.  


It is a long story. I can go on and on forever. Yet my story is similar 
to Khun Tawit's in that it contains corruptions on the part of the government
people. No, don't take me as George Bush's followers who believe in small
government and big business. To shrink the government is not going to help
in this case. What we need is not the change in QUANTITY but in the QUALITY.
We need a more decentralized and locally controlled government.

This kind of corruption is still going on. Its magnitude is even higher 
than that done on the politicians' part as conceived (and justified) by
the military when they did the coup on Feb.23, 1991. Yet they did not do
anything about it except to come up with a list of the socalled "unually
rich" politicians whom later were recruited by the military as their 
supporters. If they really wanted to cut the grass root of curruption in
the country, they might probably have been surprised to see that the most
corruptible high ranking officials were in the forces themselves!




Newsgroups: soc.culture.thai