New Dam Helps Farmers Shake Off Poverty

Last week Pattani hosted an academic conference about the southern region. At the opening, Her Royal Highness Princess Sirindhorn graced the event and made the formal inauguration. The rector of the university and a Harvard professor welcomed the delegates. Former foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan gave a keynote address. Such conferences are not unusual, and such opening rituals are standard. But this conference had some extra spice.

The opening ceremony was an exchange of power and prestige. Prince of Songkhla University at Pattani gained kudos from the presence of the princess and from association with a world centre of learning such as Harvard.The princess enjoyed another small confirmation as a patron of intellectual pursuits. Harvard reasserted its claim to be a world centre of Thai studies. Surin reminded the audience how his rise from southern Muslim lad to foreign minister was symbolic of the region's successful incorporation in the nation. Locality, nation, academia, royalty and politics each contributed its particular magic and came away burnished.

But if we widen the lens a bit to take in events outside the ceremonial hall, the exchange becomes more complex and more interesting. As is usual with such royal visits, hundreds of local officials assembled outside the hall in dazzling white ceremonial uniforms. They stood in neat ranks as the royal cavalcade arrived. A favoured few filed into the hall to add another splendid touch to the opening rite. Then when the royal cavalcade left, the white uniforms vanished.

Of course they went back to work. But this conference was organised by anthropologists who are fascinated by the theatre of such rituals. In the light of what happened afterwards, this disappearing act might be interpreted with more meaning.

The academic conference focused on the unique ethnic, cultural and social mix of this region and its special character as a border zone. But it was not confined in the ivory tower. The conference was subtitled "Current Social Transformations from People's Perspectives." Alongside the academic sessions, community leaders, NGO workers and local activists held a panel on "voices from the grass roots". In many ways, this was the most vibrant.

Other panels lasted no more than a morning or afternoon. The grass-roots one continued for the full three days.

Others stuck more or less to the timetable. The grass-roots panel kept going through coffee breaks, overran finishing times and reassembled after dinner for a late-night session. Audiences were large and debates passionate.

Afterwards, Chang Noi asked some grass-roots participants how they felt about the event. "There wasn't enough time", came the answer. "There's so much that needs to be discussed."

Inevitably, the grass-roots panel opened with the hot topic, the Thai-Malaysian gas pipeline. Papers questioned the social and environmental impact. Even more, they questioned the way the process had evolved. The scheme was hatched between Thailand and Malaysia. Government did not consult local people. It fed them bad information. It tried to split communities which objected.

But the pipeline was only the beginning. The grass-roots panel discussed forty different issues. Watershed forests. Wetlands. Mangrove forests. The competition between big and small fishermen. Industrial pollution. Community projects to develop new products, new markets, new crafts. Local schooling. Local cultural traditions.

Many of the debates criticised the government's development projects. Wetlands deteriorated because "The government developed the area without understanding the community and its ecological system and without people's participation." Government relocated people for a lignite project, and "the new place was difficult for them to live in." The fishery department put down artificial coral to increase shellfish but failed to consult the local fishermen who knew the best locations. Villagers who protested against the forestry department had to flee into Malaysia.

Summing up the panel, an NGO worker pictured "development" as an aeroplane flying overhead and dropping bombs on the local communities. The summary statement claimed that development failed "because decision-making is in the hands of a minority, ie bureaucrats and politicians, who do not understand local conditions well enough". The academic panels down the corridor were discussing the problems of minorities in this border region. This panel piquantly identified the real minorities as "bureaucrats and politicians".

But this panel was not a whine against authority. Presenters had plenty of successful examples of community forests, community management of marine resources, local banks and alternative education schemes. Many of these stories started out with officials launching bad projects and then being persuaded by local leaders to pay attention to local knowledge and environmental realities. The summary statement hoped such examples of successful local cooperation could be multiplied.

An exchange of power and magic was going on here - very different from the exchange in the opening ceremony, but no less powerful or significant. Local activists borrow the academic technologies of seminar, research and publication to give their messages greater weight and reach. They gain legitimacy through association with the university and with such a prestigious event. The university (created top-down from Bangkok) gains by pushing its foundations more deeply into the local communities and local concerns. The foreign academics go away with some extra knowledge to invest in their lectures, publications and consultancies.

In a less intense way, this process is happening all over Thailand. The local universities and upgraded teachers' colleges are not simply teaching factories. They bring resources of learning, technology and empathy which help to organise and articulate voices from the grass roots. They offer a channel of communication and advocacy which bypasses officialdom and which reaches from locality to the capital and beyond. While political and administrative decentralisation is still problematic, academic and cultural decentralisation is running far ahead.

In this light, an anthropologist from Mars (or Harvard) might evaluate the conference's opening ritual with a different emphasis. The exchange of power and magic inside the hall is still fascinating. But there is another story about the white-uniformed officials who appear in such strength and then vanish.

Chang Noi is a pseudonym.