Assembly of the Poor: down to the difficult details

23 April 1997

Over the next few days, the protest by the Assembly of the Poor will pass the 3-month mark. And reach a new crisis. The Assembly has set April 29 as a deadline for a satisfactory response from the Cabinet.

On the side of both government and protesters, this remains a remarkable event.

The camp is clean, calm, orderly, good-natured, almost business-like. More than 10,000 have been involved for three months, yet there has been only one incident. On April 8, Cabinet was scheduled to decide on land issues from the north. Villagers went to Government House prepared to thank and bless the Cabinet. At the last moment, the item was removed from the Cabinet agenda. Another delay. One of many. The mood of celebration turned to frustration. A scuffle. Lawsuits.

Chavalit is handling the issue better than his predecessors. "Chuan just did not want to talk to us," remembered an Assembly leader. "He was just too conservative. Banharn was a little better. At least he accepted we have a case in principle. But nothing came of it. In the end, he’s just a wealthy businessman. Chavalit has done more. He has got down to the details."

Ministers like Snoh, Chucheep and Yingphan did not have the knowledge or sensitivity to deal with such a protest. Chavalit removed them from the process. He brought in a group of deputy ministers who have broader minds and some social conscience. They sat down and talked with the Assembly. They dug into the details.

They fixed some of the simpler issues. A few villagers went home happy. But when it came to big issues, deputy ministers did not have the authority. Negotiations dragged. Academics and NGOs called on Chavalit to involve himself personally to break the deadlock. The prime minister agreed. But every time he scheduled a meeting with the Assembly, something intervened. The economy. The stock market. The property crisis. Moodys. Meetings were always postponed.

On 11 April, he finally turned up. He was well prepared. He reached an understanding with the Assembly on major principles. A memorandum of understanding was written down and signed. The next Cabinet meeting approved this memo. Optimists hoped the villagers would now go home, celebrate Songkran, plant their fields.

But the villagers know about agreements "in principle". They have been here before. In 1994 and in 1995. The memo and Cabinet’s acknowledgement are a step in the right direction. But no more. The memo is rather skimpy, sometimes vague, occasionally self-contradictory. It says basically: we must solve these problems. It does not say how or when. So only a few villagers went home for Songkran. The majority decided to celebrate in front of Government House. The Assembly wants another step forward by the 29th. They are determined to stay on to pin the government down.

The three big issues which remain are difficult. They are about details. But the details also turn out to involve very big principles.

First there are 107 villages with around 5,000 households situated in 19 forest areas in the north. The authorities want to move them out. The villages want to stay. The issue is legally difficult. If the villagers could prove they occupied the land before it was declared reserved, some would qualify for titles under the land reform laws. But how to prove it? Before 1954, there was no government officials in these areas to issue documents.

Even if there were documents, the issue is difficult on environmental grounds. The villages are in national parks, reserved forests, or grade A watershed. Environmentalists argue there are larger issues of preservation which should take precedence. But then there remains a human issue. What to do with these 5,000 families? The Assembly wants Cabinet to approve changes in the official forest boundaries which will allow the villages to stay.

Second, there are villagers dislodged by the Sirindhorn and Pak Mool dams. The Cabinet has approved compensation. This itself is a big step forward. Authorities had been resisting claims arising from the Sirindhorn dam for many years.

But how to calculate compensation? The authorities currently take a costing approach. They value the land lost, throw in a hundred baht or so for each mango tree, and come up with a figure. But the villagers have not lost just land, they have lost livelihood. Not just a mango tree, but a lifetime of mangos. They don’t want a cash payment. They want a livelihood. They want land.

There are 3,301 households involved from Pak Mool and 2,526 from Sirindhorn. Providing such livelihood compensation would mean finding over 60,000 rai. There simply is not such an extent of land lying around unused and unowned. So government would have to buy it. But where should it find the funds? From the regular budget?

Then the issue becomes more complex. Many of the villagers from Pak Mool were fishermen. After the dam was built, there were no more fish. How to calculate their compensation? The authorities again use their costing approach: the farmers owned their land and mango trees, but did the fishermen own the fish? If not, why should we cost them?

Moreover, while farmers can be resettled to new land, fishermen cannot be resettled to new fish. There aren’t any available. The fishermen agree to be compensated with land instead. But how to calculate the exchange rate between fish and land? If a fisherman used to catch so many fish a day, how much land should he be given?

The third issue involves five proposed new dams (including Kaeng Sua Ten). These projects are still at the planning stage. Feasibility and environmental impact studies are still under way. But the past record is not good. Government tends to railroad such projects through. Environmental studies have been ignored. There is no established process for public hearings.

Besides, once such projects are announced, villages in the area are attacked by "planning blight". Government offices refuse to provide electricity, water connections, roads, land deeds, house registrations. Officials urge villagers to sell their land to the government straight away, rather than wrestling for compensation. Under these pressures, communities can wither away.

The Assembly wants the government to stop these projects. Chavalit replied that he cannot give in like that. His government would look weak. Besides, there are other people who will benefit from these dams. In the 11 April memo, government agrees to prevent planning blight, and to establish a proper process for decision-making on these projects, including public hearings.

These three issues are hangovers from the past era of Thailand’s rural history. There used to be a lot of free land. If villagers were dislodged, they would go somewhere else. If they protested, they would probably be branded as communists. The authorities got used to being able to push villagers around. Laws and bureaucratic habits reflect this past era.

But times have changed. The land has run out. Villagers stick their ground because they have nowhere else to go. They now organise to protect themselves.

The authorities need to make a mental jump to deal with this new situation. For officials, this is often difficult. They feel they have a duty to enforce laws which were made in the old era. For the older generation of government ministers, it is difficult too. When they see a rural protest, they look for a steamroller. The new generation of deputy ministers can at least confront the problems.

Government needs to rethink its approach to large national projects (dams, forests) which affect many local lives.

First, government needs a better mechanism for dealing with villagers who are living on land which has been declared as forest. A strictly legalistic approach will not work. It is not fair to base decisions on documents which the villagers are unlikely to process. It is silly to take up Cabinet time with the details of each case. We need a permanent land tribunal which can investigate these cases, and make recommendations based on human and environmental concerns rather than old laws.

Second, government needs to codify and enforce a proper process for assessing benefits, costs, and liabilities of dams and similar projects.

Third, government has to confront the issue of compensation. Government is reluctant to accept the principle of compensation for livelihood, because it does not know how to calculate, and is afraid of the cost. But what is the social benefit of the current system which tends to create poor people?

In other areas, government has established the idea of contributory funds. The banks contribute a percentage of their profits to a fund which is now being used to bail out the finance industry. The oil companies contribute into the oil fund, which is now being used for energy conservation. Why not apply this same principle to the farmers? Create a dams fund with contributions from the electricity and irrigation authorities. Use this fund for buying the land needed to restore the livelihood of those dislodged by the Pak Mool and Sirindhorn dams. Create a broader agricultural fund from a fractional percentage on all agricultural exports. Use this fund for other compensation issues arising from land, forests, and development schemes.

The negotiations between the Assembly and the Cabinet have come down to the small details. But resolving these details will require some big changes. The Assembly protest is shifting government’s management of the countryside away from the old mix of paternalism and exploitation, to a new era of negotiation and equity.