Thais urged to cooperate not compete with nations

Thais should seek cooperation with other societies, rather than allowing themselves to become preoccupied with international competition, prominent historian Professor Nidhi Eowseewong said.

“Thais tend to look at the outside world in terms of competition. Even the Asean Economic Community, for example; we think about how we will compete with Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. According to my understanding, the AEC was founded to foster cooperation and a common market, and not for competition. How did this competitive mindset come about?”

Nidhi argued that such a mentality was the result of the spread of US cultural influence, and that it made Thais think they have to be No 1. This, said Nidhi, had led to such things as the construction of the largest Buddha in the world, the largest joss stick in the world, and so on.

Despite the outwardly competitive mindset, the historian, who delivered the keynote speech on “Thailand Reform for Living in the Same Planet with the Others: The Future Imagination” at the fourth National Congress of Sociology in Bangkok yesterday, said inequality continued to pose a challenge to Thai society. The 20 per cent of the people at the top of the economic pyramid own 69 per cent of the national wealth, for example.

Nidhi advocated decentralisation as a solution.

“This inequality has brought about political and social tension and also prevented the individual potentials [of many people] from being realised, and this affects the country,” said Nidhi, who also advocates the fostering of greater bargaining and negotiating skills.

Nidhi said it was imperative that power be decentralised as much as possible and that it should not be merely transferred to local elites at the provincial level. He said subdistrict authorities and tambon administrative organisations should not become replicas of the power structure in Bangkok.

“Structural reform will reduce the concentration of power at the centre,” said Nidhi, adding that the challenge lay in how power could be spread as widely as possible.

If this effort succeeds, Nidhi said he expected all other reforms to follow. He said Thailand could not expect to solve its problems by tackling them in a piecemeal, compartmentalised fashion, as was seen in the handling of last year’s floods. Structural reform and decentralisation must be tackled as well, as they will be make other reforms possible by giving ordinary people a greater say, he said.