I would like to move our discussion about TCDs into this new topic krab so we can focus on how we address the development challenges of our nation and propose the professional and practical goals for them together with some detail proposal.

Let me repost the current agenda that we are up to here na krab. My apology if I miss any detail krab. Let's continue our discussion here and when we have develop a concrete well-round proposal we can move to the next step to draft the TCDs note which is the product of TSAM knowledge network.

In the mean time I will try my best to facilitate the ideas and discussion in this topic to reach our goal krab

Thank you everyone who has contribute to this cause so far and khun mint who started the previous topic. Let's discuss for the greater future of Thailand!

Thailand Centennial Development Goals (TCDs)

Motivation:

In the coming 24 years there will be two important centennial anniversaries for Thailand; The King's 100th Birthday and the 100th anniversary of Thai Democracy. Clearly, this two anniversaries will mark the very important milestones in Thai history which is worthwhile for achieving the next step of Thailand development.

So far members of TSAM have contributed to this proposal as follow;

Kraiyos:

1. Improve the responsiveness and inclusiveness of democratic governance under constitutional monarchy

2. Develop and sustain the equal and robust economy and gender equality in labour force participation

3. Achieve egalitarian social development and equal opportunity to education, more importantly developing the nationwide CIVIC EDUCATION that equip the civic mind and a sound understanding on democracy to every pupils and their instructors.

4. Reaching deep south provinces conflict resolution and reduce conflicts and violence in Thai society

5. Ensure the sustainable health care system nationally and improve citizens' quality of life and health awareness equally

6. Promote environmental and energy sustainability

7. Advance innovation & research excellency of public and private enterprises and develop the knowledge society

Khun Karn and Khun Pornkamol:

1. Reduce preventable deaths in rural areas.

2. Rural area development (including Access to clean water for living and agriculture).

3. Alternative Energy Source

4. Sustainable tourism business

5. Revolutionary develop the volunteer organization esp. students-led org that promote civic and public mind of the participants which is the very important ground for civic engagement and public service.

Khun Srunya:

1. Develop "free thinkink" education system, unleash students ideas and free speech in their learning evnvironment

2. The establshment of Human Security and Safety for all Thais.

3. Empowering women in their workforce and also to encourage women to participate in politics.

Khun Pete:

Education:

Develop the democratically and social responsive education curriculum for the sustainable society that has a well balance of main stream schooling and other issues that are relevant to Thai society such as agricultural knowledge in rural Thai economy, civic education, health and energy awarenesses.

The thread, Abhisit as the newly elected PM: Can he untangle the mess in politics?, is now merged with this one ka.

So I posted in the other thread and at around the same time as K. Kraiyos posted on the new thread so that we can just focus simply on the blueprint for change or the TCDs. We decide that essentially our goals are the same.

I admire everyone's effort in addressing these pressing issues as we see as crucial for our country. I want to repost my earlier post on this thread. I originally summarized based on everyone's opinions. ^____^ I hope I didn't miss out na ka. If I did, please feel free to correct/add/edit na ka. After all, these goals and changes are for ourselves, our country, and indeed our happiness.

Below you will find my attempt to summarize everyone's opinion. K. Kraiyos and I will be as attentive to what you have to say as we can na ka. Everyone's opinions is priceless. Let's continue to create positive change in our society gun na ka. We have already done so much getting together and striving to contribute despite our busy schedule and hectic daily routines. You all are admirable. =)

MY EARLIER POST:
---------------------------------------------------
I value everyone's opinion on here so I am going to summarize them and add some of my own to the post below na ka which I attempt to categorize into the following topics.

1. Government role:
- Llsten: be open to criticism from people from all classes, all geographic areas, all ages
- Act: Be responsive and take appropriate action
- Evaluate: get feedback and refine actions if needed
2. Education:
- Equal opportunity: the poor, people in rural areas, disabled kids
- Free thinking, critical thinking, freedom of speech
- Instill the responsibility one has beyond oneself, reach out for others in the community (i.e. workshop, volunteer)
- Applying problem solving skills to outside-of-classroom life
3. Economy:
- Rethinking tourism?
- Expanding the base of our economy: less gap btwn rich and poor
4. Healthcare
- Advance together with science and technology to provide best healthcare possible to the people of Thailand
- Equal opportunity
- Less difference between public and private hospitals (i.e. service, fee, etc)
- Affordable healthcare plan (but not awfully cheap like 30Bht without providing enough fund to the infrastructure to support such change)
5. Security and Safety of Thais:
- Crime rate within Bangkok, Chiang Mai or major cities
- Problems near borders with Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia, etc.
6. Equality and Opportunity:
- I think this concept will have to be engaged in all of the above topics
7. Science and Technology:
- Stable and well managed infrastructure
8. Energy and Environment:
- Less dependency on oil
- Better foreign policy with oil producing countries
9. Corruption:
- Involves more check and balance systems

----------------------------------------------------

Mint

I also like to add

----------------------------------------------------

I think all of us agree that education is the prime point for sustainable development and growth of Thailand and her people. Inevitably, fundamental change has to come from within each one of us. To be able to build a character with indestructible happiness would be able to lead us to contribute to our society. I find myself struggling to give to others when I am not happy with my life. I believe that positive changes in Thailand are, in fact, a reflection of the happiness of our own lives as well.

Someone who votes for the politician who buys votes might really need the money to feed her dying son. She is also struggling. So I feel that if we can create a happy, satisfying environment and reach out to others whenever and wherever we are, in a way, we are indirectly helping our country as well na ka. Just my two cents na ka.

Let's be the best of ourselves.

Mint

Thank you so much krab K. Mint.

Let's bring our best for the future of Thailand.


And for the incoming holiday season, for all the thoughtful ideas and thriving debates, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2009 to all TSAM members, wherever you are krab!

I'd like to add in a part of civil society krub.

Nowadays, civic organizations and NGOs have emerged substantially, however, there is no clear policy of how to deal with these emergence.

For Thailand Centennial Development Goals, I hope to see:

1) Communities, with certain capabilities, should get the rights to manage their local natural resources, such as forest, water, and coastal resources. There should be a law for this. (It was two years ago. It was canceled in 2008).

2) Government agencies in rural areas work as a facilitator to enhance local organizations and networks, and also supporting the work of decent NGOs.

3) Local administrative function work as it should be, not as a servant of a political party.

4) There should be a more competitive market for development project. Nowadays, the market for development project is a kind of oligopoly and oligopsony market, i.e. few buyers of development projects -only government and สสส.- and few sellers - there are few development organizations that are really efficient. There should be some kind of policy from the government to solve this problem.

Stop by krup,

I don't know if these ideas are 'unreachable dreams' or 'realizable plans'.

There were plenty of them previously and most of them die along the time line and covered by sand of ignorance.

Don't like to discourage you guys. The aims (TCDs) are good.

But how serious are you guys into them?

Dont answer me, answer to yourself. If you are quite serious, why don't you start with 'drafting the proposal' starting with philosophy behind the goals, sources of the problems, expected procedures, required stakeholders and actionable plans for each stakeholders.

Just like to see you far it would go (with hope)

very best,

Just wanna ask some simple questions with respect in response to Khun Kraiyos's proposed idea no. 1 - Improve the responsiveness and inclusiveness of democratic governance under constitutional monarchy. Democratic governance requires promotion of fundamental freedoms and respect of human rights. How could such freedoms and rights especially freedom of expression be upheld in a 'democratic' country under Thai constitutional democracy? And frankly asking, are we really seeing that in the next 24 years, Thailand will still be a constitutional monarchy? - well this would be an interesting debate rather!

Regards,
Kwanravee

Like to raise questions of many topics concluded above as summarized by K.Mint...

1. Government role:
- Llsten: be open to criticism from people from all classes, all geographic areas, all ages

?? Any mechanism to 'listen to' free speech of millions and then how to 'take them into account' rather than ignoring millions of them?

- Act: Be responsive and take appropriate action
- Evaluate: get feedback and refine actions if needed

?? Any decisive definition and implication of 'being responsive' ? It matters a lot to 'evaluation' and 'feedback & refined actions' . . normal KPI approach to measure the performance of people esp in government is inadequate and imprecise....somehow prejudice and distorting. (from my experience)

I think, the government just does its job!! One of the most important job is to construct the good infrastructure on 'legal background and judicial system' that align well domestic and international context. Then laid down the legal infrastructure of the soicety on economic context (after judicial and political context). Just this job, it is quite difficult already. Then providing 'fundamental factor of life', education-helath-social insurance-social security . . any good mechanism for these? Currently, NO!!

2. Education:
- Equal opportunity: the poor, people in rural areas, disabled kids

?? Any clear definition and implication of 'equlity' and how can we measure it? . . it is like 'shall we provide unemployment insurance & support to the unemployed? If so, many 'marginal workers' would quit the job and get the 'government provided benefits' . . This is also implied to the 'equal opportunity' and support the the poor and rural areas . . .all about incentive and performance!!

- Free thinking, critical thinking, freedom of speech

?? I am really afraid of this thing...we now cannot even talk freely about Royal family (no offense here). If we raise the issue, the problem of lese majeste would come up for sure. . . think about it first

- Instill the responsibility one has beyond oneself, reach out for others in the community (i.e. workshop, volunteer)

?? good idea, but how can we sustain it? any mechanism and resources?

- Applying problem solving skills to outside-of-classroom life

?? Adequate opportunities to the students or whom interested?

3. Economy:
- Rethinking tourism?

?? A LOT OF HOMEWORK to do on this topic . . TAT is now working only on the marketing (it implies, TAT officers can travel abroad a lot and for free) This raises problem on efficiency in many aspects. Intelligent body for Thailand's tourism sector is in the embryoic stage!! The task is passes back and forth between ministry and many others. So weak!!

- Expanding the base of our economy: less gap btwn rich and poor

?? What is the base? . . Less gap by tax? by support? by what? what is the gap though? Incentive and Performance issue (again)

4. Healthcare
- Advance together with science and technology to provide best healthcare possible to the people of Thailand

?? What about the additional cost? Cost of tools and technologies, who will bear it? Then when we have the technologies, how shall we allocate them? FYI Bangkok has 10 big machine for the brain medication / operation (i don't know exact name and function), but they 'under utilize them"!!! Because of there is no good allocation and cooperation between public and private sector!! Pride & prejudice? maybe it is.

- Equal opportunity
- Less difference between public and private hospitals (i.e. service, fee, etc)

?? What is the meaning of equality here, and on what aspect? In fact, most distinctive factors of private and public hospital is the 'hotel service' appended to medical ones!!! Then the diffierence between 'medicine' (imported from Scandenevian countries or imported from india-locally produced) . . Another issue to be concern is the leak of physician from the 'medical care system' and the fluctuation of distributional pattern of medical care personnel. . . hurrrr... so many issues to mention.

- Affordable healthcare plan (but not awfully cheap like 30Bht without providing enough fund to the infrastructure to support such change)

I think, one who want to take these issues seriously shall read research of HSRI for the background. Then political issues on them. Then you will have a clearer picture of the problem.

I think I should stop here. Too many things to comment and say about the issue and problem .. and in many 'vertical levels'

Anyways, Bonne Annee krup

Best,

Regarding energy and environment, there have been studies conducted which reveal that Thailand has energy surplus. In other words, demand for gas and fuel has been linear; grows at more or less the same amount but official Thai load forecasts are always exponential. They have consistently overestimated demand, which in turn stimulates investment. What the government should do is to consider clean, decentralized options on a level playing field. Power development plan for 2007 replied on a bulk of new power plants which were natural gas..large amount of them come from Burma and Thai people have been using this 'cheap' energy at the expense of bloods and flesh of Burmese people. Thai people also เสียค่าโง่ for PTT without knowing it. For more information, please see reports from www.earthrights.org or studies conducted by EIA

Regarding Chol's proposed idea no.4, I'm not sure if the words 'competitive' and 'market' are the right words to use (unless you mean it) as they imply 'gain and lost' and could lead to an understanding that it's 'always' some kind of business when development as projects could mean in many other different ways eg; those small-scaled, community-initiated projects where they don't reply on funding from big donors as you are talking about. If it were me, I would prefer using the term 'space'..it's the issue of certain big donors seeing development projects as their areas of business and try to oligopolize and we don't have to necessarily following their traps.

Cheers

'space' here could also mean 'opportunities'

Thank you everyone for kindly participating into this topic so far na krab, all the question are very interesting. may I answer some them that I am responsible for as follow.

For K.Kwanravee question about how could the democratic governance under constitutional monarchy system works freely.

To date there are over 30 nations currently use "parliamentary" constitutional monarchies (this is another the title for this system) around the globe, however the freedom of expression among these nations vary from the most free to the least free compare to the rest of the world. There are various determinations of the freedom under this particular system but surely lack of freedom is not because of the system per se and there are rooms for the improvement of freedom of expression under this system. The most important point would be the legislature issue in which Thai society needs a more substantial understanding and debate to deliberately improve our freedom of expression responsively. Initially, some additional legislation may be needed to prevent people exploiting any particular laws to politically attack their opponent, then some modification of any existing unclear laws may require later on.

My point is that, there are rooms for determining changes in parliamentary constitutional monarchies regarding the freedom of expression and there are plenty of success examples and history across the globe. We need to understand more, discuss more and start the process more sooner than later to improve freedom of expression in our society krab.

I will answer other question in another post krab.

Thank you.

Thanks also Khun Kraiyos for sharing your views. The fact that we are discussing this topic means that we are exercising our freedom of expression freely, which people living in Thailand wouldn't be able to do so or face charges!

May I further give my views;
1. Regarding the number of countries using this system, no matter how many, it just doesn't give legitimacy for any fundamental human rights to be violated or restricted. Also many countries with this system are in their decline.
2. A healthy democratic society is the one in which all people can enjoy their fundamental human rights and human dignity. It is a society where people are encouraged that as human beings, they can handle truth. This also implies transparency and accountability.
3. Restriction or violation of freedom of expression could lead to violations of other rights including the right to access to information and press freedom.
4. In Thailand, the lese majesty law has been easily used as political weapon to attack those with different political views. The case of Mr. Chotisak who wasn’t standing in the theatre was one of several examples. PAD people had used him to further create hatred in the society. What is so wrong with people who hold different ideology? If it’s not because they are so afraid of any challenge to their power or wanted to maintain a status quo, why would they need this law? - this law is so outdated that need to be abolished.
5. Well, supportes for monarchy might say that monarchy is a symbol of unity. But can’t people in general unite without a monarch? What about ongoing conflicts in the Deep South or other parts of the country? What does it mean if the system is not also to be blamed? Centralization and creation of ‘Thainess’ (including the motto ‘love nation, religion and monarchy’) do indeed play a role in creating the conflicts. – let not mention how Thai Queen encouraged Thai Buddhist civilians to be armed in the south.
6. Without the ability to criticize, knowledge becomes fixed or dead. This’s no difference from culture in its decadent form that becomes violent and oppressive.
6. Through propaganda, Thai king has been made ‘King of the Poor’ or the Righteous or God (though the country is no longer absolute monarchy but in practice, no doubt!). As an individual, he could be ‘good’ but seeing one as God is a real danger because people will stop questioning and be living in this ‘blind faith’. The king and family members have come up with many royal projects including dams etc. – do they benefit all people? If not, who would dare to complaint?
7. In countries under constitutional monarchy with more freedom of expression, expenditures or royal spending is an issue i.e. Holland, England etc. Those are developed countries where there are less gaps between the rich and the poor..What about people in developing world? Why do we allow such privileges to continue?

Let me tell you what I experience with my own eyes.. one day in the city center of Siam Square after finished campaigning on Free Burma, my friends and I saw this old man in his old clothes carrying many plastic bags full of garbage falling down. We helped lifting him up and were waiting for a taxi to take him home. The first one came, the driver refused to take him..though he didn’t say a word, but we knew why. Came the second one, third one until there was no more car on the street! Yes..no single car on the street of Siam Square at 3 pm.! In 30 minutes of waiting on the road side, came a parade of 8 red luxurious Mercedez..they were led by police cars with police personnel saluting as the cars drove along. Yet another 10 minutes of waiting for those in the cars to enter the building, it’s the same 10 minutes long of my friend and I holding this old poor man in our arms - he could just fall at any time if we let go off him. I couldn’t feel anything but anger and pain inside..why as human beings, we are so different? But who was I blame?

Later when I got home and saw the news on TV., a princess and her mother were at the Espanade for the grand opening of one diamond store..that was on 8th August 2008 (8/8/08) – auspicious day for the minority some but no difference from many other days for the majority poor… This is one example …one reality that got me thinking and fighting to end any form of privileges and I hope you would feel and realise it too somehow.

Best,
Kwanravee

I really admire all of you for devoting your time to this very important discussion na ka and am so sorry that I will have to be brief since I have to dash off soon.

With regard to P'Chol's comments,

- 1) 'should get the rights to manage their local natural resources', could we maybe elaborate or expand that to 'should be given access to, control of and allowed to participate in decision-making on the use and development of their local natural resources'?
- for point 2), could we also add or specify that government agencies should work to promote more equitable distribution of benefits in rural areas? You see so many businesses in the north of Thailand benefitting from hotels and golf courses, with very little going to the local people or local hill tribes.

Wish you all the best for the New Year na ka :)

Khun Kwanravee, agree with your issues (well delineated krup) and share your sympathy with the old man krup. (anyways, I am not on any side na krup; not Red nor Yellow).

I though K.Kraiyos's comment on #12 is like PAD's logic. Agree na krup, but need deeper thinking and logical investigation for 'legislature issue'.

As many issues related to 'government and NGOs' here, please allow me to recommend some reading. I think it is a good one for 'governance system' both law and 'lawlessness' in governance. The book is Avinash Dixit (2004) Lawlessness and Economics (Princeton University Press) One of the Gorman Lecture Series at UCL.

The thing is the book will help would clarify the 'fundamental institutions' of change within a few pages (from Relegious & Social Norm, Legal & Judicial Infrastructure, Political Process and Organizational Infrstructure and Network, then Economic Decision and Allocation). There are levels and interplays. One important message on governance, if the "state" fallshorts to provide good mechanisms to solve the conflict within society, 'private sector' would create it up through 'incentive compatible' mechanism in order to procceed the working (economic decision and allocation that create wealth and wellbeing to 'society' / people).

Hope you active guys are holding tight to the TCDs na krup and stand for it for long.

Thanks ka, K.Kaipichit..will check it out!

In peace and solidarity,
K.

Sawasdee pee mai ka everyone!

Sorry for my absence. I hope you all had a wonderful new year celebration na ka. Best wishes for everything ka.

I guess our discussion might have taken on a little bit of detour during my absence. ^___^ I am seeing many freedom of speech here on this thread which I truly admire the courage of those who express their thoughts and opinions.

In essence, I want to make sure that we stay on the topic and work towards developing Thailand Centennial Development Goals na ka.

The discussion on whether democracy or any other form can be discussed in a separate thread na ka.

K.Kraiyos and I will respond in greater details to K.Kaipichit's post soon na ka. We are working on it together ka.

Mint

the role of Monarchy is very much relevant..I hope at least we all stay critical so that whatever ideas we have, they will be rooted.

Cheers,
K.

Thank you again krab for further ideas and questions in this topic.

I would like to answer some questions from k.kaipichit on post number 12 as follow, k.mint will answer the rest soon krab.

Responsive governance

To achieve responsive governance a country need to promote mechanisms in both sides of the coin; supply-led accountability (government) and demand-led accountability (civic participation)

Supply-led accountability

The main function of the government is to make a decision on wealth transfer from one to another place in the polity according to the intelligent information of the collective choice and the constraints they have gathered from their constituents and technocrats and from the process of parliamentary debate. In most of the time there are multiple options for government to choose in allocating wealths through legislative actions. Also, there are many players in such process ranging from the cabinet, MPs (majority and minority sides), constituents, organized interest groups, NGOs, scholars etc etc. Inside the process of reaching this decision is where responsive governance define itself.

To evaluate how responsive the government has made its decision, one could examine the choice of the government. Irresponsive government often fail to transfer the wealth responsively to the collective choice and fiscal constraint either because of corruption or incompetency. Various effective institutional constraint, check and balance system and civic-engaging citizens are needed to determine the responsiveness of government in this context.

There are a number of ways to access the responsiveness of democratic governance across the globe. Most notably many inter-govermental organizations and scholars access it through various corruption, media freedom, institutions indices. Empirically, this approach can help us to understand the causes and consequences of responsive governance.

For instance, the UNDP has devote its major resource to examine and develop the responsiveness governance across the world in order to make sure that the supportive institutional environments are in place to facilitate the democratic system to achieve the MDGs goals in time of 2015.

I think the philosophy of responsive governance in TCDs is comparable with of the UNDP. We hope to address the problem why Thai government has failed to deliver the accountability; for instance, less corruption, less media intervention, less vote buyings behaviors, greater anticipation to the constituents not any particular interest groups etc etc. To do so we need institutional reforms and politicians' mental reform of some sense which, as this topic is for, open to everyone ideas krab.

Demand-led accountability

On the other hand, civic participation is crucial in promoting responsive governance. Many developing democracies have many good institutional laws and policies in place but, still, it is still lack the responsiveness of governance. The very good example for Thailand is our decentralization policy that created OR BOR TOR and OR BOR JOR across the country, however this new decentralization policy has yet to show its original benefits (instead it even make corruption more severe).

Genuine understanding of democracy trough civic education and information from independent medias is the key to develop responsive government from the demand side. When the voters understand the civic duty and how their voice can be counted democratically, the government will be effectively discipline and provide the true responsive governance to the society by delivering the truly anticipated public projects with least corruption to the constituents.

To evaluate the demand-led accountability, there are still large research gap in Thailand's context. We could start by conducting the research on the study of determination of civic mind in Thai society; say what kind of interplay education and information have in generating civic mind or how patron-client mechanism undermine democracy in Thailand and how can we improve the situation. Again this is an open debate for everyone in This topic krab.

To conclude my reply, the definition and implication of responsive democracy as well as its evaluation method are widely recognized by most inter-governmental organizations and scholars. Government main function is simply to make a decision on how to share a cake responsively to everyone who come to the birthday party notwithstanding how well you know someone more than others, the jobs to buy a cake, candles and every other things in the party is for technocrats and public officers in each ministry to do. For TCDs, we would like to hear more ideas from everyone about how can we improve the responsiveness of the government and existing democratic institutions in Thailand in order to facilitate the process of achieving the rest of TDCs goals krab.

I will answer the other question in another post krab.

Thank you krab

I understand all your points and feelings, however I see things differently and want to share with you.

Each country has a history. The history determines the country's present condition. This condition includes the existing social institutions. As a result, each country has different existing social institutions, as well as how they have been and will be developed.

Thai society has a certain path of development of social institutions. No matter if the path is right or wrong, it leads us to the situation we are today, from which our future will be developed.

Although you claim that what we perceive today as social institutions i.e. nation, religion and monarchy, is what was constructed by state 50-60 years or even 150 years ago, but we can't deny that a majority of population, don't know exact proportion, still have this perception. This common perception, or common knowledge, is an existing social institution. Of course, I agree that this institution is changing. A bigger proportion of people perceive it differently and It might change any time in the future. However, we'll never know when.

The violent action against k.Chotsak, whom I consider one of my friend (really, I know him), is just a reaction of a society trying to get rid of something that is not fit in, just like our bodies have an immune system. I see it as a nature of a society.

Human rights is important to development as one of many freedoms of people for them to live as they want. However, I really believe that this rights is just another human-constructed discourse for a purpose, emerged from one context, which obviously not from the context of our country. But since we see some of its benefit, it needs to be carefully installed into our context. I disagree with any radical change because there's too much cost involve, as we can see from examples of history of western countries.

And although I share your sympathy to that old man, we are living in the world of differences, not just cultural difference, but also economic, political and social status. These differences have their own causes. Some, or even all of them, are results of unjust social systems. However, I'm sure that there are many of them that comes from their own efforts; and some didn't even know how they got those status since it is attached to them since they were born.

It's a good thing to help people who are in trouble or have less opportunities, but there is no reason at all to blame those who are well-off at the moment. Trying to rip off their status is, I think, an action that do not their rights into account at all. It's rather a person who takes that action who has privilege of doing so.

Those people in those red Mercedez might have stopped their cars and help the poor old man if they were in your situation.

So, instead of fighting to end any those privileges, I guess there are plenty of alternatives to change our society into a more equal one with the least pain to every party. Some policies that help expanding opportunities for the poor might be a good start. After that, there're steps that need to be taken in order to build up the equal society. Each step has its own condition. For example, if we want to demolish lese majeste law, I guess our society has to reach a stage which people are well-educated and ready to talk with reason and knowledge first... etc.

I hope your sympathy, pain and anger make you blind from this point of view.

Best,
Chol

Sorry for taking a long time na ka. I will answer each subtopic in a separate post by starting with education first ka. I understand that my previous posts lack details and here are some of the rough suggestions of how such abstract idea might be implemented. Please feel free to add to the list or comments na ka. ^____^

Education

1. Encourage Critical thinking:
- Teacher's role switches from giving instruction to promote construction of ideas.
- Schools issue their own (i.e. weekly) newspaper to boost students' participation in expressing their opinions.

2. Instill Responsibility Beyond Oneself / Promote community services:
- Make volunteering a mandatory extracurricular activities for students in middle and high schools
- Government supports non profit organizations that extend the help to those in need, i.e. disabled, orphants, homeless, etc.

3. Entend Problem Solving Skills to "Life outside the classroom":
- Schools should add a subject of philosophy to the curriculum.
- Teachers encourage students to share their experiences of applying what they learn to real life problems.
- Government can direct some funds to school (i.e. school can start a conference on philosophy and real life problems, etc.)

Healthcare

1. Promote excellence public healthcare services and develop sustainable medical research and technology in parallel

- Government allocates funds to promote excellence of public healthcare and motivate skillfull doctors and personnel to stay in the public sector via i.e. tax cut, reasonable income, most dedicated doctor awards, etc.
- Increase tax from the private hospitals.
- Instead of allowing absolute competition between public and private healthcare sectors, encourage cooperations and make each sector's developement dependent on the other's.

i.e. Redirect different specialties to different sectors. For example, make the private hospitals specialized in developing advance medical technology; and make the public hospitals excellent in providing healthcare services. To provide incentives for private hospitals to do so, government must advertise Thailand's intent to develop its private healthcare as a southeast asia medical hub. This will draw the attention from the private sector.

Government must also limit the number of domestic patients that can be treated in each private hospital (via extremely high tax increase when number of patients exceed certain amount); whereas if the private hospitals treat international patients, the tax rise is insignificant, etc. But before doing that, we have to make sure that the public sector can for sure provide an excellent healthcare services. The process might take 10 years to establish before one can start to delineate each sector's specialties.

There should be two subdepartments within the department of medical science (Grom Garn Paed) that serve the purpose of nurturing the dependent growth of each sector (public and private).
----------------------------------------------------

Please feel free to add to this na ka. My sister and I are making questionaire in the healthcare section for medical personnel in rural areas. We aim to look into currently existing problems and solutions that the people are interested in seeing. So hopefully I will be able to expand in more details on this matter soon.

p'Ei krub

I've been thinking and I think our discussion is quite out of the topic of TDCs. (I mean I also think that this topic is relevant to TDCs but we're quite discussing in the angle that is not relevant).

What do u say if we start a new topic? ... let me know what you think (you can call or miss call me krub).

Chol

Yes, Chol..no problem ja..I started by rasing some points which were of my curiosity in relation to the topic (if the topic simply said 'let's work on future development plans for Thailand together', I wouldn't have been bothered asking more questions). I also needed to criticize certain idea proposed in the discussion and I hope we all do so that any ideas we are proposing will be substantial and can really be implemented. I'm also not just criticising but I'm willing to give alternative views too if I see it fits in.

Again to my understanding, people joining in this network come from different backgrounds and experiences. If this web board is meant to be discussion/ knowledge-based, criticisms (with reasons supported) must be tolerated. It doesn't matter what views (radical, moderate etc.) people have, as long as they have reasons to support it and the good will and spirit to make it happen, it's all worth it.

So please carry on the very essence of the discussion that is worthwhile to you. I appreaciate all the sharings and all the best! ;)

First and foremost, Happy New Year 2009 everyone!!

It is very interesting to see everyone's ideas and inputs on TCDs issue. There are indeed a number of issues which people view it essential for the future development of Thailand.

I also would like to bring to your attention on the issue of 'Gender Equality' as a social development issue for our country to also address. Various 'equality' issues (eg. opportunities, etc) have been discussed above, I have noticed that 'Gender Equality' is not being emphasized in Thailand and there is little knowledge on this issue in our society. Some of you may see 'Gender Equality' as a small issue compared to many others which should be tackeld first (eg. economic issues, poverty in rural areas, education, rural development, etc), but i do believe that gender issues can be incorporated within these areas also. Social development, particulary the empowerment of women and gender equality would serve as the foundation for the future development of Thailand. In order for Thailand to move towards a better future, change must take place first thing in our community and society.

Empowering women economically and politically can bring a difference to Thailand as currently Thai politics is mainly in the hands of 'men'. It would be interesting to see the differences if women were to take a more powerful political stand on this. What would then happen? Would we see less corruption? Various studies have been conducted on the level of women's participation in parliament. Interestingly it is foudn that the greater women's participation in politics, the lower the corruption rate.

I have attached the links for any onf you who are interested in these studies:
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTGENDER/Resources/wp4.pdf
http://www.u4.no/document/showdoc.cfm?id=124

Economically, women should also be empowered to start up their own business, working networks, or rural network for entrepreneurial purposes. They should be given a stand in our society to become empowered and not be restricted in the homes. Allow these women to become productive citizens of Thailand, and fullfill their full potential to help progress Thailand economically and politically!

The promotion of Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality have been widely raised across the world has have been addressed as one of the MDG goals of the UN (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/gender.shtml). Gender equality should also be considered being incorporated in various development issues of TCDs, either be be in education, politics or economics.

Thank you for reading ka. Comments are always welcome.

Also if you feel the need to create a seperate topic on monarchy, I'm not hesitant to share but in these few days, I'll have to focus mainly on my exam and assignments ;)

Cheers,
K.

Impressive responses and replies from K.Mint and K.Kraiyos krup..

Let me (re)comment on Health Care sector first. (I will selectively comment on some issues na krup. I don't have much time to explain all. It would be great if we all can really sit and talk on the round table)

Note : Impressed from you and your sister's project on interviewing / surveying the rural doctors na krup. In fact, there are many researches on this topic. Go find HSRI and Health Care Economics of Chula krup. It can save your time and budget and avoide redundant replication.

The most dangeroud proposal of K.Mint is "letting the government to promote Thailand as a medical hub" in order to 'lure' private sector of the health care industry to do R&D in medicine and medical technology.

The fact is....this policy will promote and increase demand for medical care / personnel from abroad. Given unmatched increase in supply of medical personnel, the foreign demand will make return on private medical sector rise, then doctors in this sector get more salary (in both general and specilized doctors). So the huge gap of return between private and public (hold constant by the government policy) will incentivize doctors in public sectors to move to private one, clustered in BKK and Phuket or big cities. Then the deterioration of distributional patter, geographically and between sectors, occurs. . .. The unlucky guy is the poor in up-country regions whom you like to help!!!

Many other issues on Tax and control over public and private sectors are investigated through the lens of contract theory (multitasking moral hazard model) with simplified figures as a policy tool for health care system. (Hate to say this, but I wrote this paper and presented it in both international and national conferences.) In fact, this problem (medical care personnel inadequacy) has been in thailand for at least 3 decades. You believe it or not, there is no 'agreed' policy framework / tool for this problem. (Hate to say this : my paper is the only one so far that proposes the policy tool, derived from theoretical model / logical derivation given information constrained due to the nature of medical care product, for this kind of problem.)

Another important fact : Thai Medical Personnel Organization (whatever the name is) is one of the cause of the problem. It monopolizes the medical personal sector by limited creation and restrited import personnel from abroad (even in private sector). It has done this for years, but it has a good reason and excuse though!!

Another important issue you forget to raise is : "medicine" (as a tool for doctor for curation and prevention). After decades, องการเภสัช of Thailand cannot still produce a 'good and needed' medicines!! It produces only a basic one and cannot catch up the new & increased demand of curative drugs!!!

สงสัย หมอเก่งๆ คงไปเล่นการเมือง ไปเป็นผู้บริหาร (โดยไม่ทำการรักษาคนไข้แล้ว) และ เภสัชกรที่จบใหม่ๆ ไปเป็น dealer ยาให้บริษัทต่างชาติกันหมด . . เฮ้ออออ)

The end of the road of all problem is about the 'cost' or curation, medical care & services, then cost of lives and quality of life of Thai people. . . That is why we have to see the cost and budget (with understanding the real problems behind)

Hope it helps you clarify the problem krup.

On education, (please allow me to cut & paste instead of writting it up na krup)

Education

1. Encourage Critical thinking:
- Teacher's role switches from giving instruction to promote construction of ideas.

?? How? To have skillful teachers who can do this is not an easy job. It is the skill, not knowledge, for teaching 'to promote construction of ideas'. Yes, you can have some good schools that have these kind of teachers. But you cannot do the 'mass'. If you like to do the mass production on this kind of teacher, how do you do that? how many years does it take? what mechanism and the method of teaching the teachers would you use? etc etc.

- Schools issue their own (i.e. weekly) newspaper to boost students' participation in expressing their opinions.

?? Incentive to have student's participation!! School newspaper is good 'choice', but....i think you need to think more about 'creating the chance of creation of creativity, funding that chance, and sustaining that chance' na krup.

2. Instill Responsibility Beyond Oneself / Promote community services:
- Make volunteering a mandatory extracurricular activities for students in middle and high schools

?? The same issue : incentive to join the extracurricular activities. Further, if you 'require' it would not be 'volunteering' anymore.

- Government supports non profit organizations that extend the help to those in need, i.e. disabled, orphants, homeless, etc.

?? Agree on those 'in need' group. But you will have so many problems on 'funding' 'choosing NonProfit Organization' to do this. . . again who will create/ fund/ sustain the project krup.

3. Entend Problem Solving Skills to "Life outside the classroom":
- Schools should add a subject of philosophy to the curriculum.

?? Philosophy in school class, really? What about วิชาพุทธศาสนา which is also one of the best philosophy? Ok..now you can imagine series of problems coming out for practice.

- Teachers encourage students to share their experiences of applying what they learn to real life problems.

?? Suppose we have this kind of teacher in school, what experience to be shared krup? What life is the life outside the classroom when kids have to go back home and get TV and ละคร brainwash!! Inadequate 'quality TV programs' and 'quality space / activities / sports / parks'.....most of 'supposed to be' green areas are now shopping malls!!!! (now you see the link to problem outside the scope of consideration now)

(note : read the note at the end of this post)

- Government can direct some funds to school (i.e. school can start a conference on philosophy and real life problems, etc.)

?? with respect, I think this is an unreachable dream krup.

Note : people are much more complicated than a mechanical machine that we can design / control and even rebuild. I appreciate your will and ambition na krup. But if you really want to make TCDs real and seriuos, you need to concern more about the human factors and social scope and connection (you can choose economic / politic / law or any social sciences approach to think about the problems) Otherwise, TCDs is just a beautiful dream of flambouyant new generation krup.

Please note : all my comments are not aimed to 'discourage' any one of you who are the brain and strength of the country na krup. Just want to let you know (if you are serious about the TCDs) the weakness / the unmentioned in the problems / Point out some 'consitent logical thinking' na krup.

Appreciate your effort and will though.

(I hope I will come back and reply K. Kraiyos's reply soon. Few word : I think you focus too much on responsive democracy/governance/government. you might be too strict to the tool. Beware of government failure as well na krup. It is one of the important source of failure!! (in addition to market failures) In fact, I think, you will have many problems since you thinki about good for people especially on issue of the 'measurement and aggregation' of collective utility krup . . as Arrow concerned 50 years ago)

K. Kaipichit,

Please don't generalize my idea ka. There are many ways and approaches that people will come together and work things out. Just because we think things might not be possible, that does not mean dreams can never be attained. Otherwise, do you just accept the reality and give up? If my suggestions are not plausible, please do suggest something else. I would appreciate your comments if that's the case.

I don't see anything wrong with having what you called "a beautiful dream of flamboyant new generation". Dreams will come true if our will is strong enough. I would love you hear what you want to see the change in our society and the feasible approach in your opinion. It's true that I don't know much about politics, economics or law. It's true I have always been in science and technology but that doesn't disqualify me to have dreams and desire changes in our society.

There are many beautiful changes in this world that happens beyond your imagination. All one needs is the courage to dream and the will power to stay true to those dreams until the end of your life. Every problem has many solutions. Whether or not you regard the problem as opportunity or a closed door, it is your choice.

"To the weak, difficulty is a closed door. To the strong, however, it is a door waiting to be opened." -- Almafuerte

To have faced difficulties in life doesn't mean one has to learn to let go and be easy on ourselves. In turn, problems are there to challenge us so that we can summon all courage and strength we have within our lives to overcome any difficulty. Those who have struggled the most are the people who truly deserved the greatest kind of happiness.

PS. I don't just design machines and treat people like machines. I understand psychology and philosophy quite well. So please don't impose the personality trait that doesn't belong to me on me.