Foundations of Country?s Well-Being

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amthaiEconomics

Millions of people around the world are still living under the deprived conditions including poverty, food insecurity, water scarcity, and poor living environments. Many people are put into the worst conditions of warfare and likely to be put away from home and become immigrants.
In Thailand, although the absolute poverty rate has decreased over the past decades, the problem of income inequality has not been making any significant improvement. Many people are still living under the conditions of deprivation with risks caused by crime, drug, environmental threats and especially political conflicts leading to more violence. 

Making the well-being of people in the country is therefore not only development economic conditions to raise the income of people, but it is also necessary to build other foundations of nation?s well-being. Foundations of the  country?s well-being comprise of the following components. 

First, the foundation of food security

Foundation of food security shall be built aiming to create the food abundance for the country. Food security allows people in the country not to starve or struggle for food to survive their lives. As well, the country must not fall into the situation of food deficiency when the poor are unable to access to foods. Although Thailand is one of the world?s leading food producer and exporter, the country is exposed to risks of food insecurity due to the evolved economic restructuring which shrunken the agriculture sector and caused labors to be shifted from agricultural to industrial and service sectors. Given the context of ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that Thailand is likely to lose her comparative advantage in labor costs to the neighboring countries, industrial labors are more vulnerable to food insecurity due to the lack of social safety net in this sector comparing to the agricultural sector. Besides, the increasing demand for bio-based energy has caused the change of land use from food production to bio-energy production.

Critical steps required to build the foundation of food security include the economic structural reform to create better income distribution, welfare systems reform for non-agricultural sector, agricultural productivity improvement especially the focus on farm mechanization, agricultural land reform and land restoration, as well as land planning and zoning in order to enforce the appropriate food production in aligning to the land conditions and food demand.

Second, foundation of economic opportunity

Building economic opportunity for all is a critical foundation for country?s well-being because currently many economic sectors are still under the monopolized control of some interest groups supported by politicians. Many previous government policies spoiled people to be more dependent to the government instead of empowering them to make them stand strong on themselves though the means of merchandises or money allocation. The way to create economic opportunities should be carried out through the reform of economic structure, policies and legal causes leading to free and fair economic competition that allows all people to conduct either works or business fairly based on their own capacities. 

Third, foundation of safety

Safety foundation shall cover all areas of life including living conditions, transportation, job, and information. Thailand is having low level of safety due to the poor law enforcement. Such situation leads to law violation, mafia, gangsters, and illegal business. Sometimes those who violate the laws are the law enforcers themselves. Moreover, Thai society is also at risk due to political conflicts that create hatred and violence between people who hold different political views and orientations. In addition, new threats those have been originated from electronic media and social network also become the new source of risk.

Thailand shall develop effective safety systems covering all aforementioned areas through cooperation from all sectors in society. This is to create social immunity so that people are aware of the threats to safety. Furthermore, legal and justice reform is needed to improve the law enforcement effectiveness and the law violators are punished strictly without bias or discrimination. Thailand should also create society with unified pluralist character so that people could live together peacefully even the diversity remains in society. 

Forth, foundation of knowledge

Knowledge is a crucial factor needed to propel the knowledge based and creative economy but the Thailand?s weakest foundation. Thailand?s production and exporting sectors are constrained to the low value-added products because most of what Thailand produced fell into the primary production of goods and raw materials. Most industries in Thailand are Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) with no own technologies or brands. Services and products produced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or community business still undifferentiated and lack of creativity. Most of them are copied from one to another. 

The way to build the foundation of knowledge is to move Thailand towards the knowledge society so that the country will have appropriate knowledge systems and people will love learning.  Thailand shall focus on knowledge creation that can be developed to new body of knowledge and systematic knowledge allocation to those in need. Research and Development shall receive the priority especially in complement with the investment in high value-added industries. Intellectual property and copyrights must be properly protected. People should be equipped with creative thinking and capacity of entrepreneurship that will promote the country to become an innovative  nation that Thais can initiate new innovations.

Fifth, the foundation of virtue

A society with foundation of virtue is the society where people have good consciousness; show goodwill toward one another; stay in unity; and concern for public interest more than personal interest. Any power or influence can never force or motivate people to do any immoral or illegal deeds. However, nowadays many people seek for self-interest rather than putting public-above-self; thus corruption is regarded as the big disease for this country.

Virtue is necessary to be promoted among Thais by encouraging media that supports morality, promoting any persons who have shown example of high virtue. Moreover, it is important to create a system that allows people to do good things easily while discourages people from doing the wrong things. Those who do wrong shall be punished through a fair justice system. For instance, students are supported to do activities that benefit the society; or the public-focused extra-curriculum activities that students performed should be taken into account with the academic achievement for the admission criteria.  

Building the foundations of country?s well-being must conform to each other because each of them is interconnected and affects one another. Besides, building foundations of the country in the other dimensions can be considered from my  book entitled " Siam Araya Manifesto " and " Chao Araya : Chao Civilize Tee Fai Ha (Araya People : People of Civility that are looked for )"

Kriengsak Chareonwongsak
Senior Fellow at Harvard University?s Center of Business and Government.
kriengsak@kriengsak.com, http://www.kriengsak.com

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