BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT BETTER

       Villagers should be encouraged to collectively fix goals for their own community's development, implement their own means to achieve them and choose metrics to measure the results, a seminar heard last week.
       A bottom up approach to development by local people themselves should replace the heavy reliance on the top-down approach directed by the government or academics in Bangkok, Paiboon Wattanasiritham, a prominent figure in community development, told the Nation Conference.
       Paiboon is an adviser to two communities in Ratchaburi, west of Bangkok.
       While the government each year sets a target for economic growth and lays out many indicators to measure it, villagers of Tambon Baanluak in Photaram and Tambon Hnongpanjan in Baankha choose to determine their own goals and methods of achieving them and key indicators for making assessments, he said.
       For example, each community has several objectives, such as the physical and mental health of its members, unity, adequate income, no drug abuse, participation in community affairs, preservation of local culture, and honest and accountable leaders.
       Then the community designs and implements the means to attain them.
       For example, to achieve well being in health, public health volunteers have to educate the people and organise regular medical check-ups. And a campaign to promote proper behaviour is launched.
       Villagers can use statistics from local hospitals on patient visits as a key indicator to measure the success or failure of their collective efforts. This procedure over time should enhance their problem-solving skills.
       "It takes time … I don't believe in frog jumps," Paiboon said, referring to the trial-and-error process initiated and implemented by villagers.
       Over the past decade, people have started to grasp the concept of community development after 20 years of efforts to promote it. "Thousand of communities have implemented their own development scheme," he said.
       Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University, argued that in the market economy, the poor do not benefit even in boom times. The boom is a problem, leading to excessive exploitation of nature, which results in the high pollution of air and water resources and eventually climate change, she said. Internationally, developing countries export cheap products and credit to developed countries. Migrant workers also provide cheap labour to advanced countries, she said. "The poor subsidise the rich," she said.
       Current economic development plans also create all the wrong incentives by emphasising short-term returns rather than long-run sustainable development. For example young talents in India aspire to work in the finance industry in order to make a fast buck while India lacks professionals in basic research, she said.
       Governments should discipline the market, particularly the financial market, she added.