Development???

Rasi Sali is the first village that I went to on the third unit of our program. The issue of this unit is water, and more specifically dams. In Rasi Sali, the government of Thailand built a dam for what they say is irrigation purposes, but instead the dam has done nothing more then flooded crucial crop fields for surrounding villagers and diverted the fish that normally come up stream. This has in turn severely affected their livelihoods, mainly due to violation of right to culture, food, work, health, etc. The situation has been happening for quite some time now, and the Thai government is well aware of the issue at hand. The most inspiring part about this is the activism of the locals in the village. A few years ago, the elders of the Rasi Sali village decided that they were not going to stand for the violations that were occurring any more, and in retaliation and pure civil disobedience style, they set up a protest village outside of the entrance to the dam. The village includes members from many families through out the village and come to show what a community with an issue can do when they mobilize.

My own experiences and impressions of the village were interesting. I have to say that I never really thought of right to culture as a huge issue. Rights seem to be tangible things that are or are notgiven to someone, such as food, water, work, right? How can one measure the right to culture anyways? Well I guess I have to then think about what exactly a right to culture in America would be maybe to find a parallel. In the case of Rasi Sali, the fields of which they plants cow neow, or sticky rice, were flooded. Cow neow is a stable of the northeast region of Thailand and in a way culturally defines the region. It’s in many ways seen as a lower class food to many of the people in the rest of Thailand, but that’s also in many ways why its so important. On top of that the people in the area have a long history of working as fisherman and farmers. It has become part of their culture and even has been integrated in to their holiday system, with the month surrounding harvest season being vacation time for the children of the area so that they can help their parents harvest rice.

The conclusion of this is that the people of the area have a tradition to their land and their work, a defining part of their culture. The dam has essentially forced them to look for other venues of employment, abandoning what they know best from years of training to do “new generation” jobs such as driving taxi’s in Bangkok, and running shops in Bangkok’s tourist hot spot, Khao San road. It does not really seem fair does it? And all in the name of development for new times, seems more one sided to me.