Academic-NGO alliance: the third force

In the old days social activists were criticised for speaking too much from their hearts and too little with their heads. To critics, these activists liked to sensationalise issues but lacked real information to support their arguments.

Today the same critics could observe some positive changes within the non-governmental organisation (NGO) movement. NGO leaders have clearly recognised their weaknesses and worked to improve themselves. They know that Thai society has become more complicated and so have the problems they are dealing with. Not surprisingly, many NGOs have their own research units for which personnel with necessary expertise are hired to work both in the field and on the Internet.

However, a key factor in the improvement of NGOs' knowledge and information is the contribution from academics who have become increasingly active in social activism. While many of their collegues in the universities enter the consulting business for industries, these academics, professing a different ideology, offer themselves as free-of-charge consultants for NGOs and people's organisations (POs).

Their involvement has become an essential element in the NGO and PO movement. Check newspaper reports on current social questions tackled by these organisations, and one will find comments from at least one academic directly or indirectly voicing support for these groups.

Dr Anan Kanchanaphan of Chiang Mai University explains that academics have a role to play because Thais trust their status as aajaan (teachers), the kind of respect which NGO workers are not accorded.

''Sometimes we haven't said anything new or anything different from the activists and villagers. The problems tackled by the Assembly of the Poor, for example, did not receive much attention from the public until we came out to stress the very same points,'' he said.

But like many academics, Anan has better reasons than this for his involvement in social movements. One is because he saw certain loopholes in the NGOs' arguments, and the other is that he wants to influence policy-writing.

An example, he said, is the drafting of the Community Forest Bill. The bill was the result of an extensive course of field research which he and his collegues at Chiang Mai University designed so that NGOs and villagers living in the forests were included in the process. From that, the NGOs and villagers soon realised that the heart of the bill should be villagers' rights to manage the forest, not the right to own the forest, as formerly demanded by NGOs.

Law and policy-writing in this country has usually been based on the ''feelings'' of decision-makers and bureaucrats instead of information from researchers, the anthropologist said. NGOs were the very first group which recognised that the development policy was on the wrong track. They proposed changes by bringing political pressure to bear, but their proposals nave sometimes lacked supportive information. This is where Anan sees his role.

Today there are more academics in social activism, but the levels of their involvement differ. Roughly, they can be divided into three groups.

Anan belongs to the first group, those who have strayed pretty far from the university environment. Along with a number of his collegues from Chiang Mai University, Anan formed a group called ''Academics for the Poor'' this year to support some 20,000 underpriviledged villagers under the Assembly of the Poor umbrella. Prominent members of the group include Prof Nithi Eawsriwong, Chalardchai Ramitanon, Yos Santasombat, and Chayant Wanaputi.

But not everybody welcomes their role. A group of northern villagers who are involved in the forest-land controversy burnt them in effigy in protest at their ''biased'' comments. Perhaps they were the very first group of academics in the country to be treated like politicians.

Many academics in the first group were activists themselves during their student days. This includes Surichai Wankaeo of Chulalongkorn University's Political Science faculty, Suthy Prasartsert in Economics and Gothom Areeya in Engineering. Surichai and Suthy are now consultants for a number of NGOs such as the Assembly of the Poor.

Those in this group also do work beyond their academic fields: Surichai is a political scientist but is a consultant for NGOs monitoring the illegal dumping of industrial toxic waste, and Gothom is an electrical engineer but is an outstanding activist in the pro-democracy movement.

Surichai noted that by involving themselves in the social movement, academics also gain knowledge not to be found in books, classrooms or laboratories. In return they discover new research topics which fulfil their hunger for knowledge and at the same time respond to social needs.

The second group of academics do not involve themselves as deeply as the first, and they probably constitute a much larger number. They comment and research in line with their expertise. To NGOs, these academics are their ''natural allies''.

In the recent movement to protect jasmine rice, considered a national heritage, against a possible patent by an American firm, NGOs discovered Sukhothai Thammathirat University's Dr Jakkrit Kuanpoj, one of the country's foremost experts in patent law. Jakkrit says he joined the jasmine-rice campaign because he has been interested in the social dimension of the law ever since his student years in Britain.

Dr Pasuk Pongpaichit and Dr Suthawan Sathienthai, renowned economists at Chulalongkorn University, also fall in the second group. Their separate evaluations of the proposed Kaeng Sue Ten dam concluded that the project was not economically viable. Conservationists and villagers often refer to the two studies when arguing against the project.

Thirayuth Boonmee of Thammasat University can also be classified in this group. He clearly identifies himself as a social critic, but the points he raises echo those made by NGOs. His latest public comment about the rich-poor polarisation and the urgent need for tax reform greatly bolstered NGOs' criticism of the government's failure to help the suffering social sector.

This second group also includes a lot of academic new faces, especially those from provincial universities and other educational institutions. Mostly they are concerned with local issues. Those from Prince of Songkhla University, for example, actively participated in public fora organised by local NGOs to discuss the social and environmental impacts of a proposed gas pipeline from Malaysia.

Last but not least are the academics who are full-time activists. Prof Saneh Chammarig, a respected political scientist, became president of the Local Development Institute after retiring from Thammasat University and now heads an alternative rural development project in Buri Ram province.

Banthorn On-dam, a former lecturer in anthropologtyat Thammasat University, is another well-recognised academic-cum-activist. He has turned to advocacy work in a number of fields from rural development to human rights, not only at a national but also at a regional level.

In the northeastern provinces there are independent academics outside the university system who work extensively with villagers in the same kind of work as done by NGO workers in an attempt to improve the quality of rural life and farmers' bargaining power.

The academia-NGO alliance is part of the so-called ''third system'', which is helping bring new ideas and new alternatives to a society long controlled by the government and the corporate sector.

The Nation