The recent cabinet approval for the exploration of mineral ores in watershed forests just confirms the dreadful reality that Thailand's biggest danger is the people who shape policy.

In the typical hush-hush manner that has for so long allowed bureaucrats to destroy nature, the Mineral Resources Department managed yet again to win cabinet approval, this time for a 1.5 billion baht project to excavate potential ore deposits at 60 sites in what little remains of our precious rain catchment forests.

Yes, 1.5 billion baht!We're dirt poor as a country. Our unfortunate children have been robbed of free lunches and education grants due to national budget cuts. The sick and the poor have suffered more through fewer public health services. Our environment has been ruined as a result of unregulated, me-first development. Yet our government wants to spend 1.5 billion baht to destroy the people's source of sustenance even further.

They must be crazy!But we will be even more crazy if we let this suicidal policy materialise without doing anything to stop it.

Foreign loans or not, it's us and our children who must dig deep in our pockets to pay for these costs. Come to think of it, we're like a beggar who isn't only robbed but also forced to pay for the knife placed at our throat.

Why is it we keep seeing strange mega-projects being initiated by various arms of the government? Like buying warplanes or battleships that we cannot afford even to run. Or pressing ahead with huge projects that make no sense at all in time of bust.

It's probably because the private sector is still in a coma, making the government the country's biggest source of cash. Given the deluge of foreign loans, our ruling elites are having a ball burning money with absurd projects. Needless to say, the tea-money business has never been as brisk.

According to the ore exploration scheme, 1.5 billion baht will be spent to hire private companies to explore potential deposits before inviting miners in to milk the land. In short, we are footing the mining companies' survey bills.

What is even more ridiculous is that the state is using taxpayers' money to subsidise private mining businesses to subject the citizens to a slow death. It is a known fact that mines, apart from destroying the forests and local communities, are a big threat to good health.

Look at the Lower Klity villagers in the Thung Yai forests. The lead mine there has been releasing toxic water into a natural waterway for over 30 years, resulting in dangerously high lead levels in the villagers' bloodstream. Yet, they get no health care, no compensation. And after cosmetic tampering with its waste treatment system, the mine will soon be back in business.

Lead is among the metals on the ore exploration list. We can foresee a similar tragedy elsewhere given our bureaucracy's notorious regulatory weaknesses.

In the face of a national crisis, Thailand's challenge right now is to provide humans and the environment with security amid poverty and social injustice. As a small country in an inter-linked world, we also need to find ways to defend ourselves against future assaults from unregulated money mongers as well as trade domination by the West.

But our policy makers still apply old-world development strategies based on frontier expansion and the exploitation of natural resources.

This destructive policy has not only reduced us to a beggar. But also to an anaemic one. The quacks who are running the country, meanwhile, are getting fatter and fatter from prescribing fake medicines that are making us bleed until eventually we all fall down-dead.

Sanitsuda Ekachai is AssistantEditor, Bangkok Post.