The Nation October 27 1998

Thais have mixed feelings about the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Unfortunately most are quite negative. People generally view NGOs as rebels, trouble-makers, critics and even as spies for foreign donor organisations, anything but mainstream.

Although some people have began to understand NGOs and their activities on the basis of their long-standing work over the past two decades, many still have doubts about their intentions.

For example it is not clear what their political stance is, since they keep criticising, in particular, the ruling Democrat Party but at the same time do not seem to embrace any other party.

NGOs are also looked upon as mouthpieces for the disgruntled. They stage protests against hydroelectric dams, gas pipelines, nuclear power plants, new airports, single-crop agriculture, industry ... The list goes on, and confusion multiplies in the public mind.

NGOs also create confusion because they talk differently from the mainstream, especially about the direction of the country's development, often baffling those who generally repose trust in the responsibility of the state in this regard.

Yet two obvious trends can be observed: they are advocating changes in development policy, and at the organisational level they work as networks more than in the past.

Many NGOs have also tried to shift direction from being issue-oriented to a larger picture at the policy level. To them, Thailand has been on the wrong development-policy track since the '70s in that quick money has been earned at the expense of society and the environment.

Srisuwan Khuankhachorn, director of the Foundation for Ecological Recovery (FER) explained that the shift had been prompted by NGOs' long years of experience that social and environmental problems were caused by wrong development policies.

''All of them have learned, you see, that finally the root of every problem they address is the mistaken direction of national development policy, which is centralised, opaque and non-participatory,'' commented one NGO worker.

A number of NGOs agreed with this observation, according to many separate interviews.

''After a long time trying to solve the problem at the micro-level, all of us have learned that it is impossible without touching on the policy level. All social problems stem from structural deficiencies,'' added an official of NGOs-Coordinating on Development (NGOs-COD).

Together with the change of direction, the set-up of Thai NGOs has also gradually changed. From working individually or on an orgainsational basis, they have converged into networks. They have learned that it is not necessary to have a partner which thinks in exactly the same way and agrees on all points, as they imagined in the past of shared ideology.

NGOs-COD is seen as the embodiment of this set-up.

NGOs have centred themselves on NGOs-COD since 1985, and it functions as their official representative body dealing with both government and donors.

NGOs-COD had a significant role between 1987 and 1992. Since its establishment it had gathered NGOs together and tried to set a direction for the movement. One prominent principle to emerge from this attempt was community-based development, which has since given rise to many offshoots, such as the community-forest proposal.

An annual forum for reporting environmental issues had been in existence since the late '80s in order to update the status of the Thai environment, in other words to update the impact of mainstream development in its environmental dimension.

The rapid growth of the Thai economy since 1987 saw NGOs-COD playing a very important role in criticising the negative impact of mainstream, industry-based development aimed at including Thailand in the fold of the ''newly industrialised countries'' (NICs).

But the situation has changed in the past five years. NGOs-COD has seen its role decline for various reasons, especially changes in its leadership, whose individual fields of interest have been reflected in the direction of its efforts.

The theme of its annual conference would seem to suggest a shift of focus away from rural natural-resource management towards ''greener'' products and ''greener'' consumers.

Another reason is the changing social situation in which the principle of community-based development has become more accepted by the public. Greater recognition given to specific NGOs means that NGOs-COD has a less specific role.

Thai NGOs are moving towards a network style but doing it flexibly. Their future can be discerned in the way the network works.

Wednesday: Part Two -- Challenges.