More than six million Thais – two million of them children – still live beneath the poverty line, which is calculated at 1,386 baht per month (approximately US$43) and another five million within 20% of the line. The government, elected under a pro-poor and redistributive manifesto, brought into force a six-point plan to help the poor at a time of rising oil and food prices. The measures included free bus rides, a price cap on cooking gas, excise tax reductions on fuel and water.
The plan seems to be working well. Poor people are benefiting from the subsidies and those not in need are not able to sequester the benefits for themselves – i.e. riding on one of the 800 free buses does not attract the middle classes because they are among the non air-conditioned not terribly comfortable set of vehicles.
Some have argued that the use of food coupons would be better than subsidies. Subsidies, after all, tend to become counter-productive if not managed effectively and attract the wrath of the IMF/World Bank and other such institutions. However, food coupons would not work so well in a society in which so many people exist in at best a semi-official state. People too poor to pay tax and living in an illegal or at least unregistered house (i.e. a slum) do not appear on many official records and would, therefore, not be able to obtain the coupons – people also do not know how to access such services and would be disenfranchised accordingly.
These are the policies that are labelled ‘populist’ by the anti-democracy movement and the once-proud Democrat Party, which has become a home for scoundrels under the disastrous leadership of super-privileged quisling Abhisit Vejjajiva. What, in fact, is wrong with populism like this? People in their millions appreciate what the government is doing for them, although no doubt they would like there to be more and many are affected by the relentless anti-government propaganda in most of the media. Consequently, once the courts ban and break up the People’s Power Party on some pretext, a new party will be formed and the work will begin again (of course it has already started) on putting together a new coalition of interests that will permit these pro-poor policies to continue, populist or not.
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It really is crazy how so many people can still live in poverty like that. Is there any information about the distribution of these people? How many of them live in cities vs. rural areas?