New Mandala

Local wisdom - in its various incarnations, and political guises - will remain a focus for this blog as we try to examine politics, economics and agriculture throughout rural Southeast Asia.  A flurry of stories about “local wisdom” have dominated Thai and English-language media over the past weeks.  Andrew and I will be providing some more commentary on this issue in the next [...]

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There are many ways to leave Bangkok.  You know, the old story: plane, train, automobile…tuk tuk.  Yesterday I made my way out of the Big Smoke in the front seat of a generic inter-provincial bus - the transport of choice for millions of lower and middle income Thais looking to get away from their primate capital. The grip of [...]

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One of the recurrent themes in attacks on the Thaksin government is that “populist” policies (the term often used to refer to policies that allocate resources to rural areas rather than Bangkok) have increased household debt. For example, Kasian’s important article on the political economy of the Thaksin government argues that policies such as the [...]

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