India has long lived in a difficult neighbourhood, but time was when things seemed to be getting better the farther you travelled from it, especially eastwards. But the instability in Iran and Iraq, on the one side, in Tibet and Xinjiang, on the other, and in Myanmar and now Thailand on the third, shows that one has to travel a long distance from New Delhi before arriving at a place of peace and plenty. Thailand was one of south-east Asia’s growth miracles. For the first three decades of the second half of the last century Buddhist Thailand’s economy grew no faster than ‘Hindu’ India’s! But just when India moved up from its infamous 3.5 per cent per annum GDP growth to 5 per cent, Thailand moved from its long-term 4 per cent to a whopping 8 per cent. The so called ‘boom years’ of 1986-97 were notorious for Bangkok’s traffic jams and road-building stories. Before China’s growth miracle came Thailand’s, fuelled by Japanese investments. Then came the financial crisis in 1997 and since then the economy has chugged along at between 3 per cent and 4 per cent.
But it is not the economic boom and bust that has done Thailand in. It is the social mismanagement of that process. Thaksin Shinawatra’s crony capitalism and the Thai elite’s inability to deal with social, economic and regional inequality cursed Thailand to a long decade of troubled existence. An idyllic land of a peace- and fun-loving people, working hard by day and partying by night, an exotic holiday destination, a human development success story, and then a financial basket case. Thailand’s domestic troubles began at a time when India was just beginning to rediscover this civilisational neighbour of yore. Just over a decade ago Thailand launched its own ‘Look West’ policy, seeking to build bridges with India. The Thai trade minister and later director general of the World Trade Organisation, Supachai Panitchpakadi, took keen interest in deepening the Thailand-India relationship. Out of this renewed good neighbourliness came the idea of a regional economic grouping called BIMSTEC, built on the twin pillars of Thailand’s ‘Look West’ and India’s ‘Look East’ policy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first visit abroad as PM in July 2004 was to Bangkok for the BIMSTEC summit. This fledgling relationship of great economic promise has been grounded by Thailand’s domestic pre-occupations. What a pity. India should wish Thailand well, even though in recent months Thailand has been flirting with its post-crisis economic benefactor, China. China’s influence has greatly increased in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. But that should not deter India from renewing its ancient and recent links with the Thai people and wish them well.
Thailand’s political crisis and social discontent offer lessons, and a note of warning, for India’s political and business elite. Economic growth is in itself no guarantor of political stability. It is a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition. Political stability requires positive movement on upward social mobility, especially for the poor and middle classes. Everyone should be better off and no one worse off as a result of growth. Social stability comes not just from economic improvement but also political empowerment and a feeling of belonging. Nations that cannot make all sections feel they belong remain inherently unstable. One final lesson from Thailand — it is always good to have a middle class. Societies marked by a rich-poor binary divide are inherently unstable. The middle class always acts as a cementing and stabilising force.