Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss 
Mention Bangkok to anybody who has lived or traveled in the Thai capital and their mind will drift to mouth-watering food eaten on a wobbly folding table on the side of the road. They invariably will start praising the fuming piles of Pad Thai, freshly cut papaya salads, crispy omelettes, grilled pork neck or sizzling seafood available on every street for a tenth of the price of a Big Mac. On 17 April, all of this was supposed to have come to an end.
On that day, a ban on street vending along some of the city’s most famous food destinations came into force, pushed by the city governor, Aswin Kwanmuang, and the man who put him there: Prayuth Chan-o-cha, a general who took control of the country after staging a coup in May of 2014. In March, metropolitan police officers handed out notices to vacate the sidewalks with the declared objective of cleaning up the city and preventing any hindrance to its pedestrians.
The move has been met with a popular outcry. Critics have pointed out that the ban will sacrifice thousands of vendors’ livelihoods, and the economic survival of urban poor in an increasingly expensive city, on the altar of middle class dreams of cleanliness and respectability. Even Thais who favor a slicker Bangkok have denounced the absurdity of implementing this policy just a month after CNN named the Thai metropolis one of the world capitals of street food and condemned its predictably disastrous effects on tourism, the only industry that has kept the Thai economy afloat since the military takeover. These are essential objections and Bangkok would suffer greatly by losing one of its most distinctive features. Yet the military attack to street vendors signals something broader and more sinister than putting aesthetics over culinary, social, and economic concerns. It’s about imposing an authoritarian order over Bangkok and crushing whoever defies it.
In other Asian countries, like Singapore or Japan, street vending is governed by a formalised system of licenses, schedules, and screenings. In the Thai capital it is driven by the vendors’ ingenuity, constant appearances and disappearances, and flexible uses of space: a petrol station may become a portable bar at night, a bank’s car park is covered by portable gazebos and transformed into a restaurant serving delicacies from the Northeastern region. This show of creativity, disregard for planning rules, and defiance of established boundaries infuriates the Thai military regime.
James C. Scott has suggested that states have ‘always seemed to be the enemy of people who move around’. For authoritarian regimes this war against wanderers turns into an obsession. British colonialism was tormented by unruly nomads and its French counterpart by the contorted alleys of the Arab Kasbah and its impenetrable veiled women. Maoist China was fixated with wandering Tibetan monks, and contemporary authoritarianism with illegal migrants and their uncontrolled movements. What united all of their enemies was the defiance for physical and mental borders, an attitude that has been a perennial source of frustration for authoritarian governments.
Even if with different vehemence, these regimes have deployed all of their available tools to record, organise, and block defiant subjects. Sometimes they raise walls in the desert, others times they build new cities and forcibly relocate people. In extreme cases, they create camps to contain and exterminate them. While the Thai government’s ban on street vendors may seem less violent, the result is the same: an attack to ways of life that don’t fit into the rigid grid of military mindsets.
Since he came to power, the Thai dictator has followed its egregious precursors. First, Prayuth cracked down on illegal migrants, refusing to provide safe harbor to Muslim groups escaping ethnic persecution in neighboring Myanmar, deporting thousands of Cambodia workers — allegedly killing nine in the process — and imposing tighter controls over working visas. Then, he directed his attention to open public debate, particularly in relation to the heavily guarded territory of the monarchy. Lese majeste law, which punishes any critic of the royal institution with 3 to 15 years of jail, was used with unprecedented alacrity. Before the 2014 coup, only 5 people were behind bars for this crime, and other 5 awaited trials. Since the establishment of Prayuth’s personal rule, 68 people have been charged. Now his war against people who defy boundaries has moved to Bangkok’s wanderers par excellence: its street vendors.
Promises to impose order over Bangkok’s vendors are nothing new. They are almost ritual components of enthroning new city governors and appeasing the urban middle classes. Invariably, however, they are put aside once citizens, interest groups, and local residents come knocking at their door. Yet, unencumbered by the need to win popular support, the regime displayed unprecedented violence and disregard for auditing practices, negotiation, or the effects of its policy on Bangkok’s citizens. Under military rule, avenues of negotiation or resistance are almost not existent and any organizing against the junta’s orders can be met with lengthy detention on sedition charges or suspicious roadside killings, as people who questioned the boundaries of their control have learned on their skin.
Nomads, as the the travel writer Bruce Chatwin once wrote, see frontiers as a form of insanity. For soldiers they are a raison d’être, one they are accustomed to guard with brute force. People who disregard them ridicule the military obsession for order, discipline, and categorization, revealing the risible pretense of absolute control. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, vendors who move fluidly through material and mental grids reveal the pettiness and fragility of authoritarianism. In between exquisite meals, they remind us that order is always open to challenges and that great pleasures reside in its cracks, a lesson that scares military regimes more than anything else and that Prayuth is now determined to silence.
……………
Claudio Sopranzetti is a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Owners of the Map and is currently working at Awakened, a graphic novel on life in Bangkok. You can follow him on Twitter at @anthroaddict.
Header image via Flickr user Ronn Aldaman, used under Creative Commons licence.
This is all very nice and quite touchingly romantic but what I want to see is interviews with the vendors being asked these questions. 1) Why are you doing this? 2) Are you happy doing it? 3) Is there anything else you would prefer to do?
“Nothing about us without us”
3
11
Too bad. The article starts well.
For people interested in a more “political” take on contemporary Thailand than is usually available on NM, the question of the “street cleaning” that has been undertaken by the BMA is an interesting and vital one.
To make it into just another instance of the big bad dictator obsessing over control (over the wild and crazy denizens of “Nomad Bangkok” no less!) is a sad testament to the utter lack of interest in anything other than shoring up one’s “anti-junta” credentials.
Thailand has a taxation problem. Some estimates of the size of the grey economy put it at almost 60% of GDP. Even the lower estimate of 40% from the World Bank would suggest a staggering amount of untaxed economic activity.
The thousands upon thousands of food vendors and sellers of just about anything and everything that take up spots on sidewalks and roadsides throughout Thailand are self-employed business people who pay no taxes.
Receiving nothing from any level of government in “infrastructural” support for their enterprise means that they probably shouldn’t have to: police do not protect them (but some do shake them down); they don’t get social security; they can’t get bank loans.
Some of the vendors pay a regular “rent” to the shops they sit in front of and especially in Bangkok have to pay a certain amount of “protection” money, whether to local toughs or their uniformed equivalents aka the police. But nothing goes into the national coffers.
Every time the Bangkok middle-classes hit the streets with their anti-democratic confreres from the upper echelons, they make the point that people who pay no taxes should not get a vote. And everyone knows that the only folks who pay income tax are government employees and people working in companies “official” enough to be required to collect it.
But vendors pay VAT and those market-stall vendors much of whose business is export oriented are unable to get their VAT back so pay more than their “official” colleagues. And VAT is regressive, so everyone employed or otherwise active in the shadow economy is paying more than their share of this particular tax.
As to those like Sam who wonder whether a couple running a small somtam and gai yang stall and making 40 or 50K a month would rather be working for 10K each in a “real job” and wonder whether they are “happy” doing so, I suggest a little experience working for a Thai boss would not go amiss.
The grey or shadow economy extends far beyond the street food vendors of Bangkok but much of it is in a similar situation.
People on all sides of the political conflict decry corruption and there can be no question that such a huge shadow economy leaves many people open to corrupt practices and all sorts of exploitation, like loan sharking.
If you bother to go back over social media discussions of the past 20 years you will find plenty of plangent criticism of Bangkok’s blocked sidewalks, from farang ex-pats as well as middle-class Thais. The same young pretties who were out smiling at Suthep hate having to negotiate the stalls when they go out for lunch at one of them.
So while there may indeed be an outcry, now, in defense of street food, there has long been an equivalent outcry demanding that the police or the BMA or whatever administration happens to be in power DO SOMETHING to make Bangkok more like Singapore or the dead sterile streets of a city like Vancouver.
Which brings me to a question: are the streets of Canadian and American and European cities, where casual street vending is met with police action very consistently, evidence that Prayuth-like cartoon dictators are obsessed with control in all these places too?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I mean, Bruce Chatwin was indicting modern western culture with his “nomadism”, not petty dictators in SE Asia.
19
6
‘Self-employed business people who pay no taxes’. It’s always about money: why rent a shophouse and declare your income when you can get away with paying a little pin money to the local boss and set up on a street and minimise your overheads? THAT is why there are so many vendors on the streets of Bangkok. And the BMA misses out on any income to help maintain the streets and pavements. There is just too much traffic and too many people in Bangkok now to have pavements and roads blocked by vendors in busy areas. And rats everywhere. All those moaning about this ‘clean up’ should think carefully about quality of life for Bangkokians and visitors, and surely eating in a designated market area can’t be all bad?
5
8
Kaz, by your naive comments you don’t seem to live in Bkk.
An example “why rent a shophouse and declare your income”. The simple answer to this is money; poor people can not afford 50 – 100K monthly rent, plus two months deposit.
The “paying a little pin money to the local boss” is another false fact of yours. The vendors pay to the “tessakit” officers, municipal officers, just as other industries pay to the police ie transport drivers. They also pay to shop owners too, as Michael Wilson pointed out.
Kaz if you want a sterile and expensive ffod scene I suggest you move to Singapore.
Just ask anyone resident in Bkk how they love the convenience of street food and the ease of never being more than 50 metres from a snack or meal. Who would want to travel to a crowded “designated market area”?
5
6
If indeed street traders are making making 40 – 50K baht a month then I am more than happy to acknowledge Michael Wilson’s advice though most traders of my acquaintence don’t appear to enjoy so much income and if they did why would they be there for years on end?
Of course they are a cheap convenience for Bangkok office workers and also the Thai government who can use them to hide the true unemployment rate in Thailand.
6
0
Dear Michael,
the issue of taxation and formalization is a really central one. It has, however, nothing to do with the junta’s actions. The first and only serious attempt to bring the grey economy into a formalized system of taxation and social protection in Thailand was started in 2003, under the formula of De Soto’s “transforming assets into capital.” Vendors, motorcycle taxi drivers, and some of the van operators were register, given formal permission and offered to social security in exchange for taxation and limiting of the civil servants’ demands for money. That project had a lot of a short-comings (see my upcoming book for details) but it worked in making part of the economy more readable and less corrupt (partially). Doing so had nothing to do with kicking vendors out of the streets or with evicting them, it requires a proper registration and control over police officers. That process stopped after the 2006 coup, in which many affiliated with the junta were involved. Prayuth’s actions have none of the aspects which suggest the ban as part of a formalization of grey economy. No alternative markets are being offered, no registration procedure has been devised, and no attack to police interference and racketeering of street economies have been implemented. If you read the BMA’s orders and notices are about pedestrians and cleanliness, not taxation. I would be happy to have that discussion about taxation mechanisms and agree with with that VAT is the worst possible way of implementing taxes but, once again, this government does not have an interest in raising taxes or extending social services.
As for the issue of nomadism and order, I think whether in SEA, contemporary US, Europe, or China authoritarianism since the 19th century is obsessed with people who move and seem uncontrollable. My own country, Italy, basically watching people sinking into the Mediterranean is one of the many contemporary examples. Unfortunately, insanity is not a regional disease.
4
0
Don’t agree that this illegal coup détat government is not interested in raising taxes, Prayuth ran this up the VAT flagpole just a couple of weeks ago. Wrong tree up barking the.
Even so, I do agree that this has nothing to do with trying to regularise a part of the grey economy, though it may be hoped that would be a useful by-product. The government is trying to make Bangkok more appealing to the ‘higher-worth’ tourists. I would suggest they do something about the sewer system first but of course they won’t. No point in going crazy with money that could be used to buy tanks, submarines, planes and helicopters that Thailand doesn’t need and whose only purpose is to make a few inadequate general staff feel all tough and virile and stuff Misfits to a man, mental illness abounds. What a joke.
Personally I think it’s a terrific idea to boot out the street traders though. The more people this shower piss off the better. More the merrier, stoke the fires and loose the tumbrils.
3
0
Caro Claudio,
I didn’t intend to suggest that the junta was interested in “raising taxes or extending social services”; simply destroying the livelihoods of what is being estimated at 15,000 people would surely be an odd way of going about it if they were.
As you pointed out in your article, promising to clear Bangkok’s sidewalks is standard practice for new city governors and new national administrations, but, as is the case with so many oft-promised outcomes, delivery has rarely ever taken place.
This means that at some level there is a long-standing consensus among the governing classes and a vocal part of their constituency in Bangkok that something needs to be done. As I pointed out, the non-taxed condition of these very visible businesses has given rise to a nasty ‘Respect My Taxes’ response to the ‘Respect My Vote’ call.
For me, this historical context and political push mean that it is not sufficient to refer this program solely to the junta and its “war against people who defy boundaries”. It is a long-standing BMA intention finally being acted upon in a typically crude and callous way and the responsibility for it cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the big bad junta. The Thai state has a habit of this kind of thing and the tipping point can come under just about any sort of regime, elected or not.
In a more general sense, whereas I can say that I appreciate the poetry of your comparing Bangkok curry vendors to wandering monks upsetting obsessively orderly Maoist China (!) and placing them in the context of Chatwin’s romanticized vision of the nomadic alternative, I somehow doubt it would carry much water with the people themselves.
Running a business, especially on a busy street where you have to wash dishes repeatedly without a source of running water, is not really in the same category of life experience as an Aboriginal Australian singing his way along a ley line.
Thailand’s stalled modernization, and that is what this is all related to, is not so much about the harshness of authoritarian rule (although there is that without a doubt), as it is related to the inability/unwillingness of Thai authorities to do the hard thing in either the old-fashioned “western” method of enclosure and semi-forced emigration or the modern social democratic method of retraining and welfare support in order to make Bangkok’s streets as antiseptic and orderly as streets are expected to be throughout the liberal democratic nations of the G7.
It isn’t just “soldiers” who obsess about order and control and it isn’t just authoritarian governments who do so either. How do we imagine Bangkok came to be so different from European and American cities? Surely not from an obsessive concern with order on the part of Thai soldiers.
One can only hope that once this particular phase of Thailand’s tidal swing between elected and military governments is over, the streets of Bangkok will find their way back to Thailand from their sad sterile sojourn in the Denmark of the authoritarian imagination.
0
1
not so much what as how ….
0
1
Some excellent comments here, and in isolation they make good sense, but we must recall that Prayuth has been quick to establish a reputation for targeting the low-hanging fruit while maintaining a resolute silence about the really big issues in Thailand, and one in particular – corruption.
I have seen it estimated that corruption absorbs up to 40% of the GDP in Thailand, and, consistent with what you say Michael, it is untaxed and is a direct burden on the quality of services in Thailand. For example, the roads I travel on in my occasional visits are appallingly bad, and, when repaired, they are appallingly bad again in about 6 months – this is the real cost of, though of course, these are not the main roads that the pooyay travel on when visiting the ‘ban-awk’ phrae; they are always kept in good condition, appearance in Thailand is paramount and trumps all else. For every 100 baht allocated to roads in Thailand, about 60 baht gets spent on roads and infrastructure costs, the rest is paid to local officials in corruption, it’s the price the local contractors have to pay if they want the work. A local man of my acquaintance was approached to become one of the 2 ‘poo-chuay’ assistants of the local pooyay bahn, the price was 40,000 baht, payable to said pooyay bahn, and it’s been the same for decades. Corruption is ubiquitous in Thailand and permeates all levels of society, from the very bottom up to and including the very top. Or perhaps I should say from the very top to the very bottom, because there is no doubt at all in my mind that is starts at the top, and permeates downwards.
Prayuth will not address corruption seriously, because a good part of his own personal fortune of more than 100 million baht os widely believed to have been gained in the same way – corruption; and too many people know about it for him to be able to seriously tackle the issue from the top. It’s an integral part of the Thai culture and is taught by example .in schools, universities and the workplace This was the subject of a very true cartoon in the English-speaking media over the past few days, and it’s very true. Corruption riddles Thailand, and is everywhere from the aforesaid pooyay bahn right up to the biggest godfather of them all, the guy that died and has been replaced by someone even more corrupt and even less principled.
If Prayuth is not prepared to address the real problem in Thailand and will steadfastly continue to only address the cosmetic issues, then Thailand will continue to decline and fall. As it is doing right now, as we speak.
The food traders can be addressed, and Prayuth will claim some credit for what will be a token improvement in Thailand. Meanwhile, the bigger problem – corruption, will take 50 years to eradicate if they start tomorrow, and they won’t start tomorrow. The police, the armed forces and the judiciary need to be gutted and thousands imprisoned for very long times. Mor importantly, the king needs to be exiled to Germany or wherever will take him – that’s what it will take. Reform in Thailand requires either a republic or a crusading king. Since it does not have the latter, it must take the former.
Other than that, Michaels points are sound enough – in my opinion .
21
0
Thanks for the points about taxation. Is it the case that taxes are more often collected from the vendors in authorized public markets? places like Jatucak and the various night markets that are found around the city?
Do we think that the junta’s supporters are more likely to eat and shop indoors at the various malls around the city, not so much the center city show piece malls but the several places with an anchor store of some sort, moderately priced retail, banking, and assemblies of chain restaurants and indoor food courts? I know a number of middle class people for whom these places are a regular part of their weekly routine and who are afraid of or maybe embarrassed by the street food that ordinary folks and tourists buy.
0
0
Very few of the vendors in places like Jatujak or Pratunam or Platinum are licensed and taxed. These places are where entrepreneurial Thais go when they would rather not have to put up with the rigidly hierarchical employment available in companies that do payroll tax deductions etcetera.
“Kaz” takes the standard Bangkok middle-class position and suggests that street vendors et al are more or less parasitic on the economy, which would be funny if it weren’t so backwards and upside-down. The more these shadow economy folks have to interact with the “real economy”, like paying rent to landlords, the more they are ripped off by the utterly corrupt upper echelons who control land and retail space.
Sam Deedes takes the western “social justice warrior” point of view which can never see people like Thai street vendors as anything but victims when in fact they are the people who have in most cases absolutely refused to be victimized in this economy. The ones who stay at their stations year after year do so because they are making enough money to keep their kids in school and smartphones and eventually put them through university. The ones who drop out, and there are many, are those who end up going to the Middle East or Singapore to make more than they can working in the “real” economy here.
The 300 baht per day minimum wage translates out to somewhere between 7 and 9K baht a month. That is the official economy where folks like Sam would imagine they would rather be if given their druthers. 6 day weeks and 10 hour days for 9K baht is not what everyone dreams of at 40 with two kids and dependent parents back home.
I’ve worked with kids finishing their BAs and intending to go to work with their parents in the street stall biz or at a talat nut because surprisingly enough having to suck up to a contact to get a job at a bank or an airline starting at 12 or 14K a month just isn’t all that attractive to some people.
In its own small way, this “Singaporization” movement is similar to the closing of the commons in 18th century Britain, in that its ultimate effect will be to drive more and more people into the “real” economy where the capitalists who form a significant part of this network tyranny (and who are constantly ignored by commenters hereon) can put them to work for minimum wage and firmly under the thumb of the bureaucracy.
9
0
What’s wrong with having more Singapore style hawker centres in Bangkok. IMHO, there are way too few. In Bangkok, it’s far too often ONLY a two-choice menu : either air-con, or street food (hugely delicious both almost invariably are). But I’ve seen far too few Singapore-style non-air conditioned hawker centres built on the ground floor of Thai housing estates, or even buildings a bit more upmarket. Would be glad to know of some more.
1
0
OK Michael, I defer to your experience. I led myself away from my not clearly expressed initial point which was that the article was about people who did not have a voice in it. I just think the article would have been better if it had included that aspect.
I am, by the way, a huge fan of Claudio Sopranzetti. I have met him and purchased his books.
1
0
The question not yet clarified for me here is that whether food prices will increase? whether this will increase inflation? Thailand has always had low inflation, is it partly a result of the informal economy? Furthermore, many rural and other marginal populations provide Bangkok markets and some food stalls, the demise of such will affect many, many households and communities, along with motorcycle taxi drivers and other local workers in accessing cheap food. All this is so consistent with Prayuth’s policies of supporting the rich/middle classes and not the lower classes.
2
0
Need those taxes to pay those generals and buy those submarines
3
0
There’s one item missing from this discussion : bugs.
General Prayut PM Sir – where can I buy fried bugs ?
Especially my favourite : fried cockroach ?
If street vendors are gone ?
Thai beer – in which your family may have some steak – simply won’t taste as delicious as when gulped down with a good old, well-fried cockey.
Mate – Thailand is world’s best practice re. this.
Only serious competitor is Cambodia.(Vietnam a distant third).
Surely PM Sir, you do not want to be beaten by Cambodia ??!!
And in Singapore, I can n’t find a fried cockroach for the beer-swilling life of me.
On behalf of the simple cockroach Sir, I petition you to take another bite at this crunch-line issue.
3
2
This is being shared (Facebook url below) by at least a few folks using Facebook in Thailand. The comment on the share I saw was “Clean Japanese canals,” which I perhaps presumptuously take to be a, “See, this what a street should look like” comment.
Set backs, green-space, landscape buffers — these are ways that planning and zoning codes can see to the creation of open public space around urban development. Minimal set backs, such as are the norm in Bangkok even in residential neighborhoods benefit developers by allowing more area for building while depriving the public of access for circulation and sight lines. Yes, vendors clog the sidewalks, but, yes too, the space allotted for public access is clearly inadequate, and that is in the service of the moneyed classes.
2
0
Ah, the url: https://www.facebook.com/iUrbanThailand/photos/pcb.1312340888841693/1312339562175159/?type=3&theater
1
0
Bravo Claudio, nice article. BKK food vendors did not occur in a vacuum and do not exist in one either. They are a dependent variable to the Thai political economy which has focused on attracting privileged capital of investment, while the actual habitation is the city is an afterthought. Food vendors make it possible for the lower level workers to live in the city with its lack of kitchen facilities within living spaces (less then half of residences have kitchens) through the low cost food they offer thereby being an important cog within the formal economy.
In the past there has been a reasonable amount of tolerance for the vendors and I agree with John Walsh that it would be difficult for the BMA to crack down any harder than it is, as its likely to get push back (NYT article today on vending is SE Asia).
But its upsetting the the dictatorship is applying their button down approach to solving social problems through enacting laws (such as forbidding riding in the back of pickup trucks) that go against the grain of social practice which has been customary for decades. Walsh said ” most of these laws are made by people who don’t have to go and get their own lunch”.
I read Sopranzetti’s thesis on the win motorcycle system and it was very clear how this system is similar to vendor’s practice around Bangkok. In my own thesis I call this practice “a conspicuous mutiny”. The NYTimes article quoted the amount of legally registered vendors a 11,000 while neglecting to mention that the amount of unregisted vendors is very likely at 400,000. This is roughly 2% of the population, a figure not unlike other Southern mega-cities such as New Delhi and Jakarta.
Vendors in Thailand are under counted and relatively voiceless. But they make Bangkok somewhat live able in spite of the messy, unruly, chaos that seems to part and parcel of their current food system. As Michael Wilson noted above food vending is a vehicle for upward mobility (it also serves a in a capacity for downward mobility- see articles about the Sandwich Man of Bangkok. Most vendors experience financial success and earn above the minimum wage. At the same time it ain’t easy working on a noisy, polluted street for many hours a day.
Vendors are almost completely unorganized This really puts them at a disadvantage in negotiating for their right to inhabit advantageous commercial areas. But it is precisely this disorganization that makes them an independent variable who represent an ideological danger to the junta, Their practice of taking over areas in direct response to their own financial needs and desires of the inhabitants of the city while ignoring the directives of the BMA is a form of democracy movement similar to what was imagined by Gramsi.and Lefebvre.
0
1
Revised comment:
Bravo Claudio, nice article. BKK food vendors did not occur in a vacuum and do not exist in one either. They are a dependent variable to the Thai political economy which has focused on attracting privileged capital of investment, with the actual habitation is the city an afterthought. Food vendors make it possible for the lower level workers to live in the city. Their own living spaces lack kitchens (less then half of residences have kitchens) so the low cost food vendors offer are a necessity. Even though they are part of the informal economy theory are also an integral part of the formal economy.
In the past there has been a reasonable amount of tolerance for the vendors and I agree with John Walsh that it would be difficult for the BMA to crack down any harder than it is, as its likely to get push back (NYT article today on vending is SE Asia).
But it is upsetting the the dictatorship is applying their button down approach to solving social problems through enacting laws (such as forbidding riding in the back of pickup trucks) that go against the grain of social practice which has been customary for decades. Walsh said ” most of these laws are made by people who don’t have to go and get their own lunch”.
The NYTimes article quoted the number of legally registered vendors at 11,000 while neglecting to mention that the amount of unregistered vendors is very likely at 400,000. This is roughly 2% of the population, a figure not unlike other Southern mega-cities such as New Delhi and Jakarta. Vendors in Thailand are under counted and relatively voiceless. But they make Bangkok somewhat live able in spite of the messy, unruly, chaos that seems to part and parcel of their current food system. As Michael Wilson noted above food vending is a vehicle for upward mobility (it also serves a in a capacity for downward mobility- see articles about the Sandwich Man of Bangkok. Most vendors experience financial success and earn above the minimum wage. But its not easy to forget that this involves working on a noisy, polluted street for many hours a day.
Vendors are almost completely unorganized This puts them at a disadvantage in negotiating for their right to inhabit contested spaces in the urban environment.
But it is precisely this disorganization that makes them an independent variable who represent an ideological danger to the junta, I read Sopranzetti’s thesis on the win motorcycle system and it was very clear how this system is similar to vendor’s practice around Bangkok. In my own thesis “Occupying Bangkok: Mobile Vendors and Democratic Attitudes” I label this type of practice “conspicuously mutinous”.
Their practice of taking over areas in direct response to their own financial needs and desires of the inhabitants of the city while ignoring the directives of the BMA is a form of democratic movement similar to what is imagined by Gramsi and Lefebvre. I don’t know if KSC and the BMA have considered the fact that the Arab Spring was started by the suicide of an affronted food vendor. While at the same time I would like to remind NM readers that just last year an Italian researcher who was working on this very subject in Cairo was abducted and murdered.
1
1
The writer is an Oxford academic a romantic and a dreamer. Very patronising as well. Expects thailand to remain an underdeveloped country with massive tax evasion and poor public services so that he can eat cheap street food.
Would he apply the same analysis to UK Germany France or USA?
Thailand does not exist to indulge his romantic daydreams and cheap holiday trips. And another commentator ropes in anarchist Gramsci to justify tax evasion! So in socialist countries is tax evasion tolerated? Dream on.
Most street vendors and market stall operators pay no tax as they do not register for tax. Why should those who operate their businesses through companies and pay corporate tax vat social security and workmens compensation contriibutions subsidise those who do not and who also claim free healthcare at public hospitals and free education at state schools?
Secondly does the writer support the massive and flagrant breach of intellectual property laws practised by street traders seling fake branded clothes watches perfumes cosmetics etc? We need an enthusiastic clampdown on these things by poorly paid police who accept inducements to turn a blind eye. Get rid of the fake goods sellers. It may be fun to take home fake rolexes for yr mates at 3000 bt a pop. But its illegal.
Yr contributors rightly condemn those who hide their money in tax havens and pay no tax. Thinks of the thousands in thailand who never register their businesses and never pay tax or VAT. Have yr commentators followed the policy changes of the Thai Revenue Dept over the past two yrs? Use of registered partnerships to avoid tax has been clamped down on. Lower rate bands for corporate and personal tax have been established to specifically encourage people to register for tax, come into the tax net and contribute something. Isnt that a good thing?
The third point is the public hygiene issue. Have any of yr readers seen the massive rats who live in the storm drains adjacent to food markets which are a ready supply of food. Take a walk down Silom Roaf any evening and observe for yrself. Would that be tolerated in New York London Paris or Berlin? No it would not. Rats spread diseases. Never heard of Weils disease?. The only way to get rid of the rats is to eliminate their food supply – waste food from street food stalls.
The stalls have to go. Markets should be enclosed eg Mahboonkrong. Better hygiene tax registrations and less fake goods for sale is the result.
1
6
‘Would he apply the same analysis to UK Germany France or USA?’ This statement makes no sense. Thailand has its faults, but they are mostly our Western faults, made obvious by the amateurish Thai elites. The notion that the West is superior to Thailand or any other country is a fantasy, they are simply different.
‘It may be fun to take home fake rolexes for yr mates at 3000 bt a pop. But its illegal.’ Ha, ha, ha…seriously?
‘So in socialist countries is tax evasion tolerated?’ It’s certainly tolerated in the West, but only for wealthy individuals and corporations.
In the UK many nurses feed themselves from foodbanks, and due to government cuts the streets are overrun with rats. So your characterisation is inaccurate as well as offensive. Thais or any other type of foreigner are not more corrupt or unhygienic than Westerners, unless you happen to be peering through a monocle whilst wearing a pith helmet.
Dr. Sopranzetti is an accomplished scholar, and his articles are always interesting and a pleasure to read. Antonio Gramsci was a marxist not an anarchist.
2
0
Thank you for interpreting the vendors as important potential contributor to state stability, hygiene and future progress by taking the carts indoors and formalizing. And for pointing out that romanticizing vendors may avoid down to earth obstacles to state management such as paying taxes. But comparing world cities like those in Germany, France and the US with Bangkok and the role of food vendors doesn’t fly at this time. Vendors make the system work. Watch the conversations starting regarding the monthly salary humans who don’t have a choice where (financially) where they get their food from other then the vendors.
The point is Bangkok is a mega-city. Meaning it has been created by the huge migration over the past 50 years of farmers from the country side ignited by huge neo-liberal projects that are the engine for job creation and progress in Thailand. The people who don’t fit into these projects make up the lion’s share of vendors and the people who partake of their services are low paid employees who really don’t have a choice. It sounds like instead of getting a decent meal outside you would rather have them go wave food at the 7-11, get in line and further tie them selves into a system that doesn’t care about them (I am speaking not only of the formalized capital system as well as the government).
Perhaps in the distant future BKK will have system like Singapore. If you ask Bangkokians what they think about the vendors your sure to get complaints about the inconvenience created on the sidewalk but most people rely on them and are happy to get a taste of home where the food sellers have to pay attention to the quality of their food in order to keep their customers.
I get great pleasure out of their mutinous movements throughout the city defying the order and primacy of privileged capital. Oh and don’t forget to watch your step on the sidewalks!
1
0
Come on Simon. You sound like some “wanker” from the WB or ADB when you talk about tax avoidance in Thailand and how the net needs to be spread to ensure even more Thais (and others) including presumably those on less than the minimum wage should pay tax. They do already via their daily toil but perhaps you haven’t noticed that. As for rats I know of no Thai that eats sewer rats and Bangkok is not the only city in the world – including many larger Western cities – that has sewer rats. As for enclosing markets clearly you have not enjoyed some of the best street food in the world washed down with a beer or three of your own choice. The contagion you mention seems to be in your own mind and your muddled modernizing problematic. I suggest you go to the ADB website and apply for a job with the ADB or similar. As for me, while I don’t often stroll down Silom Road as I live out in the “boonies” where we have lovely snakes who like to visit us, especially during the wet season, I would be traumatized if I did not see a rat or two. Although of course you can see a rat or three gracing the areas very close to MBK. Perhaps you had better stick to Paragon where all or most of the rats nibble away at the top of the food chain.
3
0
Thank you, Simon.
I hope some on NM will recognize that this, and not just the unleashed id of another authoritarian junta, is precisely the mindset that is behind the street clearances.
It is the western/modern drive for [I]recht and ordnung[/I] and squeaky hygiene that is being made manifest, not just the standard “oriental despotism” that is usually invoked to explain whatever we don’t like or agree with in Thai political culture.
0
1
Simon – let me assure, you need have no fear of rats. I’ve been eating Thai street food since 1963, and the ONLY times I’ve developed stomach trouble was after too much delicious som tam. I’ve NEVER suffered Well’s disease.
1
1
Simon it is a good point re the paying of taxes but I think there may be other factors to take into account. There are a lot of other areas that the regime needs to pay attention to in order to move into the Thailand 4.0 era. Many people do not pay tax, there is a tax threshold and low income earners pay low taxes. Inflation is kept in check making Bangkok one of the most affordable cities in the region. If everyone is paying relatively high rents prices are likely to sky rocket, and access for working class and middle class alike to affordable street food will diminish. If Thailand wishes to move out of the middle income trap they are going to depend on the tourist industry. Bangkok has often been voted the most popular city, and its street food is acclaimed as possibly the best in the world. A Singapore-type Bangkok will not attract more visitors, which Thailand seems to desperately want to increase.
As for the hygiene question it is certainly a problem, but not one that cannot be overcome through regulations enforced by the BMA. Simple hygiene and sanitation practices could control the rat problem. Yes there are a lot of rats but I have seen them in many areas where there are no food stalls. I have seen them in other major cities of the world, not usually as many though. As for intellectual property, from my observations the impact has thus far been limited, such products are still freely available in tourist and other areas. Some markets selling such goods may have been affected by closures, but I don’t think this has much to do with street food.
The generals do not have a mandate to make such sweeping changes, especially when it affects the lives of so many of those living on the margins who sell and often provide the food from local provinces for food stalls and markets. I would hate to see Isan people driven from the city, or driven into more menial and less entrepreneurial roles. Yes, many in the elite and middle classes have long called for such changes and the generals are obliging their constituency.
0
0