Last week I was talking to a woman in a rural village in Chiang Mai province. She had eloquent views on the subject of sufficiency economy. For her it meant “khon jon yuu pen khon jon, khon ruay yuu pen khon ruay” (the poor stay poor, the rich stay rich). To this she added an interesting insight. She said that the policy was, in effect, discouraging rural people from seeking higher education (rian sung). In her view urban Thais felt threatened by the influx of educated rural youngsters into the labour market (her own daughter had recently graduated and obtained urban employment). Sufficiency economy, in her eyes, was an attempt to shelter urbanites from the educational and occupational competition generated by hardworking and diligent rural students. An interesting contribution to the sufficiency economy debate.