National development and the reshaping of a metropolis: 1958-71
The Sarit regime and Phat
............The great spur to state-coordinated economic development policy came in 1957 with the accession to power of Field Marshall Sarit Thanarat through his coup and his assumption of personal executive power in the following year. His "revolutionary' dictatorial regime avowed a commitment to a programme of economic and social development (phatthana), which aimed to unify the nation against the dangers of communism and to advance modernisation. Notably corrupt, Sarit nevertheless engineered considerable change in the bureaucracy by promoting a more thoroughgoing commitment to economic efficiency and national development policy management Economic nationalism was dropped in favour of an open-door economic policy, and the oppressive parasitism of the state enterprises and their cronies was eased with a more accommodating treatment of Chinese business elites and private domestic capital (Darling 1965: 194). While individuals in the ruling elite continued their connections with business the state withdrew from direct control of commerce and industry as a result, the private sector grew (Girling 1981: 79-80; Muscat 1994: 113-14)
................Following the US strategy to cultivate Thailand as a bastion of anticommunism in the region, and in response to persistent requests by Sarit's government for more aid, technical support and military and development funding to Thailand increased (Darling 1965: 206-9; Pasuk and Baker 1995: 276-7). Receptive to a World Bank Mission report of 1958, Sarit established the National Economic Development Board (NEDB) and the Board of Investment (BOI) to boost industrial growth, foreign investment and diversification in the national economy (Keyes 1987: 15 l-3; Suehiro 1989: 178-9; Ingram 1971: 231-2). Western-trained technocrats were brought in to assume leading advisory roles and the NEDB and key institutions such as the Bank of Thailand were staffed by new western-trained Thai technocrats committed to management and efficiency. These technocrats came to form a significant professionalised subculture within the bureaucracy (Evers and Silcock 1967: 103-4). They filled a critical mediating role with international agencies and were part of the regime's project to establish a climate conducive to increased overseas aid and private investment. While the actual capacity of the NEDB and its technocrats (later renamed the NESDB National Economic and Social Development Board) to implement programmes was limited and hampered by persistent rivalries and inefficiencies of government line agencies, this period saw the advent of a new rhetoric of development planning a a growing capacity among state agencies to monitor the economy and map its people through statistical measurements. Bangkok was one of the first objects of planning, and the failure of this planning serves to highlight the dominance of more powerful forces shaping space and society in the metropolis