When Ari was shot dead in 1953, Thailand had just come through a period of turmoil following the Japanese occupation and World War II. shortages in most categories of and of parliament from Saraburi Province wrote that thc xen population there had suffered critical decline, recovery from which would require no less than seven years. This decline was caused by food shortage that led pcople to kill draft animals for meat CNA 1915. These shortages caused prices for consumer goods to rise precipitously Astudy by the Committee to Consider the Economie Situation after the war puts inflation a any- where between 436 and 1,446 percent(NA 1915). Alleged price gouging by Chinese merchants, cspecially in commodities like gold, did not help the situation(NA 1915). Rampant corruption and inefficiency in state-owned enterprises and the civil service only made matters worse. "Imegularities" in rice exports, for example, were common with shipments sent to the British via Malaya in exchange for cloth and cooking oil(NA 1915). From these conditions of economic crisis and corruption came a rise in