Marayad Prabsakul, a villager in Tambon Lum Sai Yong in Buri Ram's Muang district, wants to know, ''What is the Tambon Administration Organisation (TAO) doing for my village?''

This seemingly innocuous question reflects the way many rural people react to the concept of letting people govern themselves as part of the country's democratisation process.

Marayad and most of her neighbours found out the answer to her question over the two years that the tambon administration was set up: nothing changes much, except every family now has to pay the additional various taxes as the tambon administration requires.

''They collect Bt50 to Bt60 monthly per head from each family. We all pay and wait for changes for the better. We still don't even have an asphalt road to our village,'' said Marayad, a noodle vendor.

For Marayad and most people in her community, their tambon administration has been a major flop.

A member of Tambon Thasak Administration Organisation in Nakhon Si Thammarat's Muang district points to insufficient revenue raised by the administration as a major cause of what many villagers perceive as failure.

He said the TAO has managed to build only three kilometres of asphalt road leading out of the tambon toward a main road. There are several more kilometres to go before the road link project is completed.

The administration member in Nakhon Si Thammarat is speaking for most other TAOs around the country when he says: ''We cannot do much because of limitation of budget and power.''

With the central government expecting decentralisation to lead to self-administration by local people, TAOs have been set up nationwide as a local mechanism.

Yet many of these administrations are not altogether successful because the centralised administration continued to exist, forcing tambon administrations to struggle for the power they needed.

In the century since the centralised administration was introduced by King Rama V, rural people have been developed to be followers. Under the Tambon Council, a former local unit of tambon, the TAO was regional, turning into simply another step in the centralised authority from Bangkok. What had happened in the past continued to happen: the real needs of rural people were seldom met by this top-down approach.

TAOs were established nationwide in 1995 as local self-administration to decentralise power and to enable local organisations to deal with problems occurring in their areas.

Unlike the former Tambon administration, which gave authority to only one person as the tambon chief, the latest local organisation has two elected representatives -- called ''members of the Tambon Administration Organisation'' -- from each village in the tambon (a tambon contains around 10 villages). Elections for these members takes place every four years.

The Interior Ministry is expected to add 567 new tambon to the present 6,397 tambon throughout the country this year.

Phitsanulok city's mayor, Premrudee Charmpunuch, noted that another factor in running her administration effectively is having a good relationship with the provincial governor so that she can solve local problems smoothly.

''Once, when we had a conflict with a local 'influential person', I told the provincial governor what exactly was happening in my area. After he understood the situation, he agreed to support me. So we cleared the problem up smoothly,'' she said.

Besides, Premrudee has a qualification that other mayors may not enjoy -- she is a politician's wife.

Without outside power or help, such self-administration faces difficulties in dealing with problem themselves. It is still not a real independent body as long as it has no power to manage resources or not enough power to bargain with national policy or ministry-level policy down even to local businesses.

Nakhon Sawan's Tambon Nong Pho Administration Organisation, for instance, the administration can do nothing about the sugar cane factory in the community, even though it is a significant cause of health hazards and pollution.

Even when people requested assistance from the Industrial Factories Department, no action was taken to solve their problem.

''The factory used its connection with higher authorities. What can we do, since we have no any connection? All we can do is just listen to them when they say they will solve the pollution problems,'' Nanthawan Kerdkun, president of the association, pointed out.

She added that the administration is still not be independent from the whole system. Local participation continues limited when people have to deal with vested interests.

The political and bureaucratic system suppresses the power of the local self-administration organisation. It seems the government still has no intention of completely decentralising power to grassroots self-governing local bodies.

Decentralising government power is not enough for local self-governing bodies to thrive, said Udon Tantisunthorn, a former deputy interior minister.

Decentralisation needs a package containing all aspects concerning such important areas as education, health care, and agriculture. Government agencies working in these fields must act as trainers in providing a body of knowledge of management to tambon administrations.

Training staff is needed, because tambon administration still lacks understanding of its role and responsibilities.

Dr Kowit Puang-ngam, a community development lecturer of Thammasat University's Social Welfare Faculty, said that bureaucracy has not yet transferred power of management to local communities. At present, there is still some duplication in work among various government agencies that implement their projects in the communities, while the TAOs still cannot bargain with government agencies for what they really want.

''As long as there is no complete transfer of management from central government mechanisms to local self-administration, true development may not occur, and all roads will still lead to Government House as they always do,'' he said.

Sirot Wapao, president of Tambon Parukasao Administration Organisation in Narathiwat's Bajoh district, explained that there is some obstacles in self-governance.

''The administration members need to have vision, experience, and connection with others to make tambon administration work,'' he said.

Budget is another major obstacle pushing many TAOs into difficulties, according to a report of the Interior Ministry's Policy and Planning Bureau.

The report said out of the 6,397 TAOs, 5,792 tambon receive less than Bt3 million in revenue, an extremely small amount when divided by nine to 10 villages. Each village will get only a few hundred thousands of baht.

It is a big problem for a local body to develop the communities with such a small budget. The report said the revenue goes mainly to infrastructure as the first priority.

But Sirot disagreed. Infrastructure may not always be the first priority. To him, human resources in his community needs to be strengthened first. He said his administration focuses on projects to develop the potential of the villagers, such as occupational training for the women. It is better for the villagers to earn a higher income than to have a smooth asphalt road.

''Under a limited budget, tambon administration members need a body of knowledge to manage their own organisation as well as enough experience to consider the priorities in development, not just some traditional infrastructure projects such as roads,'' he said.

Sirot, however, does not mean that infrastructure is unimportant for improving quality of life. He said that having connections with higher authorities or politicians can facilitate his organisation's projects, not only infrastructure, but all project initiation.

At present, some tambon administrations can run their work effectively, while others fail. Improving a community's quality of life under a self-administration organisation is not easy, not the least for poorly-educated villagers who have just started to learn to handle their own affairs for the first time.

Many villagers are still get stuck with Marayad's question -- What is the Tambon Administration Organisation doing for the village? Other questions follow the same theme: ''What is democracy doing for me? What is the government doing for me?'' ... and so on.

To be sure, these are legitimate questions that need to be asked by every citizen in a free society.

But one can't help but be surprised when it becomes clear that most of the people who pose these questions invariably stop asking further questions, as if these questions are the only ones that matter.

But a positive change is obviously in the offing. At least there are some people like Sirot who have started asking a more constructive question: How can the community make tambon administration work for them?

The fifth part in this series will focus on budget allocation which contains so many loopholes that development of the local community is suppressed.