The government does not do enough to ensure that rural people are able to capitalise on their efforts. The Nation examines this issue.

The boom times for Thailand's economy brought rural communities dreams of increasing their income.

But these dreams rapidly turned to nightmares because of a lack of knowledge or access to market information, as well as inadequate government support.

The Thai government never provides enough business information to level the playing field, said Sumet Tantivejkul, a former secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Board.

As industry began relocating away from urban centres into the countryside, not only did the numbers of factories soar. Contract farming, introduced by agro-industry, as well as direct-sales companies also found local communities throughout the country fertile ground to develop their businesses.

Rural villagers have tried hard to generate incomes through all kinds of businesses spreading out from Bangkok in the last decade, but few have benefitted from their efforts.

On one hand, rural families have always been limited by their lack of market information. One case in point is Nong Pho Village in Nakhon Sawan's Ta Klee district, 180 kilometres north of Bangkok. Kam Srikaew, 65, and his neighbours once cultivated rice crops and sold them after the harvest to middlemen, who set the prices for the paddy. The farmers had to accept these prices, Kam said, since they did not know what a fair price was.

Because rice sales did not bring in enough money to support the families, Kam and his neighbours turned to many kinds of other businesses that arrived in the village during the economic boom, only to end up in debt and experience a worsening quality of life because they did not know how to deal with the businesses.

Out of a lack of business information, many rural villagers end up being cheated again and again because they lack the business sense to see which businesses are worthwhile and which are not.

While government policy has supported the expansion of the private sector, especially industry, into rural areas, it has not paid much attention to rural people, to ensure that they can avoid being taken advantage of by businesses setting up in their areas. The government seems unconcerned with the big gap between business owners and local people.

Villagers looking for business information approach their neighbours or government agencies, who more often than not offer them the previous year's data, which is often out of date.

This available data is not enough to enable the farmer to cope with the dealings of a business, and when he encounters trouble with a private company, the agency is often unwilling to back him up.

When an asphalt road to Nong Pho village was constructed five years ago, a big agro-company also came to the village and persuaded Kam to raise chickens. They promised that if he bought their chicks and raised them, they would buy the adult chickens for Bt28 per kilogramme.

He invested about Bt100,000 to change his rice field into a chicken farm. He borrowed money from the company and bought its baby chickens, poultry feed and medicine. Three months later, the company returned and bought his 500 chickens, but it gave him Bt18 per kilogramme, Bt10 less then they had promised.

''The company said my chickens were below the company's standards, even though I had followed all instructions so that the chickens would grow to what they needed,'' he said. Since he still owed the company for the first lot of chicks, he had to buy more to pay back the debt. The company, however, continued to pay him the lower price for the chickens.

Kam found himself unable to pay back the rapidly growing debt. When he spoke with agriculture officials, they sided with the company and instructed him to pay back the debt. ''I do not know now who else I can consult,'' he said.

He gave up the chicken business a year later, and as his neighbours had, invested in other kinds of contract farming -- pig breeding, sunflower farming to supply seed to agro-businesses. The results were the same as with chicken farming: a lot of farmers sold their land to pay back the debts they incurred, without any additional information and suggestions from agriculture officials in the area.

In other areas, many farmers have ended up the victims of direct sales companies selling insurance, cosmetics and consumer products.

''Many farmers have sold their rice fields so that they can become part of this business, because they have been convinced that they can earn huge profits from selling these products,'' Satit Itsaraboot, a former salesman for several direct-sales companies, said.

''I sold insurance, cosmetics, and some luxury soaps to some farmers I worked with. After that, I convinced them to sell more to their relatives just by demonstrating the huge income they could get from the sales. As for me, I received 10 per cent to 20 per cent from the chain-selling, which doubled my salary,'' he said.

Satit, who was once also a developer, said that now the direct-sales company has convinced farmers to buy in, using the same pyramid scheme to expand its business. He said some farmers sold their last piece of land to pay for the membership. Some of them borrowed money from several sources to buy the product.

''Now they can't sell the product anymore because almost every farmer here is selling it, and few people can be in a new target group in their villages,'' he said.

In spite of the promotion, since massage machines can not work a miracle cure on leg pain, as the promotional literature advertises, some farmers have not reached their dream-income and have lost their land.

No one has tried to educate the villagers in the systems of these direct sales companies nor the dangers of taking part. Even key people in the communities -- teachers and developers -- the ones whom local people always consulted, are members of these businesses.

Because the government supports a free-market policy, it allows private companies to run their business with little monitoring in terms of providing local people with enough information.

Back in Nong Pho village, a sugar cane factory has set up with Board of Investment privileges. Meanwhile, the government has not educated villagers in dealing with the factory.

It is easy for the factory to take advantage of the villagers because they have no access to information on laws dealing with employment, environmental protection or pollution.

The local people seem to be happy with the factory, which supplies employment opportunities, but they still live under bad conditions.

For only Bt100 a day, the villagers work in the factory in an evil-smelling, dusty environment. Since their contracts are only for three months, the company can avoid paying for any welfare to them in accordance with the labour welfare law, which few people in the village understand anyway.

''We don't know whether this factory is bad or good because we can earn more money from working there, but since it has come here we cannot drink the rain water anymore because it is contaminated by dust and smog from the factory. And the black smoke that covers our village all the time -- we don't know whether it is dangerous,'' said Nanthawan Kerdkoon, a member of the Tambon Nong Pho Administration Organisation.

Though the government has never come down from its ivory tower to what business is doing in rural areas, Chulalongkorn University is now checking to see whether the Internet can supply relevant farming business information for rural people through the Tambon administrative organisation. It could be a starting point to encourage the people to bargain with businesses that settle in local communities.

The seventh part in this series, to be published on Thursday, will focus on how education plays a role in rural development.