How do you feel if the state says it wants to hear about your plight in order to offer you help, but still holds a view that you are too "stupid" to think for yourself and continues to strictly forbid you from expressing your grievances unless it approves of the platform where you have your say?
Insulting and hypocritical, you may say. Clouded by their bias and egos, I may add.
"How to end the people's stupidity" was the disgraceful mission stated in a March 9 letter, issued by the Khon Kaen Local Administration Promotion Office and signed off by the province's deputy governor.
Surasak Glahan is Deputy Editorial Pages Editor, Bangkok Post.
It was circulated to other local government agencies ahead of their March 13 meeting to prepare for a planned visit by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha.
One day prior to the meeting, Khon Kaen deputy governor Suchai Butsara circulated another letter, saying the name was inappropriate and so it was changed to "How to equip people with knowledge of the changing world". The two letters were later leaked to the media over the weekend.
To be fair, not all officials hold such an insulting attitude. But many of them do, especially when they think of the "grassroots" people who elected the governments which were later ousted by the military in the 2006 and 2014 coups. These governments were popular in the provinces, but opposed by the majority of Bangkok and other urban voters.
Like their peers in other provinces throughout the country, these local government offices have been collecting information about the needs and plight of local people as part of the military government's scheme called Thai Niyom Yangyuen or sustainable Thai-ism. They work with security officials with support from local scholars and volunteers.
I am in doubt whether the money and time spent on this information collection exercise will enlighten the government about the problems of the people.
How could these officials in Khon Kaen and elsewhere understand the real needs of locals as long as they think the people are stupid? Will the information they collect reflect the locals' views?
The Khon Kaen deputy governor yesterday apologised for his carelessness saying he did not intend to insult residents of his home town.
But the fact that he signed off the letter even though it included the insulting wording, noticeably expressed in quotation marks, means he might approve of such views in his subconscious. And his subconscious may reflect the notion of average government officials (the military included).
While officials believe grassroots folks are not smart enough, the military regime still restricts people from speaking out. Public gatherings have either been forbidden or closely monitored.
More recently, a 62-year-old native of Maha Sarakham, Udon Kurajinda, was detained at a police station for 30 hours last week for joining four friends in a small protest in his hometown in late January, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights group.
They merely stood in front of a bus terminal and shouted out loud about how much they were suffering under the economy.
His friends then were summoned to meet the police and fined 1,500 baht. Mr Udon was on the run for more than a month fearing the consequences, prior to turning himself in to the police. He was fined for the same amount and released.
Another case erupted on Friday. A lecturer of Silpakorn University posted on the campus's Facebook page that her academic debate forum faced threats by police and soldiers. They planned a public discussion on the need for a general election, but her supervisor received a visit from a group of security officials a few days ahead of the event.
At the forum, plainclothes security officials walked around recording the session using their mobile phones, she said. At the end, a senior figure among them came to tell her that the event was "inappropriate" and violated the regime's political ban, but no legal action has been taken against the organisers. It is clear that people are only allowed to voice their plight through platforms initiated and controlled by the state such as the Thai Niyom two-billion-baht information gathering mission.
With 99.5 billion baht allocated for the whole scheme, I wonder how the project will meet the people's needs if the government keeps shutting the people's mouths and closing their ears, while officials think they are smarter than the locals. It will end up being a Thai-ism mission orchestrated by the blind, leading the blind.