Sanity must prevail over rice pledging | Bangkok Post: opinion

Three cheers of chai-yo to Dr Adis Israngkura na Ayudhaya, dean of the Economic Development Faculty of the National Institute Development Administration (Nida), and 145 academics and students who co-signed a petition to the Constitution Court challenging the effectiveness of the government's rice-pledging scheme and the sanity of continuing this badly-flawed and corruption-riddled populist policy.

The group did not want the controversial scheme to be thrown out for good but only wanted it to be temporarily suspended and adjusted by the government in three aspects.

First, the pledging prices set at 15,000 baht per tonne for white rice and 20,000 baht per tonne for Hom Mali grain should be adjusted to reflect real market prices.