The first time an outsider bought land was during the same period when the village gained electricity in 1976. A lecturer at Chiang Mai University rode a bicycle and found a tract of bush at the back of Nam Jam village. At the time, the price was 25,000 baht per rai. The villagers became excited, for it was not farming land and was by no means productive. This university lecturer bought this land for self sufficient agriculture such as growing vegetables and raising chickens and to live here when he retired. People thought how strange it was that a city lecturer would want to live in a rural village like Nam Jam. In the late-1990s, he moved to live in the village.
The most important point on the village timeline that transformed the village was around the late-1980s to the early-1990s during Chatichai Choonhavan’s period as prime minister. It was the end of the Cold War and the government announced a policy to transform the former battlefields of mainland Southeast Asia into a trading zone. This bolstered an economic boom. Land speculation became widespread throughout the country, particularly in the big cities. People from Chiang Mai and the big cities - and especially from Bangkok - came to buy land in the peri-urban zone.
In Nam Jam, both individuals and gated community business buyers bought large tracts of land close to the roads, which mostly were rice fields. Nowadays, no
villager in Nam Jam owns any rice fields. All of the lands they own are residential lands, with some small plots of dry land that can only be developed for housing. In addition, the rice fields in the area became drier as there was not enough water in the Mae Taa Chang River to irrigate the dry season crop. This was partly due to excessive uses of water upstream by several new tourist places and resorts. In addition, as the irrigation canal was much lower than the rice fields in the area, it drained the water from both sides, blocking the supply to the rice fields in the area.
Thus, irrigation did not benefit rice fields in the area, and also impacted on them.
Since its construction in the early-1970s, farming land has only been cultivated in the wet season.
A 60 years old villager, who sold his land during that time, explained that in fact he wanted to keep his land; but, the land around his had already been sold to a gated community developer so he had no alternative. A woman sold her rice field along the irrigation canal because it could not hold water during farming as before.
She said it was because of the different levels of her rice fields and the canal. In addition, the land price she was offered by a lecturer from Chiang Mai University was quite high, and she had never expected to get this price for her land. She eventually sold her fields for 240,000 baht per rai in 1989, also to a lecturer from Chiang Mai University. Later, land prices increased a great deal. A few months later, in 1990, her neighbour in Nam Jam sold her land to yet another Chiang Mai University lecturer for 500,000 baht per rai. Understandably, large areas of land have been sold not only in Nam Jam but throughout the peri-urban zone of Chiang Mai.
A study undertaken in 1993 of the urbanisation of Chiang Mai into agricultural areas which included the establishment of a gated community project in Nong Khwai sub-district showed that land sales were widespread during this time. The most important reason for selling their land was because the price was convincing (56%).
The second and third reasons for deciding to sell were because they saw their neighbours sell their lands (27%) and that the land condition was no longer good for agriculture (26%) respectively. In addition, regarding the question of how people pitied some of those who sold their lands, 70% said they felt pity because they had
sold the land too cheaply (Samphan Chaiya 1993). These answers were similar to those of the Nam Jam people, who thought about selling their land during that time.
In the course of the land boom, several rice fields, including lands that used to belong to the kiln owner were sold to outsiders. The villagers thought that in part it was because the area no longer had good water. Some villagers said that the kiln owner’s children would not inherit their father’s business. Later, his children sold the land to two people in Nong Khwai. This was likely because the land in the area had become expensive. It was better to sell than to continue farming. Two gated community business persons bought land in Nam Jam during this time. The land was still rented out for rice farming to local people and landless Hmong families. This had a big impact on the landless women, who used to work in groups in the fields or rent the land. They had to search for other work outside the village. Thus, this incident affected all of the villagers.
Construction work became the most common way for villagers (both men and women, especially who are now in their 50s) to earn a living at the time. Many people said that it was difficult to find anyone at this age who had never carried a sack of cement. Working outside of the village’s agrarian sphere contributed greatly to the people’s lives today. The first villager who out-migrated to work was a woman in the mid-1960s (before the arrival of electricity) went to Bangkok. A man from the southern part of the country, who worked as a construction sub-contractor in Bangkok, visited Chiang Mai and met this young woman. They married and went to work together.
At the time, several young single villagers, i.e., men and women in their early 20s, worked in Chiang Mai town where the construction business had started to burgeon. Some worked as guards and for several types of paid work in companies and government offices in Chiang Mai city. Some went to Bangkok, following their friends or relatives who had gone there earlier, the reason being that was that they could gain a higher wage rate in Bangkok than by working in Chiang Mai. Later, several men mostly in their mid to late 20s married women they had met from
working in Bangkok, and some were from the village. Then, when they began to have children, working in Bangkok was no longer viable as they had to move with the construction sites. Therefore, they moved back to the village but continued to work on construction in Chiang Mai. It was around the late-1990s when construction in Chiang Mai was expanding greatly. These men, some of whom worked in Bangkok from one to five years, said it was very much about their ages. Before starting their families, they could work far from their hometowns. All of them had worked as daily wage labourers when they were young. When they returned to Chiang Mai, five became sub-contractors and employed their neighbours and relatives to work with them. Later, some sub-contractors started to hire Tai Yai (Shan) who crossed the border from Myanmar to northern Thailand to work for them.
At the end of this period, ten men from Nam Jam were able to develop themselves and become construction sub-contractors. Among them, five used to work in Bangkok, one had permanently established his family in Bangkok, and five worked in Chiang Mai and in other provinces in the north. The nine sub-contractors continued their work in Chiang Mai. Also in this period, two villagers among these sub-contractors from Nam Jam went to work as construction workers in Saudi Arabia for a few years (around mid 1980s). They had to borrow money from relatives and offer their land titles as guarantees in order to travel there. One came back with savings but the other one had little left and had to start his construction business back in the village.
Women who went to Bangkok mostly worked in the domestic fields such as baby and elder sitters, house cleaners, maids and as staff at small shops. According to my interviews, two female villagers, who at the time were teenagers said that they wanted to see how Bangkok looked as they had seen it on television. However, the women did not stay in Bangkok as long as the men partly due to gender and Thai cultural sensitivity. After a few years, all of them returned to their village working as wage labourers in various places such as in construction, in nearby government offices, in handicraft factories, and for Chia Tai, an agricultural business group that bought land and opened a centre for seed improvement in Nong Khwai in the
mid-1980s. In 1990, some women started taking garments from sub-contractors outside of the village to sew at home, an occupation that later became widespread. However, most of the women did not go to work in Bangkok; indeed, many have still never been there.
During this period, people saw significant improvements in economic condition and their livelihoods were improved from working in off-farm activities outside of the village. Their houses were improved using more permanent materials such as concrete and factory-roof tiles. Markets had widely expanded, two local markets were established in neighbouring villages, and transportation became more readily available. Working for money to buy food became an essential part of their lived reality. The availability of food was no longer a problem for them. Collecting food from the forest became more of a seasonal hobby, a source of joy and relief from their routine work.
After working outside of the village for some time, people could afford to buy their own vehicles. All of the sub-contractors had second hand pick-up trucks for their work and a few had red plate (new) cars. Workers, including other families at this time owned at least a motorcycle. Some put down a deposit and paid off the balance in instalments. Household electric appliances, such as television sets, rice cookers and washing machines were commonly used by families at all levels of economic status. Being in debt also became common, with amounts for each family dependent upon their capacity to return the money. Families who had businesses had more debts than wage labouring families. However, people’s livelihoods in general were much more prosperous than before.