It has reached the stage of a fancy Powerpoint presentation and a clutch of wordy strategy documents. All will be revealed to a seminar this week. This plan is the 10th in the series, which is some kind of landmark. The documents promise a big change.

Should we be excited? Or should we greet all this with a big yawn?

The Eighth Plan in 1997 also promised the biggest change in Thailand's development since planning began. So did the Ninth Plan in 2001. But the Eighth went in the bin the moment the crisis struck in July 1997. And the first Thaksin government sent the Ninth back to the NESDB with suggestions they feed it to the shredder. For the last 10 years we have been in what India dubbed "plan holiday", one of the subcontinent's great contributions to the English language alongside "eve-teasing" and "relay fast".

All three of these plans have started out with the same analysis of past development and its consequences. The Eighth Plan phrased it best: "Economy, good; society, problematic; development, unsustainable." Thailand had grown at a stunning rate in the 40 years before the 1997 crisis, but it had done so by exploiting its own people, using up its own natural resources and depending heavily on capital and technology from outside. The result is a society deeply divided by income inequalities (and now politically riven along the same fault line), an economy dangerously exposed to the eccentricities of the outside world and an environment in dire need of care. All three plans have started from the same conclusion: we can't go on like this.

Perhaps there is an unwritten rule that we need three plans saying the same thing before anything major changes. This was the case over the only major shift in overall direction since planning began. The Third Plan started advocating export-oriented industrialisation in the early 1970s, but nothing really happened until the Fifth over a decade later.

Each of these last three plans has added an argument for change. The Eighth Plan said we had to change for the good of society and the environment. People felt warm and cuddly about that but did nothing. The Ninth Plan added the need to follow the King's Sufficiency Economy. The Tenth Plan repeats both of those arguments and adds a clincher: with the rise of China and India, Thailand really cannot get away with the old formula any more.

Perhaps something may really happen this time, because the Tenth Plan seems to have a simple and coherent strategy. At present this is buried in the jargon, cliché, and political posturing of the NESDB's strategy documents, but it seems to go like this. We use all our resources (people, nature, institutions etc) badly, and that means we end up exploiting people, destroying nature and depending on the outside world. If we used those resources less wastefully, more efficiently, more carefully, then we would increase the returns and reverse those problems.

The NESDB breaks this approach down into five interlocking strategies.

First, develop the quality of people by investments in education, training, research and the cultivation of expertise. As people skills have become more important on a world scale, this strategy is critical to the whole project.

Second, strengthen the rural community economies that still support almost half the workforce but generate less than a tenth of GDP because of low technology, poor organisation and deteriorating natural resources. Small but sensible changes have the potential to deliver big results.

Third, restructure the macro-economy to get rid of the incentives that underlie the old development strategy and to facilitate more efficient use of resources of all kinds. This includes changes in investment incentives, a national pension fund to raise domestic savings, special support for sectors that are vulnerable to free-trade agreements, a competition law, consolidated public-sector accounting to impose transparency on off-budget financing, more independence for the central bank, broader social security, improved infrastructure and logistics and mobilisation of the unused land hoarded by government agencies.

Fourth, stop destroying the environment and start reviving it. This includes a tax to deter environmental destruction and implementation of the community control of resources promised in the 1997 Constitution.

Fifth, reform of the public sector under the flag of good governance including more decentralisation, more participation and better legal underpinning for rights of all kinds.

At present this plan is only at the stage of strategy. Except under the third heading of restructuring, these current documents are full of good intentions rather than practical proposals. Everything depends on how these ideas are translated into concrete projects and whether they are put into effect. Thailand's plans are only indicative documents, and implementation depends on budgets decided by politicians.

But even at this stage there is one thing that has already got lost in the transition from the planners' original vision of a "green and happy society" to their five strategy documents. That is the issue of inequality.

In societies that are highly unequal, those at the bottom feel excluded and sometimes desperate, those in the middle ranks are embroiled in a rat-race to catch up, and those at the top cannot stop accumulating because they are anxious about losing their dominance. The results are very destructive to mental health and natural resources. In some advanced countries, the new "economics of happiness" has given fresh importance to concern over inequality.

The planners want a fairer society, but they seem to think that will be achieved by "strengthening the community economies" (whatever that means) and improving political rights. Doing something about Thailand's extreme inequality is not yet on the national agenda. It seems this plan will fail to put it there too. So we will just have to learn to live with political consequences that we are only just beginning to understand.

Chang Noi is a pseudonym.

Chang noi