Boonlert Visetpricha, 34, who recently won an Amarin Printing Award for his non-fiction book, "Opening the Frontier of Homeless People", vividly remembers the day the Berlin Wall collapsed in 1989.

"I was very disappointed," says Boonlert, who at the time was a high-school student and an avid reader of Marxist philosophy.

The teenager hoped at least that Marxism would not disappear forever.

"In fact, the ideology has proved to be quite resilient [nearly two decades after the collapse of Berlin Wall]. For instance, such trends are still quite obvious in Latin America with regard to land management, because there remains a wide discrepancy between the different classes of society, or between the haves and the have-nots," he says.

"To me, [the victory of] capitalism has further widened social differences and increased the number of have-nots such as the homeless," says Boonlert, who spent 2001 and 2002 with dozens of homeless people in Bangkok.

"Back then I was doing a thesis on the homeless for my master's degree at Thammasat University, which was later published as the book 'Opening the Frontier of Homeless People'.

"Using the participant/observation method, I got to eat and live with about 20 homeless people at Sanam Luang, observing their way of life. Some of those relationships have lasted to this day," he says.

"During that period, these homeless people made their living by collecting metal, paper and other scrap that could be sold for some money. They also lived on charities' give-aways or temple meals.

"In my opinion, some of these people had become homeless because of the economic crisis, as well as the weakness of the family institution. For instance, a few had lost their day jobs and didn't have anyone to fall back on during the crisis.

"However, others were homeless voluntarily. They were even quite happy being so. For instance, a collector of paper scrap could earn as much as Bt2,000 on a given day.

"These homeless people, who are estimated to number around 2,000 in Bangkok, are also quite different from those living in the slums, where the population is far larger - estimated to total of 1.5 million," he says.

"Japan has also seen a rise in its homeless population, largely due to the forces of globalisation causing the loss of many traditional blue-collar jobs in favour of IT and other service-oriented jobs in the past decade.

"In terms of public policy on welfare, I think flexibility should be the guiding principle. The state may provide shelter to the homeless as an option, but some might not go for it due to the perceived lack of freedom and privacy. They sort of prefer to be on the move. That should be fine as long as the public good is not compromised," says Boonlert, now a lecturer on anthropology at Thammasat University.

He believes that a wide range of social problems, including slums and homelessness, ought to be resolved through strong community-based action, rather than strong government policy or even the philanthropy promoted by some capitalists.

In his opinion, the current form of cooperatives in Thailand and elsewhere is not the right answer either, so society needs to experiment with something more innovative that promises to deliver better results in reducing injustice, especially in terms of the management of land and other natural resources.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com