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Three decades is the figure that stood out in the news about the "victory" of Grandma Hai Khanjanthra, who has at long last been compensated for land lost as a result of a dam project in Ubon Ratchathani. The Cabinet this week decided to dig into an emergency budget in order to pay Bt1.2 million to the 79-year-old resident of Na Tal district, along with Bt3.6 million to two other villagers also affected by the construction of the Huay Laha Dam. Their long fight for justice is over, or so it seems.

Whether justice has really been served is another thing. Why it took 32 years for villagers to be paid for the obvious loss of their land, their means of living and way of life, due to a government project, remains a question that the much-publicised settlement fails to answer. And that's the question that we should ask anyone but Hai, who is understandably too exhausted, thankful and relieved to pursue her effort any further to find out.

Political factors that kept revisiting Grandma Hai's campaign mean that we can't be certain whether the relatively happy conclusion of her case is a true silver lining. Her plight was a dark spot on the much-praised - at least internationally - record of Thaksin Shinawatra when it came to the poor people of Thailand.

The Thaksin government's failure to help in her case provided an opportunity for the Democrats to step in. That was rather ironic because her sympathisers among political activists had been hoping that Thaksin would have been more understanding toward her - and they turned against him when he was not.

So, Grandma Hai's campaign has always been stuck in a circle of being shunned by the powers that be, but gaining sympathy, and, sometimes, false promises, from the opposition. That the Abhisit administration brought the saga to a peaceful end signals anything but a change in collective political attitudes toward Thailand's grass-roots people.

Hai's praise for the Abhisit government - which she describes as the only administration truly sympathetic to her plight - must have come from her heart. The government's action, as cynics and its critics will say, may have come from some other motive. After all, poor people have always been used rather than helped in this country.

The best-case scenario as far as the poor are concerned is that they are helped and used at the same time.

Hai's daughter, while thanking the Abhisit government, reiterated that there are more people like her mother waiting to be compensated. While Hai had the benefit of media exposure after her moving real-life story came to light on TV a few years ago, there are others who are simply too weak to fight, or too disillusioned to believe that justice will one day prevail for them.

In a more legally advanced country, Hai could have been compensated a lot more, not least because it was officially acknowledged that the dam project was a mistake. Hai has lost three decades of her life having to travel back and forth between Ubon Ratchathani's provincial hall and Bangkok to fill out forms and file complaints, only to be discouraged by the ignorance and bureaucratic red tape she regularly encountered.

Her plight is far from unique. But so far, the fact that there are thousands or tens of thousands more who have lost their property and livelihoods to so-called "development" projects has prompted legal, rather than humanitarian concern.

There was a time when the Thaksin government, fearing Hai's looming victory over the dam project would be taken as a legal precedent, nervously announced that her case would not set a new standard for other communities. It was a response that sent a predictable message that, as far as governments are concerned, "development" is the highest priority. Considering that it took Grandma Hai three decades to win a case that a lot of people believed she could win, the chances remain slim for sufferers at the hands of other projects.

"Development" and local livelihoods always clash. If we can forget the red-yellow political showdown for a while, we will see that the real problems facing Thailand's rural people are not whether their preferred political leaders have been on a collision course with the country's ruling elites. Real issues about "justice" and "rights" are something closer to all villagers than polling booths. And in this aspect, Grandma Hai is a real inspiration where fighting for democracy is concerned.

She has been fighting for nobody but herself, and thus she was spared the complication of fighting for someone else whom she doesn't really know. It has been a clear-cut, primitive struggle to protect what was really hers. There was no ideal or dream about making Thailand a better place, just pure and raw bitterness caused by the injustice that was done to her. This, in retrospect, enabled Grandma Hai to give her all and fight her honourable fight until it was done - and won.