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Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen and dear Students,
It is a great privilege and honour for me to be here with you
today to be part of this unique seminar organized by the Institute of
Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University in
collaboration with the Embassy. At the outset, I would like to congratulate
the Institute for continuing to take such initiatives which promote
understanding between our two countries at institution and people levels.
It is a pleasure to note that the Institute is organizing third such seminar in
association with us. The first one was a workshop organized under the
theme
“Gateways to India: Culture, Opportunities and Cooperation”
held on 18
th
August, 2006. The main objective of that seminar was to
provide knowledge about India to interested public with a series of
lectures, to enlarge the institute’s area of studies by starting an MA course
on Indian Studies and create network with interested groups on matters
related to India. The second one was an International Conference on
“Syncretism in South and South-East Asia: Adoption and Adaptation” held
during 24-27 May, 2007 in which about 500 participants from more than 50
countries participated. More than 120 delegates participated from India
alone!
Coming to the theme of today’s Seminar entitled “His Majesty
the King’s Sufficiency Economy philosophy and Mahatma Gandhi’s Self-
Sufficiency Concept”, let me frankly say that I am not an expert in this
area and would like the invited learned academics and intellectuals to do
the honours. However, I would definitely like to touch upon the basics
and essence of the much acclaimed new theory of “Sufficiency Economy”
propounded by His Majesty the King, which is aimed at the development
and progress of Thailand and happiness and contentment of its people.
To do so, I would draw some excerpts from the book entitled
“King Bhumibol Adulyadej: The Great King of Communication” recently