Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik relying on the varying support of those most immediately affected by the deleterious action of the market ...”.15 Or what, in the contemporary context, James Robertson conceives of as creating a global economy that is both human enabling and nature conserving.16 The social principle and practice such as this of course sounds quite familiar to our fellow indigenous peoples and rural communities. After all, it is precisely their traditional way of everyday life. There is nothing extraordinary about it. But, mind you, it becomes something so alien and subversive in the current world of industrialism, where the freedom of capital and free market turns into absolutism and totalitarian control over life on earth. It is in this global perspective that the issue of bio-diversity and indigenous knowledge must needs address itself. As emphasized earlier on, it is the whole question of human freedom and progress that is at stake. But first and foremost, the grassroots peoples and communities must pull themselves together as united front in face to face with the transnational structure of power. As a matter of fact, because of its own overbearing abuse and aggrandizement, the agents of industrial capitalism – transnational corporations, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. – have to confront with strong protests and increasingly steadfast opposition from the common people, urban and rural, everywhere. But street actions and manifestoes in themselves would be of no avail without community rights being recognized and realized at the grassroots level, both in principle and in practice. As for the role of nation-states, little, if any, can be expected under the contemporary elite system that, more often than not, tends to be alienated from its own people. On the other hand, empowering local communities would greatly help consolidate nation-states vis- à-vis transnational encroachments. Humanity has gone through the age of nation building, modernization and development patterned upon Western industrial capitalism. Throughout, local communities have been neglected and their 15 16 Karl Polanyi, op. cit., p. 132. Italics mine James Robertson, op. cit., p. x. Italics mine OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND 39