I was quite surprised about what the PM said. The link to the Bernama article is here. PM Abdullah believes that “development policies like the New Economic Policy (NEP) remain relevant as long as the economic disparity between races exist in the country.” Now, this is all well and good, I suppose. A general statement like that could mean a variety of things, with nothing specific really said. A good opening, I’m sure. And then he says this:

He said the income gap between Bumiputeras and non-Bumiputeras remains wide where for every Ringgit earned by a Bumiputera, a non-Bumiputera earns RM1.80.

“The implementation of NEP cannot be seen as a racial issue,” he said in his written reply at the Dewan Rakyat sitting here, Wednesday.


And this is the point where my bullshit detector goes wild. I get agitated easily, I think. Whenever our political masters say anything, these days, my suspcion grows. Now, why is that? I don’t know, maybe I’m naturally sceptical. Or maybe I believe in conspiracy theories. Or maybe I’m just kooky. I think I’m just kooky. Is that spelt right? So he goes on to say:

“If the proposal could hasten a more balanced and just participation between all the races and more importantly that contributes to the national integration, therefore there is no reason why the government would decline the proposal to return the NEP’s spirit,” he said.

NEP, implemented between 1971 to 1990, had succeeded in creating a peaceful and stable socio-economic environment that allowed the government to concentrate on efforts to develop the country to the present state, he said.

He said in that process the poverty rate and the wide disparity in income, employment and share holdings among races were reduced.

“The success had helped in bridging the gap between races in the country,” he said.

I wonder if his office failed to pick up the recent Inter Press article on the plight of Malaysian Indians. That article’s over here. Some excerpts:

After 150 years of labouring in rubber and oil palm plantations and in the Public Work Department (PWD) building every kind of infra-structure, Malaysian Indians, own less then 2% of the national wealth, economists told a public forum on the future of Malaysian Indians last week.

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In 2004, minority Indians accounted for a disproportionate 15 percent of juvenile delinquents, committed 40 percent of all violent crime and made up nearly 50 percent of all convicts in prisons –presenting the typical profile of a helpless underclass.

Malays constitute nearly 60 percent of the population, while the economically dominant ethnic Chinese who control business make up a quarter. The rest are mainly smaller indigenous groups.

‘’We arrived here with a few cooking pots and pans and three or four generations later most of us are still no better off,'’ said A. V. Kathiah, a former trade unionist. ‘’Some Indians don’t even have that; they have become beggars.'’

‘’We are marginalised and forgotten not just by the state but also by our own Indian leaders,'’ he told IPS. ‘’We have no say on how policies are formulated and our future is really bleak.'’

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Last week, the government’s top economic planner gave a briefing to 500 Indian intellectuals
arguing how the government takes the future of Indians into consideration when formulating policies.

He asked for a show of hands of people who are happy with the measures taken by the government. ‘’Not one of us raised our hands,'’ said a university lecturer who attended the briefing.

Mustapha Mohamad, who heads the government’s Economic Planning Unit then asked who was not satisfied. ‘’All of us put our hands up,'’ the lecturer told IPS. ‘’We told him in no uncertain terms that government has done little or nothing.'’

The problem however is not just official neglect, experts say. While the Malay-dominated government openly favours native Malays and actively helps them get a head start in everyway possible way–scholarships, business loans, employment, industrial training–the same government has refused minority Indian demands for an affirmative action policy that would give them a helping hand.

So what, really, does he mean by a narrowing of disparities? I don’t quite understand and I’m quite bewildered. Either he didn’t really care who or what class of people he was comparing, preferring to distinguish differences between bumiputeras and collective non-bumiputeras, or he is like everyone else completely ignorant — or choose to be ignorant — about the plight of Malaysian Indians.

What scares me is how all this talk seems to augur a devolution of the status of Malaysian Indians to that of our own indigenous people. Suddenly, the prospect of being a 2nd-class citizen seems all the more inviting than being forgotten and discarded like society’s untouchables.