Indian poverty demands urgent solution

By M Kulasegaran

KUALA LUMPUR; With the fragmentation of estates in the late 1960s and coupled with the decline in rubber commodity prices from the 1970s, estate labourers of Indian origin began to migrate to the towns and urban areas of Peninsular Malaysia in search of their livelihood.

Thus began a pattern of their lives that saw them exchange the discreet poverty of their estate existence for the grinding poverty of their urban lives.

Their lack of education and the higher cost of living in urban areas meant that these rural-to-urban migrants were hard put to eke out a living. They began to languish in hopelessness, their poverty turning endemic because their children’s low educational attainment, in part due to gloomy home conditions, meant their further immersion in the poverty trap.

Within two decades of this migratory drift from estate sufficiency to urban depression, Indian Malaysians began to top the indices of social pathology.

The unemployment rate, school dropout rate, crime rate, and high incidence of single parents, all testified to social malaise among Indian Malaysians.

Now MIC new president G Palanivel has suggested the urban poor Indians who are earning a meager income to move back to the estates to earn a better and higher income as a temporary solution.

Long term solution needed

Palanivel is out of touch of the real problem of the Indians. A temporary solution cannot work. What is needed is a long term solution to the hard core problem of the Indian poor.

It is suggested that a parliamentary select committee consisting of the government, opposition and eminent personalities to be established to ascertain the real cause of the hardcore poverty among the Indians.

The select committee can then make due recommendations for a permanent and long term solution for those Indians who are suffering in the urban poor net.

Thus a safety net of a sort is needed like a “tongkat” for the community to progress from the slumber.

The committee can and should visit and ascertain the real issues affecting the Indians in all areas where the Indians are residing.

I will raise this issue next week during my turn to speak during the royal address in Parliament.

Will MIC, Gerakan, MCA and PPP support me? Or as usual will they pretend not to hear me for fear of Umno their big brother?

The parliamentary select committee could also look into, among others, the poverty affecting Malaysians as a whole, gangstersim and high criminal activities among the poor, the right of government scholarship for everyone and the growing population of single mothers.

Other issues such as high dependence on alcohol and drugs, unemployment, the over dependence on foreign workers and the need for a minimum wage must also be considered.

M Kulasegaran is Ipoh Barat member of parliament and DAP’s national vice chairman.