By Anil Netto,
Just posting up my most recent TMI column.. :)
Palanivel and why BN prefers you stay poor
“If you’re troubled by poverty in the city, move back to the estates.” That’s MIC president G. Palanivel’s advice to the Indians.
It’s been a while since we’ve had such a clear reminder of how Barisan Nasional’s (BN) plan seems to very simply be: Keep Malaysians poor and ignorant, thus making them easy to rule and keep pliant.
For example, it is almost funny how Umno speaks of the need for special privileges to uplift the Malays, given that the self-proclaimed lack of significant mass social mobility among the Malays is itself a damning indictment of Umno’s utter failure to eradicate poverty amongst Malays — or amongst any Malaysians for that matter.
I am disinclined to believe that even Umno politicians can be so incompetent, and can thus only conclude that the reason for this sad state of affairs is simply that if there were no more poor Malays, Umno’s raison d’etre would cease to exist.
How tragic it is, that it is in the interests of Malaysia’s current dominant political party to keep Malays poor and disenfranchised.
A return to ignorance?
Even more tragic is the manner in which BN component parties seem to be taking a page out of Umno’s book.
Palanivel seems nostalgic for the “good old days” where all it took was a bit of election bribery and perhaps some estates-based intimidation to keep the Indian vote in line.
Perhaps the most recent protest against racism in KL rattled their already-rattling bones, and Palanivel just wishes that these pesky Indians who go on about their “rights” should literally just skip town and slink back to the estates.
Why else would he demonstrate such an incredibly inane mindset by suggesting that the best thing for poor Indians to do is return to their even poorer economic backgrounds?
Are there even any sound economic reasons for this?
I am no blind advocate of urbanisation. People should live wherever they are most comfortable, and one would have to be a fool not to acknowledge the severe problems of urban poverty.
Nonetheless, we should examine the obvious reason urban migration occurs in the first place. People very seldom make a drastic change in their environment without important reason — which in this case usually consists of the search for brighter futures.
Estates: A black hole of social mobility
Palanivel seems extremely proud of this alleged RM700 minimum wage. The question he fails to address however is: Regardless of the wage, what kind of economic mobility does a job tapping rubber afford?
Is it an industry in which after X number of years, an estate worker might hope to purchase a small plot of land to work for himself? Do a great number of estate workers get promoted to management positions in Sime Darby?
Palanivel also says that it is better Malaysian Indians take these unskilled labour jobs instead of Indonesians and Bangladeshis. I found this incredibly insulting.
We can only be considered to be progressing as a nation if Malaysians are moving out of unskilled labour and into higher paying jobs which offer real opportunities for genuine social advancement.
We should in fact be hoping for more unskilled jobs to be taken over by foreign labour (the many refugees in Malaysia could contribute significantly), because this could indicate that Malaysians are moving on to better jobs.
Learning from the Middle East
In the absence of sound economic reasoning, one would be forced to conclude that Palanivel’s backward suggestion is informed by a subversive desire to keep Malaysian voters as pliant, obedient peons — as this, of course, keeps them subservient to the ruling powers that be.
While support for those that protested in KL the weekend before seems almost eclipsed by support for uprisings in the Middle East (uprisings that rightfully deserve to be supported), they still seemed to have shaken up a few of our own ruling elite, and rightfully so.
In places like Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, heads of state learnt the hard way that you cannot keep a people down, and you cannot expect them to live in poverty and like it. Palanivel would do well to take heed of these lessons learnt.
A side effect of urbanisation is that ideas, information and movements tend to spread faster. If Palanivel thinks he can turn back the clock and undo the collective awareness that Indians have achieved in these last few years, he has another thing coming.
There are indeed a myriad of difficult problems facing the Indian community — amongst them severe poverty, discrimination, and being the group that seems to suffer the worst from abuse and deaths in detention (as I write, Selvach remains detained indefinitely and possibly subject to torture, all because he testified that he saw policemen beat Gunasegaran to death).
It is nothing short of foolish to suggest that the answers to these problems are to “balik estet.” The solution to these problems are to stop our ruling elite from stealing what belongs to the p
Just posting up my most recent TMI column.. :)
Palanivel and why BN prefers you stay poor
“If you’re troubled by poverty in the city, move back to the estates.” That’s MIC president G. Palanivel’s advice to the Indians.
It’s been a while since we’ve had such a clear reminder of how Barisan Nasional’s (BN) plan seems to very simply be: Keep Malaysians poor and ignorant, thus making them easy to rule and keep pliant.
For example, it is almost funny how Umno speaks of the need for special privileges to uplift the Malays, given that the self-proclaimed lack of significant mass social mobility among the Malays is itself a damning indictment of Umno’s utter failure to eradicate poverty amongst Malays — or amongst any Malaysians for that matter.
I am disinclined to believe that even Umno politicians can be so incompetent, and can thus only conclude that the reason for this sad state of affairs is simply that if there were no more poor Malays, Umno’s raison d’etre would cease to exist.
How tragic it is, that it is in the interests of Malaysia’s current dominant political party to keep Malays poor and disenfranchised.
A return to ignorance?
Even more tragic is the manner in which BN component parties seem to be taking a page out of Umno’s book.
Palanivel seems nostalgic for the “good old days” where all it took was a bit of election bribery and perhaps some estates-based intimidation to keep the Indian vote in line.
Perhaps the most recent protest against racism in KL rattled their already-rattling bones, and Palanivel just wishes that these pesky Indians who go on about their “rights” should literally just skip town and slink back to the estates.
Why else would he demonstrate such an incredibly inane mindset by suggesting that the best thing for poor Indians to do is return to their even poorer economic backgrounds?
Are there even any sound economic reasons for this?
I am no blind advocate of urbanisation. People should live wherever they are most comfortable, and one would have to be a fool not to acknowledge the severe problems of urban poverty.
Nonetheless, we should examine the obvious reason urban migration occurs in the first place. People very seldom make a drastic change in their environment without important reason — which in this case usually consists of the search for brighter futures.
Estates: A black hole of social mobility
Palanivel seems extremely proud of this alleged RM700 minimum wage. The question he fails to address however is: Regardless of the wage, what kind of economic mobility does a job tapping rubber afford?
Is it an industry in which after X number of years, an estate worker might hope to purchase a small plot of land to work for himself? Do a great number of estate workers get promoted to management positions in Sime Darby?
Palanivel also says that it is better Malaysian Indians take these unskilled labour jobs instead of Indonesians and Bangladeshis. I found this incredibly insulting.
We can only be considered to be progressing as a nation if Malaysians are moving out of unskilled labour and into higher paying jobs which offer real opportunities for genuine social advancement.
We should in fact be hoping for more unskilled jobs to be taken over by foreign labour (the many refugees in Malaysia could contribute significantly), because this could indicate that Malaysians are moving on to better jobs.
Learning from the Middle East
In the absence of sound economic reasoning, one would be forced to conclude that Palanivel’s backward suggestion is informed by a subversive desire to keep Malaysian voters as pliant, obedient peons — as this, of course, keeps them subservient to the ruling powers that be.
While support for those that protested in KL the weekend before seems almost eclipsed by support for uprisings in the Middle East (uprisings that rightfully deserve to be supported), they still seemed to have shaken up a few of our own ruling elite, and rightfully so.
In places like Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, heads of state learnt the hard way that you cannot keep a people down, and you cannot expect them to live in poverty and like it. Palanivel would do well to take heed of these lessons learnt.
A side effect of urbanisation is that ideas, information and movements tend to spread faster. If Palanivel thinks he can turn back the clock and undo the collective awareness that Indians have achieved in these last few years, he has another thing coming.
There are indeed a myriad of difficult problems facing the Indian community — amongst them severe poverty, discrimination, and being the group that seems to suffer the worst from abuse and deaths in detention (as I write, Selvach remains detained indefinitely and possibly subject to torture, all because he testified that he saw policemen beat Gunasegaran to death).
It is nothing short of foolish to suggest that the answers to these problems are to “balik estet.” The solution to these problems are to stop our ruling elite from stealing what belongs to the p
1 comment:
Palanivel bastard is brain dead. See how he has handled Indian problems since coming to power: (1) Interlock - send a lameduck panel, then maintain silence. Everything will die away.
(2) Indian poverty- go back to the estate. Every thing will go away. Come back another 50 years later.Someone else will be a leader. Or there wont be Indians here anymore.
Samy velu screwed us left and right. This fellow is a m...Fker
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