‘Ubah’ is just an illusion of change

Hindraf chairman P Waythamoorthy pens his political thoughts while on his fifth day of hunger strike.

COMMENT

This is the fifth day of my hunger viratham (hunger strike). I am beginning to feel weak. I wrote this article last night, so I am still able to directly communicate with you all.

I will continue publishing my thoughts, but it will be from articles I had prepared in anticipation. My resolve gets stronger with each passing day.

In this part, I will be penning my thoughts on the way the resources of a nation are allocated by the policy makers.

As I begin this part, I would like to clarify who these people, “the elite” that I keep referring to so often, are.

In short they are the top level people who hold all decision making authority in their respective large organisations and who collectively make policy decisions of the country as a community.

I have made an attempt to list them at the end of this essay to clarify.

These elites have various methods, devices and processes to achieve this influence over national policy.

The various chambers of commerce, the industry associations, the think tanks, the analyst community who evaluate and comment on policy, the ratings agencies which evaluate policy and give credit ratings, the stock markets, international agency advisories and the movement of investment funds are some key methods and devices by which the elite influence and control national policy.

A situation of control of national policy falling into the hands of the financial elite of the US is described in this seminal article ‘The Quiet Coup‘ in the Atlantic Monthly magazine about the situation in the US at the peak of the sub-prime crisis. This will throw light on how it may work here in our country.

The politicians are really only front men for these elites. Their job is to ensure that the policies dictated by the elites are made palatable to the people.

They develop justifications, campaigns, high sounding programs in order to achieve this. The more effectively they can front for the elites, the more support they will get from these members of the elite, and the more funds they will get and have in their war chests for the next elections.

Plan for the displaced estate workers

In our five-year blueprint for the upliftment of the Indian poor, we had laid out several plans. I would like to just touch on one of those plans and relate it to this discussion on national policy to help understand why we are facing resistance from the political class to its adoption – to a plan that is entirely justifiable whichever way you look at it.

The ‘Displaced Estate Workers (DEW) Land Allocated Contract Farming Project’ is that plan. This is a program similar to the Felda scheme, in that each participating household gets 10 acres of land that they will put to a variety of agricultural use.

The agricultural activity could include padi farming, livestock farming, vegetable farming, fresh water shrimp or fish farming among others that may be feasible.

Our proposal is to develop this program for 20,000 DEW households. The budget that we had proposed for this project is RM2 billion per year for five years or a total investment of RM10 billion on this project over the period of development of this project.

Here is the interesting part. This is only an investment. The money plus more will be returned to the nation when the project gets successfully implemented.

The benefits of this program are significant and many:

1) Human capital wastage will be put to highly productive use. So many Indian youths get sucked into crime because they cannot find alternative and productive employment with potential for upward mobility. This program will absorb a large number of such youth. Besides utilising this potential, this will be a great program to reduce crime in the country.

2) About a million metric tones of rice and about 100,000 metric tones of milk powder are imported annually, just to take two of the potential agricultural products that could be made part of the scheme. This will reduce our import dependence on two key food items and save valuable foreign exchange.

3) Upstream and downstream activities can be nurtured and further value added activities can be generated within our economy that could have a further impact on imports, foreign exchange and development of the productive potential of the economy.

4) Land is the key capital input for this project. Currently idle land could be put to productive use. Getting idle capacity to be productive, land and human capital simply means greater efficiency in our economy.

These are all significant benefits for the nation. But do the policy makers see it in this way?

Unless the project has significant benefit for the elites, projects such as these that largely only benefit the people get put on the backburner.

Benefits for the elites come in many forms – rentier commissions, fees, bribes, profits, subsidies to the elite, soft loans, loan guarantees, inflated pricing, guaranteed purchases are some examples.

The policy makers have no trouble in spending our national resources in setting up National Feedlot Centres and giving out hundreds of millions of ringgits that get spent off somewhere else or in the purchase of military hardwares that cost billions that we will never ever need.

There is not the same impact to the economy with those decisions, yet that is the slant of most decisions made by the policy makers.

These things do begin to make sense when you have an appropriate model for understanding how things really work in our universe.

Elites control everything

The principle that applies here is that “ whatever promotes and preserves the interests of the elites get the resources and everything else gets the boot”. The interest of the people will always be forsaken by the elites.

But the elites cannot get away with all that, can they, you may ask. The answer is they always do, except in occasional cases when there is a conflict or there is a slip up, then we get a glimpse of what really happens at all other times.

But this is quickly whisked off as the occasional aberration of the system. Some unfortunate rookie takes the hit and life goes on as usual after that.

The elites control everything, including what we know and what we think, so no problemslah!

When the polticians say “Ubah”, what they mean is something that looks like a change –an illusion of change.

They create these illusions so that they may be seen to be doing more for the people than their contending opposition. However the unfortunate fact of life is that the system will only change when the elites decide it is time to change or the elites are defeated by the people in a conflict with the people and have no choice but to change.

That is one of the purpose of my hunger viratham. It is to focus attention on the nonsense in all this and hopefully to create the awareness of how things really work in our universe.

The elites and the politicians pit people against people with their confusing illusions and they get away scot free with their pillaging. This will stop when the people become sufficiently aware of how things truly work in the universe.

I hope this hunger viratham writing contributes to that education.

My list of the possible elites

The Malaysian economic and political elite:

• The richest individuals and families in the country. Go to Forbes website for the top 40 Malaysians.

• The top and senior level politicians and their families from the ruling coalition, serving and retired.

• Nazir Tun Razak, the brother of Najib Tun Razak and group managing director/chief executive officer of CIMB

• Harris Hussein Onn, the brother of Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, a major shareholder of the DUKE highway

• Top and senior level civil servants, currently serving and retired.

• Top and senior level police and army brass, serving as well as retired.

• Top level executives in GLCs, including Petronas and Khazanah

• Top level executives in private businesses, directors in large publicly and privately held businesses and their top managemnt

P Waythamoorthy is the Hindraf chairperson. He has been on his hunger strike since March 10.