High Income Economy equals Highly Focused Nation

The prime minister, Dato' Sri Najib have mentioned again and again that for Malaysia to achieve the vision of a developed nation by 2020, we must strive to become a high income economy. What is a high income economy? A high-income economy is defined by the World Bank as a country with a Gross National Income per capita of $11,906 or more in 2008.

By an analogy, if an average person who has a salary of RM3,000 to RM10,000 is considered a middle income, and RM10,000 and above is considered high income, what he should do in order to get that range of salary? Of course the first thing that he can thought of is to get back to school. A Master degree might get him there but a phd will definitely get him to that range. But this approach may take some time, and probably not cost effective.

Another option is some refocussing on his strength and skills. If he works now as an engineer, he still may be trap with that middle income, but by becoming a specialist engineer, he can get to that range. All that he needs is to focus on one niche area and be good at it. Malaysia can do the same. Look hard into what Malaysia is good at, focus very hard on it, be tremendously good at it and the global market will bend down to your knees and will forever be at your doorstep. Look as an example, Japan become a developed nation by focussing on automotive and electronics. Malaysia needs a niche area where the nation is already good at, focus all its resources to it, and become a specialist whereby all the global market recognise and will source it in Malaysia.

The Commonality Culture

The main objective of the creation of the internet is connectivity and information sharing. the ARPANET, the pioneer of the now world wide web was created just to do that..to solve the problem of how can one computer be connected to another computer and interchange information in realtime. From that simple objective, the internet has involved to what we are seeing today. Facebook, Twitter, blogger and other social networking are all created with one main reason; to connect everyone. Facebook now have 350 million users. Just imagine that. Even the population of Malaysia is 27 million. Facebook is a nation by its own and interconnecting the entire country and even regions.

So, what will happen if everyone is connected? You will start to have a commonalisation culture. A commonalisation culture whereby the issues discussed is the same, the information sharing is practically the same and even slangs and words are approaching towards commonality. I started to notice this when the news of MJ died. Everyone on facebook and twitter is talking the same thing and everyone gives their own personal view on the news. This would never happen 5 to 10 years ago. The same happens with the inauguration of Barrack Obama. Previously, the news are only shared one way.. For the first time in history of mankind, the news is shared two ways. You can get the main information plus also the side and less informal info on the same issue.

Is this commonality culture is good or bad? Only time will tell

My view on 1Malaysia

The 1Malaysia concept brought about by Dato' Seri Najib, our sixth prime minister is something very noble indeed. The objective is to get all of Malaysian's to act as one, to think as one and also most importantly to unite as one. The only problem that I have with this concept is that, it is just a rebranding of another term that was previouly called 'muhibbah'. The spirit of 'muhibbah' has been propagated by our previous leaders many-many times. To accept and understand other cultures in Malaysia and be emphatic to different races is called 'semangat muhibbah'. So, what is so different about 1Malaysia? It is just a rebranding exercise done by Najib.

Politics is all about perception

If you watch closely all Anwar Ibrahim's speeches, you can see the pattern of his speeches. He tends to repeat the same topics that he knows people would like to hear. He will also know what keywords that triggers the emotion of people and audiences. He also knows what keywords that are current and sensational. Such keywords are like 'altantunya', 'price hike', 'toll hike', etc and he rarely uses bombactic words. As for the leaders of UMNO / BN, you can see that their speeches are sometimes full of keywords that sometimes feels out of touch of the common people. Eventhough the keywords of their speech is important such as 'knowledge based', 'innovation', 'sustainable development', it rarely touch the heart of the majority of the people. And I am starting to see the same pattern used by our new prime minister, Dato' Seri Najib. He must acknowledged that his main competitor is Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim and he is still winning in terms of creating the perception that he is more closer to the rakyat compared to Najib. If BN wants to win PRU13, perception management must be given due priority. Even the word 'turun padang' is actually an insult to the people. It is very feudalistic and seems to inspire that the minister is sitting on a throne and have to come down from the throne to join the peasants in the field.

NEP: Strengthening the Strong, Weakening the Weak

Since its debut in 1971, the National Economic Policy, many have observed that the policy has not liven up to its expectations. But, in my opinion, if there are no such thing as the NEP, it would definitely be a different story today. I believe that the Malays is as strong as the other races in term of economic sectors. Heck, the Malays are international traders during the era of Sultanate of Malacca. I believe that the reason that the Malay are not strong in the economic sector today is due to the National Economic Policy. The NEP has somewhat strengthening the already strong and weakening the already weak.

I would like to make an analogy of the National Economic Policy to this fictional story. Imagine in a house where you have a father and two sons. In bringing up his two sons, the father notices that the second one seems to be much more independent and usually do everything on his own initiative without much relying to his father for any support. The second child also excel in academic. Meanwhile, the adult child are totally different story. The adult child does not show any initiative in life and very much dependent on the support of his father. So, being a good father, seeing the development of his two children, he will try to balance this out. Seeing that his second child can survive on his own, he puts more attention to the adult son. The support is putting more tuition money for the adult son, buying him more gifts to encourage him to excel and also pampers him more as to shows his encouragement. The second child is not given much of his attention because he knew that the second child is already well off. And seeing this development, the second child gets even better in academic and life even though he is not rewarded as much as his brother. But deep inside, he felt a bit of resentment to the biased treatment by the father. This makes him even harder to excel in life just to show to his father who is better among the siblings.

The father thought that by giving extra rewards and attention, the adult child will change his behavior and finally be able to live his life to the fullest. But, the opposite occurs. The adult feels pampered and becomes even more dependent on his father. He become even worse in academic because he knew even if he gets bad results, the father will always be there for him to bail him out. Even when he is out in the world and setting up a business, he will know that even the business fails, the father will always be there for him. For him, there will always be a safety net and therefore the treatment by his father have make him even weaker than before. He is totally dependent on his father and worries that if the father is no longer there he will not survive on its own.

Meanwhile, the second child who already making out on its own never relies on his father. He knows that his father will only give preferential treatment to the eldest and therefore for him there is no safety net. Therefore, he must succeed in life. This has make him stronger and more confident in living his life. Therefore, not being pampered by his father has somewhat build his characteristic to be much stronger than his brother.

This analogy is a simple analogy if to compare with the total obejctive of the NEP and also the NDP. But, policy and human relationship is always correlated. We are all human basically. The policy will always remain a policy if there is no human to implement it. Humans are complicated. And therefore, in making sure a policy does not backfire is by understanding the pscychology of the human being.