There are Harold and Kumar,
after Harrod and Domar,
a high rate of development,
after a great pot investment.
I was Sarawak for two weeks in early 2011. It was election time and the campaigning period was well underway.
From my observation, I think I can conclude that the politics of development is very much alive in Sarawak. It is not hard to understand why.
While the standard of living in Kuching, the state capital, was respectable, a number of communities just outside of the city limits still did not have access to the local electricity grid. They wanted electricity. On the road to Bau, the residents complained how dark it was at night along the road. They wanted streetlights. The journey to Sri Aman meanwhile felt like a mild rollercoaster ride. Users wanted a smoother and wider road.
The politics of development there is very much about physical infrastructure. It is about promises and execution of development. Incumbents make lavish promises for more and better infrastructures. Challengers harp on unfulfilled promises.
While there were other concerns lingering in the mind of Sarawakian voters I am sure (indeed, it would be a remiss if I did not mention that the Chief Minister of Sarawak, a popular brand of lightning rod among urban voters), the way the campaigns were sometimes framed was as if the primary concern was development. It was a matter of whether the electorates should reward the incumbents for a job well done, or punish them for not bringing in sufficient development.
To be sure, the politics of development is relevant not only to Sarawak, but also to other places throughout the country. Else, the authority would not have paved the roads just before a critical election.
In other places where road connections are respectable, with clean water supply and electricity taken for granted, the same brand of politics is less appealing to the electorates.
Voters in these places—likely urbanites—have expectations too sophisticated than anything the politics of development can cater to. Educated urbanites are no longer mostly concerned about physical infrastructure. They will shrug it off and they will probably return to say that mere development is no longer enough. There are other concerns.
That comes close to what economist Amartya Sen has articulated in one of his books, Freedom as Development. He argued that development should be understood in its widest sense. Economic development is not merely about paved road, tall buildings and everything that is concrete but it is also about the soft aspect of individual freedom. It is about individual empowerment. Institutions should be created and improved so that individual freedom is guaranteed.
With such freedom, individuals can take upon themselves to promote their own welfare. After all, the end of development is enhancement of individual welfare.
So, freedom is one of the necessary means of development and the focus on physical development alone is not enough.
And if one subscribes to something similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where individuals prioritize economic well-being and other basic needs over political rights, then perhaps, for many Malaysians, the basic needs for brick and mortar development have been fulfilled. Any more of that kind of development returns less satisfaction than it did before. Now, the same Malaysians may want to fulfill other needs down the list that they have ignored previously.
So, faced with the widened definition of development, the old way of doing things becomes inadequate.
There are at least two major cases illustrating how the traditional development argument alone is insufficient and sometimes rejected altogether because it clashes so nakedly against other concerns. One will bring us to Pahang, where Lynas is building a rare earth processing plant. The other will bring us to Johor, where Petronas is investing in a massive petrochemical complex.
The proponents of the projects have highlighted the projects’ merits: foreign investment, jobs creation, technology transfer, tax revenue, etc. In a society that hungers for more old development, the projects would have gained popular support.
Yet the projects face popular opposition for a variety of reasons, the most notable perhaps being environmental and health concerns. In the past, not too many would oppose such development. Many needed it. Today, the acceptance of development comes with conditions. The conditionality is a sign of the end of the old politics of development.
The politics of development itself suffers from fatalism. Its appeals will end because development, whether the narrow definition or the more holistic one, is not an end by itself. It is a mean to an end. What is the appeal of the promises of more development, when we are nearing the very end that any development aimed for? What is the appeal, when we are at the end? We already have it.
The politics of development only lasts as long as development has not reached its stated end. The death of development politics is the natural ending for any successful development.
Only failure prolongs the life of old-style development politics.
If one looks at various socioeconomic statistics, it is easy to conclude how far behind Malaysia Cambodia is.
Yet superficially, if one landed in Siem Reap in north Cambodia, one would find it hard to differentiate rural Cambodia from rural Malaysia, apart from Khmer writing on the billboards and posters as well as the spoken language. The homes appeared Malay and the people themselves looked Malay. There were a number of times when a Cambodian spoke to me in Khmer, only to giggle finding out that I did not speak their tongue.
The substantive difference became clearer only once I was in the town of Siem Reap. Most parts of the town were dusty to present a Wild, Wild West impression. There was clear under investment in infrastructure. The statement on infrastructure was true elsewhere as well. There were not too many cars. Whatever seen on the road would be driven by westerners, or belonged to the government or some aid organizations. The locals would either ride a bicycle or a motorcycle generally instead.
The tuk-tuk and the likes formed the backbone of public transport. A Cambodian tuk-tuk is essentially a small cabin attached to a motorcycle.
In Siem Reap, Battambang and Phnom Penh, every single available tuk-tuk driver would hail me and ask if I needed a ride. Sometimes, it appeared almost everybody on the road honked at me to ask plainly, ”tuk-tuk?”
A college friend of mine whom I was traveling with me told me that her brother visited Cambodia a few years earlier. She joked that he was traumatized by the tuk-tuks. She went on to buy a tuk-tuk-themed T-shirt for him as a cruel souvenir.
The persistence was noteworthy and it did not end with the tuk-tuks.
As both of us explored the Angkor temple ruins littered throughout the land, children would approach us and beg us to buy something from them. It could be a bottle of cold water, a flute, a book, a piece of cloth, anything. They would beg in the softest of voices that would melt the heart of an untrained traveler. There was a hint of desperation in their voices. And they were persistent.
After a while I became desensitized to the incessant pleas, as many other travelers eventually did. My friend made the desensitization easier. She said we could not possibly help them all by purchasing everything from everybody.
What struck me the most, and informed me the most about the state of Cambodian society beyond the cold statistics, was our guide.
We employed a Cambodian guide, who led us into various ruins. He explained to us in detail the history, the story behind amazing Angkor’s bas-reliefs and shared tidbits about temples for a moment worth of amusement. We thoroughly enjoyed his company.
By the end of the day, we wanted to go to where we wanted to go and he had to go to where he had to go. We parted ways. We paid and thanked him for a splendid day.
He thanked us for the payment, as it is customary to do so. What was unusual was that he exhibited further unnecessary gratitude. He explicitly thanked us for providing him with employment.
It was quite clear that he not only wanted a job. He also needed it.
What I am about to do is an attempt at generalization. There are always perils at doing so but after observing the Cambodian society as a foreigner, I do think Cambodia has a bright future.
It is true that it is poor now, with children working on the streets when they are supposed to be in school.
Yet, I do not believe those rough edges are enough to negate my optimism. I am optimistic because Cambodians in general appeared to have that hunger to move forward and leave the past behind.
Life in the capital Phnom Penh is the symbol of that hunger. The city is not as modern as Kuala Lumpur and it will be many years before the two are at parity.
Nevertheless, Phnom Penh is developing even as it maintains its old colonial charm. One can immediately feel the go-go spirit in the capital as one skyscraper or two slowly inches toward the sky, as the tuk-tuks laze across the city. The newly found Cambodian openness will further aid progress.
For years, Cambodia was held back by inward-looking world views. Judging by what I saw in Cambodia, from the rural north to the urban south, that self-damaging age has come to pass almost fully.
A new Cambodian era introduces its own issues.
Cambodians complain of corruption and suspicious political maneuvering. But as the society matures as it is inevitable with continuous economic progress that was impossible 30 or 40 years ago, chances are these issues will be arrested along the way to a more tolerable level.
I do hope Cambodia progresses to emerge out of its ancient Khmer predecessor’s shadow.
As I was haggling with a merchant at a market in Phnom Penh for an item, an American saw me and smiled. He approached me and said: ”They’ll take every penny from you. But they are good people.”
Good things are supposed to happen to good people.
The rapid and successful economic development of China so far has been presented as the superiority of central planning over the approach taken, for example, by India. It is the Beijing development model as some would say. Authoritarian top-down approach gets things done, unlike the messy democratic means from the bottom up. All those criticisms weigh things down needlessly.
The recent high-speed train disaster that killed nearly 40 persons[1] should give advocates of the authoritarian approach a considerable pause the next time they try to sell the Beijing model over democratic ones. Reports are coming out that these infrastructure projects were rushed for the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party.[2] Results do not look good for the Chinese government.
The Beijing way of doing things has become controversial, especially after the accident.
How much of infrastructure projects all around China suffer from abuse of power or corruption in general? Was the accident a symptom of a rotten system?
Between authoritarian and democratic states, the former lacks real mechanism to make the state accountable. It will be hard to answer the questions even in democratic states, much less in ones like China’s.
Typical of authoritarian governments, the Chinese government is trying to muzzle investigations into the incident.[3] This is amid angry allegations of corruption with respect to these projects and specifically, the high-speed train system. That is an example how there is little accountability in China. Any reprimand is for public show only. Such reprimands have proven to be inconsequential. In Malaysian parlance, small fish.
Even before the train disaster, the system was already suffering from service interruptions, barely weeks after its official opening. Something must be wrong when so many glitches happened so frequently so soon.
Something is rotten in the state of China. That rottenness is the cost of the authoritarian model. There is a cost to absence of check and balance, of accountability, of freedom. It is a shame somebody has to die to learn that.
While India suffered from embarrassing criticisms before and during the last Commonwealth Games due to perhaps their incompetence in meeting deadlines, at least we knew the problems before it was too late. Remedies were taken. For China, there is a guessing game: which one is the facade and which one is real. As the train disaster showed, we found out about the rotten apples way too late.
[1] — BEIJING—The first high-speed train passed through the tracks where a deadly train collision occurred in eastern China, as authorities sought to soothe public concern over safety and the handling of the accident as well as jitters about the future of its prized high-speed rail system. [Norihiko Shirouzu. Beijing Seeks to Soothe Train Jitters. Wall Street Journal. July 26 2011]
[2] — China’s high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai has been beset by glitches in the two weeks since it opened to great fanfare on the eve of the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th anniversary celebration. [David Pierson. China’s high-speed rail glitches: Racing to make errors?. Los Angeles Times. July 16 2011]
[3] — BEIJING — China has banned local journalists from investigating the cause of a deadly high-speed train crash that has triggered public outrage and raised questions over safety, reports said Tuesday. [Allison Jackson. China seeks to muzzle reporting on train crash. AFP. July 26 2011]
As the Malaysian Parliament planned to vote out Singapore from the Malaysian federation, Tunku Abdul Rahman said this in the Dewan Rakyat:
…On the other hand, our relationship with Sabah and Sarawak has been excellent. We are desirous of carrying out extensive development programme in these two States, because we realise that under the colonial rule the development in the two States had been neglected. We know that they had joined us on their own accord and of their own free will, in hope that they would enjoy not only the independence, the prestige, which freedom brings with it but also to enjoy other fruits of freedom. They fit into the pattern of administration with the rest of the States of Malaysia so admirably well; and unless we can carry out some development however small it may be their hope and trust in us will, I am afraid, inevitably lessen… [Hansard. Parliament of Malaysia. August 9 1965]