Challenges Facing The Community
Despite the fact that the average income of Malaysian Indians exceeds that of their Malay counterparts, there exists a portion of the community who are poor and share less than 1.5% of Malaysia's wealth. Despite their obvious need, they are not eligible for any of Malaysia's lavish affirmative-action programmes, which are reserved for Malays and select indigenous people. These factors in part have resulted in the migration of many highly skilled Malaysian Indians abroad, where Indian migrants are largely upwardly mobile.
However, the underprivileged section of the community (along with the poor from other races e.g. ethnic Chinese) continue to be excluded from affirmative-action programmes despite their genuine need for support in obtaining employment, government subsidized education, and housing. This perception of a zero-sum game amongst the races has unfortunately fueled protests by frustrated sections of the hitherto quiescent community - who consequentially faced a heavy-handed response from the authorities. Recently, the Malaysian government has at least pledged to change this by increasing assistance to needy Malaysians regardless of race.
Read more about this topic: Malaysian Indian
Famous quotes containing the words challenges, facing and/or community:
“The approval of the public is to be avoided like the plague. It is absolutely essential to keep the public from entering if one wishes to avoid confusion. I must add that the public must be kept panting in expectation at the gate by a system of challenges and provocations.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“Stupidity, outrage, vanity, cruelty, iniquity, bad faith, falsehood—we fail to see the whole array when it is facing in the same direction as we.”
—Jean Rostand (1894–1977)
“As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice—there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community. To discover how scientific revolutions are effected, we shall therefore have to examine not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)