Rabindranath Tagore : Lessons for Malaysia

I came across these beautiful words by Tagore. It was incorporated by the Petra Group in its advertisement for the Sekhar Foundation which was established in remembrance of the doyen of natural rubber and palm oil research - the late Tan Sri Dr. B. Sekhar. It moved me enough that I had a quick shower and walked down to my mamak cafe to post this.....I was actually planning for a little TV and chat with my girl-friend as tomorrow I will be down in Singapore. Well, the chat can wait. I need to put my thoughts down.

Here is the poem :


" When the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depths of truth
Where tireless striving strectches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
into ever-widening thought and action
into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake".

- Rabindranath Tagore -

Tagore, of course was offering this prayer for his beloved land of India. But, I suspect any one of us can utter the same prayer for our beloved Malaysia as we so desperately need to get "into ever widening thought and action". We are bombarded with a daily dosage of narrow and parochial thinking and arguments. Reason has been sacrificed for the sheer lust for power. Moderation has taken a back seat to unbridled words of hate. History is being prostituted to serve the needs of the corrupter. The roots that bind us have become the thorns that are bleeding our very souls.

While the nation's polity is sinking deeper into the quagmire of senseless hate speech and counter speech; the state of our economy is at the risk spiraling into the abyss of no return. In the same newspaper (NST) that I read the above poem, I also read Datuk Johan Jaafar's column. I love his writings but I found it difficult to agree with him with his latest piece. The political aspects aside, he wrote that we have to remember the formula that have made us great and that on many aspects we are as good or even better than the west. Well, this is typical of Datuk's generation. Datuk, let me tell you that the west is no longer the bench mark. We also do not believe the Mahathir era's illusion of grandiose. We know that we are being beaten to the finishing line in almost all spheres of educational,technological and economic endeavors. And we are not talking about the west beating us to it, we are talking about China, India, Brazil, Vietnam, Ireland and Mexico (the last 2 was never part of the so called developed west before, but they are pulling no punches now).

The formula that the good Datuk is talking about is the very fomula that has 'educated and moulded' us "...into the dreary desert sand of dead habit". We are singing the same old tune. We are dancing to the same old song. The world, it seems to me, is singing a different song. One that we are tune deaf to.

The entire Malaysian economic thinking is based on the same old tired formula : We make, people will buy". The problem is, others are making what we are making and they are doing one hell of a better job than us. So, where does that leave us? Lets produce more of the same. Or maybe, we should produce 'bio-technology' stuff. Lets set up a bio-engineering hub. For good measure, lets throw in a space technology hub since we had a Malaysian in space. Oh yes, lets also build on our head start in outsourcing (but sorry, we need to scrap English from the education system. Maybe our outsourcing clients will understand our narrow nationalistic needs and switch to Bahasa Malaysia instead!). So here we are with a master plan for various hubs.

WHERE IS OUR NICHE? WHAT IS OUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE?

Somebody, anybody....please knock some sense into our politicians before we end up sending students to Vietnam to learn computer technology!


Note : Since my last entry on how Indian and Chinese companies are buying into what used to be their competitors, Tata Power is buying into an Australian power producing entity.