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Blog Malaysia

A Conversation With Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi, Malaysia’s First Royal Society Fellow!

Victor Tan
 

Sepupus, I’m very proud to announce that recently I had the chance to have a conversation and an interview with Malaysia’s very first Royal Society fellow, Dr. Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi!

Dr. Raviga is a biotechnologist who works with palm oil, and she was Founding Director of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board‘s Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre, as well as initiator of the Oil Palm Genome Project.

Through Dr Ravigadevi’s work, oil yields were improved because of the SHELL gene and the MANTLED gene identifications, allowing palm oil cultivators to select high-yielding through that increased land use efficiency, and land-use efficiency was increased; workers could harvest oil palm more reliably and effectively because of the VIRESCENS gene selecting for colorful fruit.

These achievements were recorded in back-to-back articles in the prestigious science journal Nature and unprecedented for Malaysian science as a whole.

I have a very deep and abiding respect for science, and on your part, you might be wondering: why is this relevant to the Malaysian economy?

Well, it is relevant because a sizable part of the Malaysian economy is built on palm oil.

Palm oil represents around 3 % of Malaysia’s national gross domestic product (GDP) and contributes nearly 38 % of our total agricultural output. In 2022 alone, the industry exported approximately 15 million tonnes of palm oil and related products, generating RM 137 billion in revenue and adding about RM 40 billion directly to GDP. The sector also supports livelihoods across the country, with plantations spanning nearly a fifth of Malaysia’s land and employing hundreds of thousands of people, particularly smallholder farmers whose operations account for over 50 % of the workforce in this industry.

Gross Domestic Product: the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country’s borders over a specific period of time. In this context, the total monetary value of all goods and services produced in Malaysia in the course of a year.

Palm oil is also extremely important in many different types of goods and services in our economy, namely:

  • Our cooking oil
  • As an additive to lots of different food products
  • As an oil in the oleochemical industry
  • And…

It is also part of fascinating narratives about discrimination, land use, agriculture – the stuff of myth to the point that it has in fact been called the alleged Lord Voldemort of the plant world, as Dr. Raviga discusses in this excellent video.

If you want to watch our conversation, you can do so right down below!

Enjoy the conversation and I’ll see you in the next one ahead.

P.S. Incidentally, Ms. Raviga is the mother of at least one Sepupunomics reader. What a surprise!

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Economics Malaysia Premium Content Premium Reports Singapore Society

Lee Kuan Yew: Founding “CEO” of Singapore Inc.

Victor Tan
 

Hello and welcome back! In this premium report, you’ll learn about Lee Kuan Yew, who in an alternate history could very well have become Prime Minister of Malaysia. But that was not to be, and he was the founding Prime Minister of Singapore instead. In this premium report, you will get to hear about his story and journey his legacy.

From Third World to First – An Economic Vision Realized

Lee Kuan Yew is revered as the founding father of modern Singapore, the man who transformed a tiny port city with no natural resources into one of the world’s richest and most developed nations. When Singapore became independent in 1965, its prospects looked bleak – per capita GDP was roughly $500, on par with countries like Ghana(review.brunswickgroup.com). Yet within a generation Singapore had vaulted into the ranks of high-income nations, even surpassing its former colonial ruler in prosperity. Under Lee’s leadership, the country’s GDP per capita grew almost 15-fold in real terms from 1960 to 2013(livemint.com). By the early 21st century, Singapore’s income per person exceeded $50,000 – higher than that of Sweden – prompting observers to dub its rise the “economic miracle”(review.brunswickgroup.com). This dramatic ascent, often called the Great Singapore Miracle, was no accident; it was the result of deliberate policies and institution-building that Lee set in motion.

Lee Kuan Yew served as Prime Minister for over three decades (1959–1990), during which he laid out an architecture for nation-building that would turn a vulnerable post-colonial city into a thriving global hub. He identified five key pillars for Singapore’s success: political stability, quality education, attracting investment, rising living standards, and strong security(nlb.gov.sg). 

Throughout his tenure, his government made strides in each of these areas. Lee built a stable, trusted government almost from scratch – a feat in itself given the turbulent conditions of the 1950s and 60s. He cultivated public confidence in Singapore’s institutions and future, often saying that the people’s trust and unity were vital ingredients of the nation’s success(exploringculturaldatablog.wordpress.com). Investors and citizens alike came to believe in the Singapore story, enabling bold long-term plans to take root. This bedrock of confidence allowed Lee to implement tough but forward-looking economic decisions that fueled growth for decades.

Meritocracy, Elitism and Technocratic Leadership

A core tenet of Lee Kuan Yew’s governance philosophy was meritocracy – the conviction that a country must be led by its ablest people, chosen on talent and performance rather than connections or race. “Singapore is a meritocracy. And these men have risen to the top by their own merit, hard work and high performance,” Lee declared in 1971, referring to the cadre of officials and professionals guiding the young nation(nas.gov.sg). He prided himself on assembling a “closely-knit and coordinated hard core” of top talent in government, stating that the fate of millions depended on the “quality, strength and foresight” of these key figures(nas.gov.sg). This emphasis on elite talent led to the recruitment of scholars and experts into politics and the civil service, turning the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) into a highly educated, technocratic team. Lee himself would later reflect that his “greatest satisfaction” was “mustering the will to make this place meritocratic, corruption-free and equal for all races – and that it will endure beyond me.”(time.com)

But not all that was said about him was beautiful and rosy.

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Blog Current Affairs Discrimination Economics Economy Reflections Social media Society

The Sepupunomics of Racial Discrimination – Part 2: Is it REALLY Discrimination?

Victor Tan
 

By now, you’ve probably already read The Sepupunomics of Racial Discrimination, Part 1. If you haven’t, pop back over and come back in a while!

Anyway, this is a topic that is extremely interesting and one that I mentioned is deeply relevant to economics.

Let me remind you of the definition I used in the last post.

Discrimination is the differential treatment of individuals or groups based on perceived group membership rather than individual merit.

I also mentioned that discrimination shapes how resources are allocated in our society by others, and it also shapes our view of ourselves and what seems logical for us to do when we ourselves allocate resources, whether we invest our time into an endeavor, our money into a business, or our presence within a country – But let me not speak in rhymes, riddles, or theory at the moment.

If you are from Malaysia, as with pretty much all other geographies, I am sure that many of you have thought that you have been discriminated against in your life.

I mean that completely, by the way.

It’s not just that Black Lives Matter exists as a real reaction to racial discrimination or the George Floyd “I can’t breathe” moment – I think that it is true even for white people nowadays in a sense, beyond the ironic, even as people share “It’s okay to be white”.

For that matter, it doesn’t matter whether you’re Malay, Chinese, or Indian either – If you go around reading social media, you will see every single major racial group declaring that they have been discriminated against, indicating a fundamental truth:

There are people from every single racial group on the planet who feel that they are getting discriminated against.

From personal experience, I can speak about Chinese family dinner table experiences where elderly people tell you about how projects are given to people who are not of your race, scholarships were given to a random acquaintance’s child because they were Malay, and that your goal, your sole and only goal, is to run away from this country as fast as possible because it is not for you and you will never be valued.

If you are Indian, we could also speak about the tales that we hear about people not renting because you had the wrong skin color, or because you were denied the same scholarships as the people in the Chinese family situation — now with a double dose of insults about illegal temples and people questioning you about your stance on Pakistan because apparently you must support Pakistan otherwise you’re not Malaysian.

Oh, but are all the aggressors Malays?

I read too much and too widely across different media ecosystems to conclude that that’s how the Malays feel — just look on social media to see dozens of different people talking about how apparently 3R laws are only for Malay people or any number of delightful permutations of ideas that people have about how somehow an imaginary system is against them, justifying Malay umbrellas, ‘agama dan bangsa’ yapping, and inviting reactions from a whole universe for whom there is nothing optimal about this situation in first, second, third, or fourth order for any community in this country.

Of course, these people are a small sample of a wider pool, but it’s not like they don’t exist or their views aren’t valid.

Do I assume some of these people are lying?

How about all of them, even as I consider an unspecified proportion of them to merely play victim in their own little racial boxes?

…Or shall I just be a charitable person and think that actually none of them are lying at all, and in reality, they are unfortunate people in a broken world?

Well… The reality is slightly more nuanced than that.

Imagine, for example, that the reason you are complaining about this in the first place is because you lost a scholarship and now your family has to go into debt in order to pay your way through university. There then arises a big question. Did you lose the scholarship because you were discriminated against? Or was it because you were just not good enough, however that’s defined?

Consider just some of the following follow-ups.

How can we know it’s discrimination?

Were you actually discriminated against, or was it just perception?

You might think it’s easy to differentiate, but it’s actually not.

I can cite you hundreds of kids who got 8 A’s for their SPM exams and who tried to apply for scholarships and didn’t get the scholarship, and then went out immediately raising hell and declaring that surely they were discriminated against because their results were so amazing, yet they didn’t receive funding, declaring “It was because I was Chinese!” or “It was because I was Indian!” or even “The government is racist against Malays and it gave all the scholarships to those Chinese and Indians!”

“How do you know how they made the decision, or who applied?”, you might ask — but then faced with that, the same people might very well then cite one or two examples of people who had less good results but who managed to get certain scholarships or grants for their education that the complainer did not as they raise hell in a state of aggrievement that unfortunately, I don’t really have a lot of sympathy for.

Yes it’s true that it could be sad if you’re not from a rich family and you don’t get a scholarship and thus cannot continue your education… But to what extent is it really fair to say that you didn’t get a scholarship because of your race and not because you didn’t display enough merit?

I am sure that many people don’t even get to the point of asking this question.

It’s undoubtedly true that many people have faced some kinds of racial slurs or epithets in their lives or the realities of living in a society where race and religion are very real things that affect how we experience life in this country, but it’s unclear that this means that scholarship providers or the people who were responsible for administering any treatment, allocating financial resources, or otherwise made the decisions that they did did so because they viewed you as being Chinese, Indian, Malay, or otherwise.

It is far from trivial to declare yourself a victim of discrimination.

In fact, whether you get rejected or not, race may not have been relevant in the first place, and the reason that you might have not gotten a scholarship need not actually have anything to do with race but instead could have something to do with your income level, the quality of your interview performance, or your academic performance – there could also have been luck, chance, or circumstance along the way.

Clearly, it is quite hard to determine what exactly happened here, and not just if you didn’t get the scholarship. In fact, even if you did get a scholarship, could you definitively prove why it is that it was you who got the scholarship? If you said no, then I think you are probably on the right track — I will never know why I, a Chinese, was given a full scholarship equivalent to more than 20 years of an average Malaysian’s annual income, to complete my education overseas — but I would probably not conclude that it was because of discrimination either positive or negative.

What if we move beyond this very limited context into understanding some of the more broad-ranging questions that we might have out there about discrimination in universities, workplaces, or otherwise in domains that extend beyond our personal lives?

Well, clearly the complexity increases.

  • Did students not get admitted to a particular university because they were of the wrong race?
  • Was it because of their academic performance?
  • Was it because of a particular affirmative action policy or was it because of the lack of an affirmative action policy?
  • Did they even apply in the first place and if they did, did they apply seriously?
  • Were there other factors that were not considered?

Whatever your answers to the questions above, and in the context of any and all of the answers whether provisional or settled that you gave to those questions earlier, can you prove your assertions beyond a shadow of doubt?

If you have no answers, then good – you’re in the right place.

Let me draw this to a close by first telling you what I am NOT saying.

I am not saying that discrimination does not exist in our society; it can be very real and present.

You can feel it subjectively with all the force of a thousand hurricanes, and however it is that you choose to go through life as you view the world through your lens of perception, that lens is yours and yours alone to decide what to do with the whole to refine and to look through and to behold the universe and its truths, lies, half-truths and half-lies, as it filters itself out to you in the limited span of your perception and really, if you feel that way, are you really wrong…?

But all I am saying is, before you conclude that something is discrimination, you may want to take a step back and ask yourself, “Is it discrimination? Am I sure that that’s the case? Can I prove it?”

Perhaps there, beyond the informational asymmetry that you may try to but never completely resolve, you will find yourself going into statistics – the statistical discrimination of Phelps and Arrow (basically, making decisions about individuals on the basis of what you observe about the average behaviors or qualities of groups), understanding how groups may be treated differently across time and space, and learning to think about both the discriminations that exist in the world and how to excel in that world anyways, damn any discrimination that may come along the way – Even if discrimination should exist, you may well then be thinking, “I will be the one to overcome”.

…Or will you choose not to engage in the process in the first place because stereotypes shape or confirm your beliefs?

Sure, the lens is modulated by attention, shaped by the evidence of our senses, beliefs, value systems, and history of prior interactions with the world, but it seems to me that while discrimination is a possibility, assuming that you are discriminated against at first glance against all evidence and at smallest moment of notice is a slippery slope towards a different kind of evil: playing victim, which, as a phenomenon, has its own fair share of maladies.

So yes, is it really discrimination?

I can’t answer that question for you in your unique situation, but if there was something that this blog post was meant to accomplish, hopefully it was to make you look around you and look at the world and begin to ask the question.

Alright, and that’s all I have to say about that, and I’ll see you in the next one!

Yours,

Sepupu.

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