Cultural Development In Malaysia

Malaysia is located in the Southeast Asia. In 2015, it is estimated to have 30 million people living in Malaysia coming from the multi-ethnic background. There are a lot of ethnics living in Malaysia, but Malays, Chinese and Indian are the chief ethnic communities while the rest are the natives living in Sabah, and Sarawak (the Borneo Island). Historically, the Malay people were the first to migrate to Malaysia that it was first called as ‘Tanah Melayu’ (Malaya) which literally translated into The Malay Land. That is also the reason why the Malays is considered as the indigenous population. As the British began its colonization on the East, Malaya also falls under their influence. One of the changes that the British had done is encouraging …show more content…
This also led to Malays being the center of attention for development and training. In order to achieve the other objective of NEP which is “to eliminate poverty irrespective of race”, the government had introduced the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) scheme. It is introduced in 1956 when Land Development Act came into force. Initially, it gave an opportunity to the rural poor citizen to resettle into a newly developed areas while managing smallholder farms, growing cash crops. As of now, the FELDA have already become independent of the state fund, while managing several private corporate entities such as FELDA Global Venture (FGV) and FELDA Investment Corporation (FIC). The reason why FELDA had made the non-Malays citizens especially Indian felt as their rights are neglected is because the FELDA scheme was focused mainly for the Malays ethnic as they were the major community living in rural areas. Before the scheme was introduced, the plantation workers were mainly made up from Indian workers that immigrated during British colonial era. So when the scheme was introduced, the workers were being replaced without given any alternatives programs or compensation. In 1980, the World Bank raised its concern over the ethnic bias in the settler selection. They are concerned with the Indian estate workers who would normally be a good candidate for the land development scheme. The scheme …show more content…
From 1970 to 1985, there was a tremendous growth of enrollment for Malay students in most of the universities in Malaysia such as University of Malaya (UM), University of Science Malaysia (USM) and National University Malaysia (UKM). Indian students’ enrollment were still increasing in local universities, but rather it was a slower growth. While for Chinese students, mostly they enrolled in Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) College which is handled by MCA especially for Chinese people. These trends also manifested in the reduction of Malay involvement in the agricultural field but rather into more professional and technical work field (Boo Teik 21). Also during the 1970s, the government started to convert former English school to Malay school due to the National Language Act 1967 which made Malay language as the national language. Chinese and Indian schools were given the option to convert to Malay school or remain as private schools. This changes had replaced the former education system into 3 major streams: Malay, Chinese and Indian schools (Haque 250). These different in streams also made it harder for different ethnicity to socialize with each other as they prefer to enroll in their own streams. The specific quota for the local universities and overseas scholarship had also restricted the