Is the Malaysian society a successful one?

      In the midst of election faze when every man, woman and their pets are talking about politics and who they ought to vote, let’s take a step back and evaluate the current state of our society. In order to do this, we have to look at some essential characteristics of a society for it to be called a successful, developed and civilised one.

The top three most important requirements of a successful society are:

     1.       Safety. There must be means to safeguard personal safety of everyone. Nobody should live in fear of being hurt physically or being robbed of their belongings.

     2.   Shelter. Everyone should have at least a basic form of shelter for them to rest and keep their personal possessions. Shelters ought to be affordable to the average persons. For the unfortunate group of people, such as the less-abled folks, old and sick folks, orphans, mentally challenged etc, basic shelter should be provided in the forms of nursing homes or centres.

     3.  Food, clean water and clothes. Access to food, clean water and clothes is essential in any successful society. Again, the unfortunate group of people must not be deprived of these basic needs.

The other essential requirements are a good government, social justice, freedom, education and health care.

The role of a government is to administrate and manage the various operations of a society, with the aim of bringing benefits to the people in the society. These operations include security forces, education system, financial system etc. Since good governance is pivotal in the provision of the other essential requirements, it will be evaluated in more details in another article.

Social justice in itself is a big topic. It basically means everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities, regardless of his or her race, gender, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation and religious belief.

The freedom of everyone in the society must be guaranteed and at the same time check and balance must exists to safe guard it from being abused to violate others in the society. Freedom generally encompasses freedoms in: speech, movement, belief, sexual orientation, religion and political affiliation.

Equal right and access to basic education for everyone is essential in a successful society. At the same time, it must be affordable to the average people and provided to those who can’t afford it.

As in education, everyone in a successful society should have equal access to a health care system the society is afford to provide.

Now, let’s look at how we, the Malaysian society, fare in terms of these essential characteristics of a successful society.

      1.       Safety. In the face of climbing crime rate, I would say we don’t pass this test.

    2.       Shelter. Although squatters are abound in the fringes of the big cities, and the sorry state of many shelters in the rural areas, I would still say we pass this test but with a very low margin. Ballooning property price may have made a few people very wealthy, but the general public suffers greatly from it.

      3.       Food, clean water and clothes. I would say we pass this test with improvements required.Thousands in some remote areas are still deprived of clean, treated water.

     4.       Good governance. I would say we failed quite badly in this test. Details will be discussed in another article.

     5.       Social justice. We failed at this as well. So many fellow Malaysians are being discriminated due to their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and political affiliation.

     6.       Freedom. Do I need to say more on this? With so many laws to curb, illegalise and prosecute freedom of Malaysians to express, to demonstrate, to profess religious belief etc, we again fail badly in this test.

     7.       Education. If we don’t consider the quality of our education system and the products from it, I would say we are pretty good in providing affordable and accessible basic education to the people.

     8.       Health care. In my personal opinion, we have a good public health care system that is affordable and accessible to most of the people in Malaysia. More costly private health care services in the form of medical centres are also available to those who afford to pay more for speedier and customised services. However, my personal experience is the wait queue at some of the popular medical centres is the same, if not longer, than public hospital. More importantly, the qualities of professional medical services (i.e. specialist advice, consultation etc) are no better than what is provided by the doctors in public hospitals. I guess, time is money for the specialists in private practice. If you don’t agree to major, costly treatments or operations, spending more time on you is equivalent to spending less time on those genuine, paying big bucks patients.

 I have summarised our report card in the following table. I have to admit this article is written within a short time and they represent my personal, subjective opinions on the subjects discussed. Ideally sufficient research has to be done to back up the claims, which I didn’t. Hence, make your own judgements.

	Requirement	Result
1	Safety	Failed.
2	Shelter	Just passed.
3	Food, clean water and clothes	Passed.
4	Good government	Failed badly.
5	Social justice	Failed.
6	Freedom	Failed badly.
7	Education	Passed.
8	Health care	Passed.