Life’s lessons after the floods

 

It’s just over a week into the new year, and with memories of the recent Great Malaysian Flood 2021 still vivid, let’s review what we’ve learnt.

I hope we’ve learnt that our environment is changing rapidly, and not for the better. A tougher lesson, however, is to admit we created the changes, and it’s our responsibility to fix them.

Given the scale of the problems – such as 100-year floods becoming commonplace – can we still fix them? The smart money says perhaps not, and that the best we can do is to learn to accommodate the changes and roll with the punches.

What else have we learnt? That our leaders covered themselves with glory in managing the flood disaster? Well, they covered themselves with something, certainly, as I’m sure you have seen for yourself, but I wouldn’t exactly call it glory.

It’s rather early in the year but I’m in a reminiscing mood already. In the old days, there was a quaint Malay euphemism for corruption (tumbuk rusuk) – which literally means a punch to the ribs. I’ve no idea about its etymology, but euphemisms are supposed to be vague and mysterious, so there you are.

Corruption back then was on a rather smaller scale, puny compared to what goes on today – perhaps 10% off a government contract or a few ringgit to settle a traffic ticket. Those days are gone.

Inflation has increased both the number of people hitting, and those getting hit in the ribs, and certainly it has increased, exponentially, the amount of “government money” involved too.

One thing that hasn’t changed, of course, is that there’s no such thing as government money, there’s only the people’s money. If it ends up in the wrong pocket, somebody somewhere else will be hungry, ill, homeless, uneducated or remain impoverished because of it.

Corruption used to be about getting a cut from some rich towkay somewhere, probably a Chinese (does that make it OK?), who came up with the idea in the first place, and “nobody got hurt”. Everybody does it, and you can go on a pilgrimage and repent for it later.

The view seemed to be that these are “our people” fighting “our fight” against “the others”. In return for their “sacrifice”, so what if they tumbuk some rusuks once in a while?

However, you don’t even hear such talk of sacrifices nowadays. That fig leaf that the corrupt used to hide behind is gone – let all the corruption stand in its full glory, and let’s exult in it.

No such thing as ‘free’ money

Here’s a perspective not often looked at. There’s no such thing as “free” money. You always pay for it one way or another.

A school for a community that costs RM10 million when it should have just cost RM5 million means there’s another community, a backward and isolated one that nobody cares about perhaps, that won’t get a school.

Factor in the clear correlation between education and a better life, and then count the number of people and their children who remain in poverty because of this neglect. The number is not trivial.

Same thing with a hospital that costs RM100 million when it could have been built for RM50 million. This means another district somewhere will be missing a hospital. And correlate that with life expectancies, quality of life etc.

The same applies to airports, highways, housing or anything else where public money is spent. One built for the price of two means only one gets built, and others elsewhere who likely need it even more won’t get it.

The inflated prices due to corruption result in inflated costs passed on to the end users, which will continue pretty much forever even if all the bribe money has been recouped. And corners will be cut too, to accommodate the many greedy mouths to be fed.

The debt created by corruption will be paid by our children, in the form of higher taxes, fewer hospital beds, more expensive medicines, fewer scholarships, roads and bridges that won’t be repaired etc. Pretty much a textbook definition of a failed state.

The rich and the capable will flee the country, taking their brains, industry and taxable revenues, and leaving the poor even worse off than before. The corrupt, who would have stashed away money for the next seven generations, won’t care.

You could ask, reasonably enough: Don’t the poor care about their future? Of course they do, but they have been brainwashed into focusing on distractions, especially race and religion. This has been going on for decades, and for many this is the only reality they know.

The religious dimension

You could ask what are the religious dimensions to this? My parents taught me that breaching the trust bestowed on you, by doing something wrong that harms others, is a bigger sin than doing something wrong unto yourself, but nowadays that belief doesn’t seem to have much currency.

In fact, there seems to be a new school of religious thought that appears to justify and rationalise such corrupt deeds, out of fear of powerful earthly forces perhaps, or just from their own desire to make hay while the sun shines.

Starving people in flooded homes will question whether the food they’re offered is halal or not (in all likelihood it’s halal), but no one questions the cash handouts from politicians (which in all likelihood, isn’t). That’s where we are now.

Get them to focus on the trivial things, and they will forget about all the big things such as their future being stolen away from them. Get them to accept poverty and hardship on earth as a ticket to heaven, and the goodies are all yours for the taking.

Curse of the elites

Coming back to todays’ issue – the Great Malaysian Flood of 2021.

The powerful political and social elites who took money corruptly in approving the exploitation of our resources, such as rampant logging in water catchment areas, are clearly responsible for the damage and the resulting misery (and deaths).

But it takes two hands to clap: the business elites who used their economic power to bribe their way into getting rich are also just as culpable.

When we take down entire forests just to sell a few pieces of choice timber, we destroy the ability of the hills to absorb heavy rain, preventing landslides and siltation that otherwise would destroy land and people downstream.

Once damaged, the hills will become even more vulnerable to a subsequent deluge and create even greater flooding, more suffering and deaths.

The flood might have still happened, anyway, and people might have still died – but better drains, dredged rivers, smarter town planning, higher quality construction, more capable rescue capabilities etc. would have ensured that the impact would not have been as bad.

You and I know who the corrupt ones are. Nowadays, they don’t even bother to hide. Yet, we let them get away with it. Partly because we’ve allowed them to make us dumb, docile and delirious with made-up issues rather than face the real one – theft of our money, and hence our future.

The poor in our society have generally been happy to accept the occasional handouts from the corrupt.

They may now realise that the bags of rice given out near elections may cost them their property and livelihoods, even their lives. Or they might not.

As long as we continue to look up to wealth and power, and not to competence and integrity, and rationalise away what our moral and religious compasses clearly forbid, the price will keep getting higher.

And it will always be paid by the lowest member of society, who has nobody else lower than them to pass the costs to, except to their own children and grandchildren. - FMT

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.