Recent thought on poverty

Abstract

As a subject "poverty" has been discussed in Malaysia for over fifty years. In my address to the Persatuan Ekonomi Malaysia Konvensyen in March 1974 I described Za'ba's efforts in 1923 to draw attention to poverty as one of the main problems confronting the Malays. I was so encouraged by the response to my paper that I translated it into Bahasa Malaysia and submitted it to Utusan Malaysia. This will appear together with several other pieces about Za'ba in a book, Jejak-Jejak di Pantai Zaman, to be published by the University of Malaya Press in the near future. Here I am going to try and clarify some of the key issues that are associated with the concept of rural poverty in Malaysia. As professional economists, I am sure you are aware that the term poverty" has now attained a fairly respectable status. When I spoke and wrote about rural poverty a decade or more ago, I was dubbed a hypercritical theory-bound trouble-maker. One VVIP once said, "There is no poverty! Everywhere one goes, especially in the rural areas, one can see smiling people. How can there be poverty in such a case?"