Dr. Toh Kin Woon's book, "Malaysia's New Economic Policy in its First Decade," published by GerakBudaya, is no ordinary book.

First published as a PhD thesis by Dr. Toh and launched by Dr. Jomo Kwame Sundaram within the walls of GerakBudaya 42 years after the time of its completion, it was a work once withheld on account of ‘contrarian’ views, given that Gerakan was then part of the Barisan Nasional coalition alongside UMNO, and only published after much persuasion and a long political career on Dr. Toh’s part.

Malaysia’s New Economic Policy In Its First Decade provides a profound examination of Malaysia's political economy, and its lessons are relevant for Malaysians even today in a world where the state continues to play a crucial role, and in which Malaysians continue to live amid the far-reaching implications of the New Economic Policy and its implementation continue to impact us all as a nation.

Moving swiftly beyond a theoretical explanation of a state, the book delves into the Malaysian state’s role in economic development from historical facts to hard numbers and data as it moves through evidence of the state's favoritism towards capitalist interests, the development of the NEP, and the ways in which state power often distorted policies to suit capitalist interests.


In particular, the book highlights how the NEP and its intents were warped by state power repeatedly, providing a complex picture of the state and shows us how, as much as the NEP had helped with eradication of poverty, its dual objectives of poverty eradication regardless of race and restructuring of society to reduce and eventually eliminate the identification of race with economic function had been distorted towards these class interests, echoing that old proverb that goes…”The road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

The tale of the NEP is a journey that the historically inclined will favor, and one that Dr. Toh delivers bounteously - the book brings us back to a rich age of colonial exploitation and comprador capitalists, manifesting a world of colonial capitalist class interests as it tells us about taxes on opium, liquor, and tobacco, each regressive to the working class and how goods favored by the capitalists remained untouched, to the British departure from a Malaya they had never intended to leave as anything but a colonial enterprise; then, it brings us into a post-colonial era during which Malaysia as a nation reckoned with a world divided economically by the British and left to reckon with the scars of May 13th as it moved into a modern age with deep questions about equity, race, and national identity that the state knew that it had to answer as it grappled imperfectly to manage the concerns of all of her major races, falling into the many traps that Dr. Toh cogently points out for us along the way even as he concludes his thesis on the question of education, noting that education is not a sufficient condition for the reformation of our society - what would be, then? That is the question that it seems to ask as the reader comes towards its closing pages, only to encounter what seems to be an exercise for the reader, reflective of what the author seems to have wanted to tell us all along:
That there are no easy answers.

Make no mistake - the divisiveness that had once served as justification for the NEP remains a significant issue in contemporary Malaysia, where cost of living crises affect people of every race, and affirmative action policies continue to spark debate and controversy as Malaysians debate university quotas and job allocations, screaming angry Facebook comments into social media enclaves as they articulate genuine sufferings.

And that is exactly why Malaysia’s New Economic Policy In Its First Decade remains relevant in 2024.

Despite being written over 40 years ago, it remains a deeply relevant reminder to evaluate facts rather than cleave to emotional tendencies, to recognize that things can go wrong (a problem that likely would remain unresolved for many Malaysians who might not know how the NEP went wrong, let alone what it even was or what it was meant to accomplish!), and to seek knowledge rather than just push forward on the basis of our blinding emotions; above all, it is a reminder to continue having these debates and to continue to learn even as we confront the new era.

This is a wonderful book for anyone who wishes to understand the underpinnings of affirmative action discourse in Malaysia, the political economy of post-colonial states, and the tale of the NEP - it was crucial in shaping my personal understanding of the economic history of Malaysia, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand Malaysia as a nation better.

Purchase the book here!

Link: https://www.gerakbudaya.com/?tck=6671...