ON the surface of it, there is much to admire about the government’s blueprint for the Indian community.

Low-income ethnic Indians stand to benefit from an injection of RM500 million into unit trust investment scheme‎s. More Indians will be given places in public universities, polytechnics and colleges. Cash-strapped Indian students will be given funds to further their studies.   Also, Indians who have been in Malaysia before 1957 will be given citizenship.

Prime Minister Najib Razak said that some RM1 billion would be committed to the 10-year Malaysian Indian Blueprint.

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Institute of Ethnic Studies (Kita) principal research fellow Denison Jayasooria said the recently announced blueprint was a welcome effort by the government to raise the standard of living of the Indian community here.

“Previous recommendations were not cabinet documents, they didn’t have federal funding,” Jayasooria told The Malaysian Insight, referring to a 1974 initiative to help the Indian community.

“This time around, it is different. This came from the government.”

Jayasooria, however, warned that Putrajaya must now walk the talk and ensure the RM1 billion aid reaches the target group.

He pointed out that how this is going to be implemented is another question as nothing much was said about the delivery mechanism and how Putrajaya was going to reach the target groups.

“At Putrajaya level, the micro level policy planning is good enough for the next two to five years, up to 2020. But now is about the delivery mechanism, what they didn’t give are details on how they are going to reach the target groups.

“So far, it is only a policy direction.

“There wasn’t a lot of operational guidelines and that needs to be worked out. Yes, this is definitely better than before, but the way ahead requires far more work,” he said. ‎

“For this blueprint to be effectively implemented, you need to reach the poor living in quarters, in a flat, that is the challenge. ‎– April 24, 2017.