This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on October 9, 2017 - October 15, 2017
When it comes to music choice, I am not the most experimental and adventurous of listeners. I have my favourites and I stick with them. Furthermore, the reason why bands like Blink-182 and Oasis became my favourites was not because I dropped into a record store (remember them?) as a teenager and just tried whatever seemed interesting but because I heard Don’t Look Back in Anger and What’s My Age Again on radio, and friends recommended Champagne Supernova and Dammit.
Therefore, I am somewhat of an ignoramus when it comes to new music that does not come on the radio, depending only on friends to introduce it to me. I am aware that these days, Spotify exists to — as a friend puts it — “open new worlds of musical possibilities”, but maybe I am too comfortable with my present music to really bother.
It seems tiring. And so, when I first heard New Slang by The Shins while watching the movie Garden State, I asked a more enlightened friend of mine, “Hey, this sounds great. Are they new? Why haven’t I heard it on the radio?”
Well, I got a look that basically said, “Ugh, don’t you know anything?”
And that was how I learnt about indie music — loosely defined as music produced independently by major commercial record labels or their subsidiaries.
I thought about this recently when I reread a blog post of Chris Blattman, professor of Global Conflict Studies at The University of Chicago. It was titled, “Real World Development Indicators, version 2.0”, which was meant as an alternative to the common indicators of well-being in nations such as gross domestic product, the Human Development Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. Blattman considers indicators such as “Proportion of NGO websites not written in English or French”, “Number of tall buildings not occupied by the government or the United Nations”, and “Number of wrecked planes near the main airport runway”.
So, as you can see, some of these are slightly tongue-in-cheek, but there is some truth to these indicators, particularly to poor countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fortunately, Malaysia is an upper-middle-income nation, but it is still a developing one. As such, I thought, in light of all the work on thinking of the future via Transformasi Nasional 2050, why not come up with a set of indicators specific to Malaysia’s context that we do not measure at the moment, but we certainly could. A list of indie development indicators, if you will.
Before my proposed list, here are a couple of ground rules:
First, no self-reported survey data. I want to see what actions people take; after all, actions speak louder than words. So, this rules out stuff like the Gross National Happiness, which, in my opinion, is grossly overrated in the first place.
Second, it must go along the lines of Blattman’s blog post, down to very specific instances. With that, here are my proposed 10:
1. Probability that cabinet ministers and senior government officials seek medical treatment in our own country (adapted from Blattman).
Actually, my sense is that Malaysia does not do too badly on this already. Of course, we should not get complacent but continue to improve our healthcare system. Furthermore, it would be great if we could develop the capacity to be world leaders in complex medical procedures.
2. Probability that cabinet ministers and senior government officials send their children to public primary and secondary schools in our own country.
A variation of the healthcare one mentioned above, but this makes sense. If the government can argue that we have a world-class education system, then their actions should back their talk. They should have skin in the game by sending their children to public primary and secondary schools. Maybe then we will see a more serious effort to implement true education reform.
3. Probability that upper-middle-class (and above) Malaysians choose to pursue tertiary studies in local universities.
This naturally follows on from point 2. I fully recognise that studying abroad, particularly in Western countries, is a real privilege and that privilege usually comes with having upper-middle-income parents. When more of these parents choose to send their children to local universities — out of choice, not out of limited funds — then our universities become real institutions of choice.
4. Probability that a given Malaysian is tri-lingual.
Let’s be honest. We are a relatively small country in a world of giants. English happens to be our top secondary language because we were colonised by the British. Otherwise, if we had been colonised by the Spaniards, estaríamos hablando Español (we would be speaking Spanish). Hence, if the world is becoming more globalised and a particular Asian country to our north is going to play a bigger role in the world, maybe we should learn that language too. Survival of the most adaptable is the rule, after all. Or learn French, German — but let’s try to be tri-lingual. It’s good for business too.
5. Probability that we do not look down on others for their poor English.
It just means that someone is trying. Let’s try to help them.
6. Proportion of population that has visited local museums and art galleries.
An important part of economic development is the ability to fulfil, more and more, of Maslow’s needs all the way to the point of meeting self-actualisation needs. Research has shown that a good way to fulfil self-actualisation is by appreciating societal arts and culture. The more Malaysians we have who do that at our museums and art galleries, the closer we will be to fulfilling, as much as possible, the Maslow needs.
7. Proportion of population that becomes teachers, caregivers, social workers and related careers.
I think it is clear where our priorities as a society are when occupations such as teachers, care-givers, social workers and nurses become ones of choice. They are perhaps our most important nation-builders.
8. Proportion of population fined for double-parking.
Not only is this a positive step towards good civil behaviour by drivers as well as implied improved infrastructure, it may also reduce incidences of scratches on cars, flattened tyres and other forms of retaliatory behaviour. A win-win all round.
9. Proportion of population across all age groups that becomes actively involved in politics.
In many ways, I agree with Aristotle, who argued that politics is the best way to inculcate the virtuous life in the citizenry (of course, it can also do the total opposite). As such, I would love to see more active participation in politics — the self-determination of our nation — going forward, whether at the community, local, state or federal level. As Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”
10. Size of the gender gap in Malaysia.
I have written previously about the gender gap in the country as well as policies on how to fix it. The basic idea is, let’s remove all social barriers that prohibit women from becoming whatever they choose in society, whether in politics, business, social life or home life. It is not just a worthy target; it is a necessary one.
11. Bonus (taken from Blattman): Per cent of undergraduate students taking a real major, rather than development studies.
Ouch.
Nicholas Khaw is an economist with the Khazanah Research and Investment Strategy Division
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