Crime is unfortunately one of the major problems affecting the Indian youths in Malaysia. Although it is unjustly perceived by the uninformed or the misinformed Malaysian society, that a vast majority of Malaysian Indian youths are inclined towards crime, a little effort beyond just labeling them so cruelly, by doing some academic research and looking at scholarly pieces of work produced by experts in the related fields from years and years of in depth researches and studies would reveal the disturbing truth on the matter. The researches and studies reveal a clear pattern on the causes of crime. Poverty, poor education, income inequalities, injustices, discriminatory government policies, etc are all causes of crime, with poverty being the major cause. Hence, it is not difficult to understand why the Malaysian Indians, especially the youths, suffering from all the above, are drawn towards crime for survival.
As we do not have access to any true, bias free and trustworthy research results and statistics from the UMNO government on why a poor minority society like the Indians get involve in crime, we need to opt for other such information available around the globe as, in essence, human nature, regardless of nationality, culture, religion, life style, etc. is the same.
Proof through many such in depth and exhausting research work and studies are not hard to find outside Malaysia. A comparison of the United States to other rich nations in WHERE WE STAND, by Michael Wolff, Peter Rutten, Albert Bayers III and The World Rank Research Team, New York (1992), revealed that America has the worst crime rate in the world. The study showed that the most visible social problems in America do not stem primarily from race. They stem from poverty. The poor, both the white and the black, share the same approximate rates of crime. According to the study, race, is only important in that discrimination against the minorities has relegated a disproportionate number of them to poverty.
Isn’t this also a matter of fact as far as Malaysian Indian minority society is concerned? Why the Indians’ crime rate is much higher than that of the Malays and Chinese in this country? The answer is so obvious from the above mentioned study, which is Indians are the most marginalized and poorest of the three ethnic groups in Malaysia. Thus their crime rate is much higher than the ‘others’. As simple as that! And why are the Indians the poorest? Because 
Amartya Sen (2008) from Harvard University, in a lecture entitled, “Violence, Identity and Poverty” discussed two main approaches to explaining violence in the contemporary world. Besides culture of a society which is closely related to religious perspective, political economy of poverty and inequality is the major cause of contemporary global violence. According to her, there is indeed a considerable plausibility in seeing a connection between violence and poverty. From Afghanistan and Sudan to Somalia and Haiti, there are plenty of examples of the dual adversities of deprivation and violence faced by the people in different parts of the world. For her, it would be hard to think that the outburst of political violence in France in the fall of 2005 had nothing to do with economic and social deprivation of some people living in the parts of the country, feeling badly treated and neglected. According to her, given the co-existence of violence and poverty, it is not at all unnatural to ask whether poverty kills twice – first through economic privation, and second, through political carnage. She stressed further that terrible poverty will generate terrifying violence, threatening the lives of all. Given the visibility and public anxiety about wars and disorders, the indirect justification of poverty removal, not for its own sake, but for pursuing peace and quiet, has become, in the recent years, a dominant part of the rhetoric fighting poverty.
Malaysia is no exception to such economic disparity and adversity and their consequences! May 13 was nothing but an outburst of the Malays on losing their 
Another research by Campbell and Muncer (1990) entitled Causes of Crime: Uncovering a Lay Model revealed that unemployment and poverty, both resulting from lack of education, are two of the major causes of crime in the American society. Professor C. Kramer (2000), a professor of sociology and director of the Criminal Justice Program at the Western Michigan University, in his article on Poverty, Inequality and Youth Violence, explained that while many factors need to be considered on the lethal violence by young people in the United States, broader social and economic forces such as poverty, inequality and social exclusion shape most of the problem of the youth violence in America. He further argues that although the conservative commentators frequently assert that among others, crime and violence are the result of cultural decline and something called moral poverty, it is the larger social and economic forces that strongly affect the cultural and moral conditions of the American families.
Currie (1998, cited by Kramer, 2000) observes, “… there is now overwhelming evidence that inequality, extreme poverty and social exclusion matter profoundly in shaping a society’s experience of violent crime”. Research on poverty and economic inequality shows that United States by far, has the highest poverty rate and the biggest gap between the rich and the poor of any developed nations (Kerbo cited by Kramer, 2000). Cross national studies show that countries with a high degree of economic inequality have higher levels of violence (Gartner, cited by Kramer, 2000). Research also shows that even within a generally deprived population, it is the most deprived children who face the greatest risks of engaging in crime and violence (Werner and Smith, cited by Kramer, 2000).
This is also glaringly evident in Malaysia. Although there is poverty among the Malays and the Chinese, it is the Indian youths from the 70% poor Indian families, as part of the most deprived and marginalized society in this country, who are more prone to criminal activities.
Currie (1998) in Crime and Punishment in America concluded that the link between extreme deprivation, delinquency and violence, then are strong, consistent and compelling. According to her, there is little question growing up in extreme poverty exerts powerful pressures toward crime. The fact that those pressures are overcome by some Individuals is testimony to human strength and resiliency. The effects of extreme deprivation, delinquency and violence are compounded by the absence of public supports to buffer economic insecurity and deprivation and they are even more potent when racial subordination is added to the mix. And this … helps us begin to understand why United States suffers more serious violent crime than other industrial democracies and why violence has remained stubbornly high in the face of our unprecedented efforts at repressive control, she concluded.
Although Currie’s discussion is focused on the American society, there are clear similarities with what is seen and experienced by Indians in this country as far as their crime involvement is concerned. A vast majority of the Malaysian Indians living in extreme poverty do stay away from crime. Many of them brave themselves to work as car washes, lorry attendants, car parking attendants, garbage collectors, petrol station workers, odd laborers, security guards, toilet cleaners and in many other lower level jobs, strongly resisting the pressures toward crime. This, in the words of Currie, is the testimony to the general Indian society’s human strength and resiliency. Nevertheless, the less resilient ones, mostly in their prime age in life, extremely frustrated with all the deprivation, exclusion, marginalization and discrimination by the UMNO government which kill their dignity as a human being as well as the hope to earn a decent living for survival, as a chain reaction and reciprocal of the same, unwillingly become victims of the political crime designed from higher above.
Like the conservative American society, the biracial political parties and racially segregated Malaysian society at large wrongly assert that Indians’ involvement in crime is due to their morally and culturally bankrupt states of being; crime among Indians is a racial and never a national problem, etc. Even if they know the truth, would they be angle enough to let the Indians share the economic pie equally by pressuring the government to take measures to solve their problem of poverty? No, Anwar Ibrahim has neither the time nor the interest in solving Indian problems, so he admitted. So are the rest in PR including the Taukeh Lim Guan Eng and the most kind and compassionate Malay Muslim and religious supremacist Hj. Hadi Awang.
Whose fault is it when the Indian youths, so well socially engineered by the UMNO government with such blatant discrimination, from womb to tomb, with full support of the passively supporting public, develop an attitude of nothing-to-lose in attempting crime for livelihood? As warned by Amartya Sen (2008), “terrible poverty will generate terrifying violence, threatening the lives of all”, it is up to the Malaysian society to continue labeling the blatantly discriminated Indians as ‘criminals’ and worsen the situation or to take responsibility and ensure a concerted effort in not only fighting poverty but also in ending the blatant discrimination against Indians for the sake of justice and humanity!
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