The Indian dilemma - short memory

I bought the Hindraf DVD outlining its blueprint for the betterment of Indians on Thaipusam day and watched it along with my mother. My mom always watches the programme Vizhuthugal on Astro Vaanavil and TV2 Tamil news where BN blows it’s own trumpet that it is a caring government doling out goodies and the proposed national celebration of Ponggal. I stopped listening to and reading mainstream news a long time ago whilst my mother depends on it for information of the goings on.

Basically, in that DVD, Hindraf outlined its six-point blueprint during the group’s fifth year anniversary celebration last November. With all that said and heard, one day my mom came up to me and said that BN seems to care for Indians with all the feel good festivities organising and goodies galore and told me that she would vote for BN since BN seems to have repented. She is also sizably concerned about riotous skirmishes that might take place if PR takes seat in Putrajaya.

Now, this is the problem of Indians here, the Indian dilemma, prevalent especially among the aged and those in rural areas, my mother included. We tend to settle for temporary provisions and succumb to gratification when our festivals are given hype. We have a short memory and are driven by gratitude which is knowingly preyed on by the ruling coalition. And, fear mongering is another factor that would make unthinking Indians become BN’s vote repository again.

The dilemma of Indians here is that they are happy if they are given a fish a day rather than learning the skill of fishing and upgrade the skill in order to develop themselves and BN is capitalising on this stumble of ours. This trait alone befits the claim that Indians are pathetic beggars. Why get angry when others call us beggars when we act like beggars?

Indians here don’t have ahead of time and critical thinking. Our kids don’t get seats in public universities scholarships despite being more than qualified, their spirits, crushed, ambition, quelled, potential and capability, repressed and yet for a meager RM500, a packet of rice, few cans of sardine and other groceries and a nationwide Ponggal celebration and we are more than willing to lick the boots of BN goons and cast our votes to the very political entity that denied our existence and our contribution to the building Malaysia for the past 55 long years.

These goodies galore and the celebrations are nothing but kiss ass gestures to gain the canvass of the Indian community back for BN. We must ask ourselves, why only now BN has come up with the term Nambikei and is giving us a literal yet non sustainable windfall? What were they smoking in the period of 55 years of rule? Why only after failure of getting 2/3rd majority is BN paying attention to Indians and why is the handouts parcel executed so close to the general election?

Is it because they had a sudden enlightenment? Is it because they have turned over a new leaf and sincerely want to serve the Indian community? No! BN is doing this for its own political survival and this Nambikei thingy and the splurge are their 11th hour attempts. It is do or die. Najib wants to preserve his position as PM; that is his only motive.

If Najib is truly sincere to uplift the Indian community sincerely he should have implemented long term nitty gritty uplifting policies and supplementary monetary aid the minute he got sworn in as our PM, in genuine