Poverty isn't a pandemic invention. It has distressed the poor and those who have sought to find a cure for it to no end. But the year-plus-old pandemic has turned poverty into penury for some. The white flags seem to signal such distress, if their appearance in several places in the country is to be read so. We should be worried about action at three levels. Start with Putrajaya.
The government cannot be said to be stingy on aid packages. On the contrary, eight of them in less than two years amounting to RM530 billion can only be said to be generous. But generosity per se is not at issue here. What is being asked is: is the aid going to the people who deserve it? Apparently not, if the white flags are to be read as signals of genuine distress.
This is puzzling because the eighth package worth RM150 billion is targeted to reach the deserving through their lawmakers and other means. Perhaps it is a question of timing. Perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye. Be that as it may, the government may need to revisit stimulus and aid policies and how they are implemented nationwide.
Politicians, especially those in Putrajaya, should know by now that policy and its implementation do not always march to the same drumbeat. The unprecedented "white flag" phenomenon may just be an extreme version of how out of step the two are. Not that there weren't any such missteps in pre-pandemic Malaysia. But then we were not as distressed as we are now.
Before, poverty was a tiny percentage of the population, or so we were told by the government of the day. To them, it was just a footnote. And so we never learned from our pre-pandemic history how the best of policies can be destroyed by poor or bad implementation. Post-pandemic Malaysia isn't going to let politicians and civil servants off the hook so easily.
Next, we have to admit to failing at a community level. How did we not know that our neighbour and his family went to bed hungry? How did we not know that he lost his job during the pandemic? How did we not know that he had used up all his savings and had no money to pay his rent? This is a moral failing at the community and human level. And failing at the religious level, too. Let's not forget a religious wisdom that's more than a millennium old: others have a right over what we have amassed over the years. Compassionate beings recognise this wisdom and act accordingly. We must never wait for our neighbours to raise the white flag.
Finally, the white flags tell us we have failed to act at a national level. "National" doesn't just mean the government. Government policies and aid packages alone would not be able to eradicate poverty. Businesses, too, must be part of the national drive to make white flags unnecessary. Some economists say capitalism can be compassionate. Greedy capitalists want nothing of this. Even when it means the beneficiaries of compassion are their employees. During the good times of the pre-pandemic days, a call for living wages was shouted out of the factory floors. Living wages, to them, eat into their profits. Greedy capitalists need to take a leaf from selfless Malaysians who rush to help those in need. Being good is the business of being human.
