The often spoken about Ninth Malaysia Plan is about to be launched soon. The government was supposed to eradicate poverty among every race in the country. This is enshrined in the so-called NEP or whatever the name they called it subsequently. Whilst the government can claim a significant achievement in eradicating poverty amongst the Malays in rural areas, there are still significant pockets of them. The Ninth Malaysia Plan should address this problem as a priority.

Then comes the poor Indians who are thrown out of the estates once the estates are sold for development. They migrate to the urban areas only to become gangsters and drug pushers (many of them) because of their poor education or total lack of education. Therefore they are ignorant even about applying for their identity cards thereby becoming stateless in their own country.

The MIC 's priority must be to help these poor souls. MIC president S Samy Vellu should sack MIC leaders if he finds even one Indian without an identity card in that leader's constituency. This is the only way we can avoid the plight of stateless Indians.

MIC should also make sure Indians are fairly represented at every level of the civil service, the police and the armed forces. Indians should make up between eight and 10 percent of these institutions. They should also be represented likewise in government-linked companies like Telekom, TNB etc. This will drastically reduce their unemployment rate and help avoid them being thugs and criminals.

Indians don't have the numbers to compete for their full quota in institutes of higher learning. The government should therefore lower the entry requirements so that at least eight percent of the graduates are Indians at any given time.

MIC has been shouting for a five percent stake in the nation's corporate wealth for the last 25 years. I hope a mechanism will be introduced for Indians to achieve this under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

Finally, it should be the cardinal policy of the government to see that its citizens have the basic necessities of life in this country of plenty.