With regards to Jacob George's letter Samy Vellu has done a lot for community , I would like to give my viewpoint on MIC president S Samy Vellu's contribution to the Indian community in Malaysia.

I would certainly agree with George that Samy Vellu has done a lot for the community. However, I would ask whether his contribution is in keeping with his position as a MIC leader and a minister who has been in the cabinet post for over 20 years. Below is Samy Vellu's report card.

Indians constitute about 8% of the country's population of 22 million but own only around 1.5% of its national wealth. This is old data but relevant.

Indians make up 14% of Malaysia's juvenile delinquents, 20% of its wife and child beaters and 41% of its beggars.

Indians make up less than 5% of all successful university applicants.

Samy Vellu's contribution should reflect a steady improvement over his 20 years to show that he's successful. He simply fails because we didn't see any improvement at the macroeconomic level. He should work through his branch leaders to improve the Indians' livelihood and leave the petty politics to other MIC leaders.

Things like helping Indians to secure places in foreign varsities or getting scholarships are appreciated but can be done by people below him as well. Why does he need to do all this? Does doing all this make him a good leader?

For an analogy, let's take a labourer and a manager. The labourer can do a lot of things every single minute and would be perceived as 'doing a lot of work' but the manager get 10 times more things done through his supervisors who manage the labourers. The manager will look at strategic direction and his indicator would be simply improvement over a long period of time.

From my viewpoint, Samy Vellu is working as a labourer and not as a manager. What we expect from him is to be a manager and he has all the opportunity as a minister. He needs to be playing in the major league and not in the backyard leagues, so to speak.

Obviously he has failed as a leader from the data above. This doesn't mean that his contribution is not appreciated - it's just not what he supposed to do at his MIC or minister level.

In MCA, we have the MCA Help Desk which handles petty issues. This is exactly the same work as what Samy Vellu is doing now. But Samy's help desk opens at 4am - that's a credit.