I read about our fellow Indians who are being thrown off plantations in Malaysia despite spilling sweat and tears on the soil for over three generations.

My cab driver has just arrived from India and tries to memorise the streets of Manhattan so that he can get me to my destination the quickest way possible. He's working hard to save money to buy an apartment.

If nothing else, this country the US, run by a dangerously incompetent president, guarantees property rights. After a long hard day at work, a man is entitled to a roof over his head that won't be taken away.

Yet for generations, we still can't take care of our own in Malaysia.

According to the Malaysian Charter on Human Rights Article 10: "Everyone has the right to full employment with fair working conditions, a safe working environment and with a humane and democratic management.

All workers must receive equal pay for the same job done irrespective of gender and ethnicity.

All workers must receive a fair and just wage that allows the person and family to maintain an adequate standard of living.

All workers are entitled to job security, the right to organize and join a union of the person's choice, and exercise the right to take all forms of industrial action in a peaceful manner."

As usual Article 10 is not even worth the paper it's written on. Why bother with the rhetoric?

Non-existent worker welfare and workers getting evicted from plantations are nothing new.

But once in a blue moon, there is a glimmer of hope - the Ipoh High Court refused to throw out the current batch of workers. Unfortunately my optimism is abated. Negotiations with Guthrie are still not going well.

A cog in a neo-classical wheel

Then I realise the plantation workers have already been defeated by definitions. We have inherited a British Empire pro-capitalist stance towards the plantations.

Using the simple, neoclassical growth model, growth boils down to the optimum combinations of technological change and capital represented by financial, physical and human contributions.

The workers are just an independent variable to be increased and decreased in proportions to fit the demands of the market economy. Accordingly there must be no state intervention into these workers' needs. This translates into indifference that lies at the heart of the classification of a plantation.

Even though a plantation comes under the rural sector in terms of its economic definition, it falls in neither the rural or urban zone in geographic area classification for development planning purposes, because it is in the category of private property. In other words, state and society cannot trespass on Guthrie's private property. This is kawasan larangan .

Arguably there was only one time when there was sufficient political will to take on the implications of this plantation classification. This was when the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW) lobbied from 1982 1990 to set a minimum wage. Their achievement was RM7.90 for 10kg of latex and at least 24 days of suitable work a month.

Unfortunately the cruel irony was that the minimum wage was insufficient to push the group above the national poverty line. To add insult to injury, foreign workers are hired to compete for plantation jobs and this effectively nullifies the small gains made by NUPW.

While negotiations go on with Guthrie, I'm afraid we know what the outcome will be. Plantation workers will go the way of the dinosaur. Plantation management does not have the incentive to rescue the workers from extinction. The economics of plantations clearly demonstrate efficiency in hiring foreign workers in the short run and shifting to cultivating land in Indonesia in the long run.

Paradigm shift

The only way out of this is if there is a paradigm shift. Prime Minister Badawi spoke on the need for human dignity in society while addressing Oxford scholars in early October. Hence the government needs to intervene in the name of social justice and do some semblance of honor to Article 10.

There has been too much political posturing by MIC - the party in the ruling coalition that claims to represent the Indian community people are distracted from economic issues and instead are caught up in identity politics that don't put food on the table for the poor.

MIC should have less talk on grandiose and abstract ideals and more action concerning practical, daily human experiences and difficulties. The PM has got to do a better job than these garrulous ethnic centered politicians who make John Kerry look monosyllabic.

There should be a shift from taking an economic laissez-faire approach to taking a social justice approach for the marginalised Indians. There should be a shift from taking Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' literally to understanding his ideas on how the wages of labor should be determined.

He said, "A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation"

Capitalism and the free market are predatory by nature. The father of modern economics saw the likes of Guthrie coming even way back in 1776. Such forces have to be dealt with.

Until then I hope that Alaigal and middle class NGOs will continue to pick up the ball dropped by MIC. The needs of plantation workers have to be continually highlighted even though they have been defeated by definitions. We mustn't forget them. As Milan Kundera said "the struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting".

TREENA WU is an economist and public policy analyst pursuing her PhD. She is currently residing in New York.