Features are usually pieces carried by the press that examine issues or social problems with greater depth in the hope that readers can be enlightened regarding matters of significance to them.

By and large, features that are run by the mainstream press often touch on matters that concern and interest the powerful, the rich, the professionals and the middle-class. These are also people who supposedly have the purchasing power to buy products and services that are advertised in the press by the commercial outfits concerned.

In certain cases, the newspapers concerned allocate regular sections or columns, such as on fashion, travel and motorcars, where the features cater to the wants, needs or interests of these groups.

There are certain mainstream newspapers, however, that do make attempts to run features from time to time that focus on development issues or problems associated with groups of people who aren't in the mainstream of society, such as the Orang Asli and also the underclass.

While these efforts are commendable in themselves, the way some of these issues and groups are tackled by the particular newspapers can be a cause for concern and therefore requires closer inspection.

Ancestral land

The Sun , for example, ran on March 5 a two-page feature with a dominant headline, 'Choosing the lesser of two evils'. This main feature was framed in such a way that the water needs of the two million residents of the Klang Valley appeared to justify the launching of the RM2.146 billion project of constructing the Sungai Selangor Dam in Kuala Kubu Baru, thereby overriding the interest and concerns of the minority Orang Asli in that area.

In other words, the piece essentially argued that the Orang Asli had to be displaced (if not sacrificed) for the larger good of the presumably productive and modern residents of the Klang Valley.

True, the Orang Asli, particularly the Temuan community, were given the opportunity to articulate their feelings in the piece, headlined 'Temuans uncertain of what is to come with move to new site'.

But this piece functioned as an appendage to the main feature and, thus, it wasn't sufficient to help readers understand substantially and appreciate the Temuan community's physical and spiritual attachment to their ancestral land where the gigantic project is taking place.

Put another way, in these features, the Orang Asli were situated in the context of the Selangor state government seeking new sources of water, as well as a conscious desire of the state to 'develop' the purportedly primitive Orang Asli.

The minority community was placed in the scheme of things of the mainstream society, merely responding to developments brought about by external factors. There apparently was no attempt made on the part of the newspaper concerned to centre stage the Orang Asli so that the dam project could be viewed instead in relation to the world view, culture and society of the Orang Asli community concerned.

Only then, perhaps, one could get to see how the dam construction fits in, if at all, with their culture, the flora and fauna, and the ecological balance which the Orang Asli fervently treasure and cherish.

Besides, this journalistic approach would give them the platform to share their rich knowledge of, say, biodiversity, natural medicinal resources, and their harmonious - not adversarial - relationship with nature, etc. with the rest of the Malaysian society.

Right prescription?

Incidentally, here it is worth quoting what University of Malaya law professor Gurdial Singh Nijar had to say about indigenous people and the importance of preserving biodiversity ( The Sun , March 8): "There is much to be learnt from their way of life and how they maintain the ecology. We have to learn that preserving biodiversity is not just for economical reasons but also because biodiversity is critical for humankind's survival."

Perhaps this is indicative of many of us, so-called modern people, who tend to fall into the trap of being presumptuous and patronising, as though we always have the right prescription for a better living for people outside of the mainstream.

The Orang Asli as a people surely, as intimated above, have a thing or two for us to learn from. This also goes to show that there is a need for us outsiders to be sensitised to the culture, beliefs, and lifestyle of the Orang Asli via several journalistic exposures of this community.

Of course, this is not the same as doing write-ups for, say, the purpose of attracting tourists where the community tends to be transformed into a curio, an object of fascination and even amusement.

In these related features, the Selangor state government and the project's concessionaire were indeed foregrounded to the extent of reinforcing the suspicion that the voices of the marginalised, such as the Orang Asli, are largely sidelined because they are numerically small and don't have political and financial clout. And this is further compounded by the usual depiction of the indigenous people as a group that lacks direction in life, and is primitive, ignorant and opposed to 'development'.

Easy answers may not be readily available, at least at the moment, to this dam controversy, but this certainly shows the need for elaborate deliberations, and also for us all to have a deeper understanding and appreciation of Mother Nature via, among others, the rich and invaluable knowledge of the Orang Asli. Furthermore, this understanding can act as a check against the predatory nature of some of the supposedly modern citizens.

Moonlighting settlers

An equally interesting piece carried by the same tabloid on the same day is one that touched on the question of socio-economic development and its impact on the ordinary people. The particular feature attempted to depict the despairs and desperation of the Felda settlers, especially after the financial meltdown and the violent fluctuation of the oil palm prices on the market.

Incidentally, oil palm cultivation was proposed as part of the compensation scheme for the Orang Asli near the Sungai Selangor Dam project because this, so went the official argument, would provide a certain source of income.

In this two-page piece headlined, 'Bleak days ahead for Felda settlers', journalist Yusuf Ghani stumbled onto a group of uniformed security guards while taking a stroll at Putrajaya's Wetland Park. He was initially scheduled to interview one of the ministers there who was assigned to help sort out financial problems faced by the Felda settlers.

The guards, as Yusuf later found out, were actually Felda settlers who commute to the ostentatious Putrajaya daily to seek extra income as guards. Life, we were told, had become unbearable to many of the settlers at the Felda Lakom in Pahang so much so that a few had to stop, for instance, sending their kids to school until they paid the monthly school bus fare.

Fluctuations in the oil palm industry and their social and economic implications were also traced over the years by the journalist via interviews with an academic and the settlers as well as data obtained from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board.

However, the piece would have been made more wholesome or holistic had it also observed in a more comprehensive fashion the material conditions of the people in the Felda plantation concerned, i.e. to bring to our attention the abject poverty and all its attendant social problems that are staring the settlers in the face. In short, allowing the Felda settlers to occupy centre stage.

On the other hand, the revelation of the impoverishment of the Felda settlers that was initially done within the luxurious confines of Putrajaya may well provide the needed contrast that should turn the heads of especially those who often tout the purported virtues of gargantuan projects. In a sense, this is bringing the periphery to the centre.