Yayasan Strategik Sosial's executive director Dr Denison Jayasooria had called for an aggressive state intervention to address the plight of the Indian working class in Malaysia ( Why Indian M'sians have been stiffed ).

Strangely, it is the same Jayasooria who commented a year ago that majority of Indians have benefitted from the government's developmental policies, only 30 percent have not benefitted. Now he says that the Indian working class is in a sorry state of affairs. Since the working class consists of more than 70 percent working class, it can therefore be assumed that there is a big discrepancy in what Jayasooria said some time back and what he is saying now.

Jayasooria is calling for aggressive state intervention to assist Indians, but then he forgets that he is part of an organisation that actually belongs to the MIC, a weak component of the Malaysian state. In other words, Jayasooria forgets he is part of the state establishment and that he should in some ways be directing the questions he has posed to the state to himself.

Even if Jayasooria is not directly involved in the decision-making of the state apparatus, he should not forget to direct some of his concerns to the MIC, the party that his paying his salary and in some ways responsible for misleading and abandoning the Indian community. He should ask his immediate boss, S Samy Vellu, as to what he has done to alleviate the sufferings of Indians, which could be aptly described as Malaysia's 'third class' citizens.

Jayasooria has a short memory, he has conveniently forgotten that one of his writings on Kampung Medan was quoted extensively by the authors of a recent textbook on ethnic relations to state that Indians were responsible for the Kampung Medan ethnic strife. To date, he has not heeded the call of many Indians organisations and the DAP for his resignation.

Samy Vellu the so-called 'defender' of Indians in the country has condoned the actions of Jayasooria by not reprimanding him for his dangerous and mischievous statements on the Kampung Medan episode.

Jayasooria should not engage in empty rhetoric about the sad plight of Indians; he himself has a small role in the present predicament faced by Indians. Knowing very well that there would not any state intervention on behalf of Indians, he tries to be the champion of the community. Yet he is the one is primarily responsible for making highly irresponsible statements about Indians as though they were the cause of the Kampung Medan tragedy.

The best thing Jayasooria can do for the community is to have the courage to tend his resignation immediately.