I read with great interest Dr Mazeni Alwi's article, [#1] Grapes of wrath grow well for the wretched [/#] (March 31), not least because I believe John Steinbeck to be one the great writers of this century.

When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America - still recovering from the Great Depression - came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations - the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labour conditions - in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge.

Alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from the weather to authorities and California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it, "They're a-workin' away at our spirits... They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, there comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."

As Mazeni is keen to point out, there are indeed many similarities between the Steinbeck's poignant characters and the present-day 'characters' of the Malaysian underbelly. It is a common story - the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer. How many times have we heard that particular clich? In fact, the rich-poor divide is now greater than it ever has been since the days of colonialist imperialism. No matter how we choose to paint the picture, the fact of the matter is that the poor in Malaysia (and indeed, the world over) have lost what little voice they once had, in the face of changing national priorities.

We no longer live in a democracy; we live in a plutocracy. Put simply, this means that the majority of the wealth we create is filtered upwards to the power-elite, the ruling classes. Adolf Hitler once said, "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." He was talking about how docile we, the public, are. How gullible we are, how malleable, how easy to manipulate and propagandise.

In the current climate, the Malaysian poor can but sit back and rely on our government to look after their interests, yet the government does nothing for the people they claim to represent. The Malaysian mainstream media spout trivia, fabrications, and lies - everything except what we need to hear. The front pages are plastered with irrelevancies about Grand Prix's and new airports, about tallest buildings and where the latest Starbuck's outlet is opening.

Every labour union formed in the last 40 or so years, every step taken to ensure better working conditions, better wages, a shorter working week, rights for the child, rights for women, equality for ethnic minorities - all have been opposed by the forces of the state. During every demonstration, the police turn out as usual, to represent our ever-greedy masters and their property, to protect the wealth the power-elite have accrued. Wealth, which was stolen from those who produced it.

We all speak about unconditional love when it comes to our own children, and yet by our inaction we are indifferent to what is really happening in the real Malaysia, where people starve, bleed and die for the ringgit.

'Unconditional' also means loving our kids enough to bequeath them a nation where the rights of every individual are guaranteed. To take the stance that 'the children are our future' is just passing the buck, because by our inaction, there will be no future for our children at all.

The point, after everything, is that human decency remains intact, if somewhat scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the poor, is now a part of Malaysian history (even if the government chooses not to allow it into our textbooks).

When, in Steinbeck's epic, the California of their dreams proves to be less than Edenic, Tom is told by his mother: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on."

The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon - Rosasharn, as they call her - the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "You got to," she says, simply. And so do we all.