Western countries are not less corrupt than Thailand because their leaders are cleaner. It’s because they have more effective control systems in place that are preventing them from becoming corrupt.
nearly all my peers (in the 40s) planned to migrate and will execute their plans in the next 5 years. reason, we have a rotten education system that trains the young to replicate rather than to think and be skillful.
on top of that, the manner to which wealth and opportunities are distributed is unbearable. the poor are not getting the help they need to ‘leap out of the fire stove’ and likely condemned for another generation.
before going out to retrieving the drained brain, stop the brain drain instead. statistics telling us those migrating are increasing in number each month. and with them, they take their skills, experience and MONEY elsewhere.
Perhaps, as my good muslim friend says, all this is due to Alhamduillah.
As long as the Malaysian government continue to promote and defend ethnic based policies that favors the majority race, you will continue to see “brain drain” from the country.
All is not lost as the country welcoming these skills workers will benefit from their contributions. Some one once said, “brain drain is better than brain in the drain.”
Born and raised in the silver state ( now a disgraced silver state), I was offered a place in an Australian University after my F5. But my parents were too poor to even buy me a bus ticket to the next town.
I had to cycle to work, about 10 kms one way and mum used to pack lunch. We needed the money so we could put food on the table.
But we preserved, I completed my Phd from UK and rest of family members are professionals in their own fields
I forsaw this coming, but it came too fast, the corruption, declining education system.
I bribed the cops, when they were wearing ” Saya tak rasuah” for small errors like cutting on a double line etc. I paid my dues, my taxes only to be marginalised when the UMNOputras were having a good time looting the country.
I decided to leave with my young kids. My new country treats me well, I work hard, pay my dues and the government is transparent. nobody asks me on my cultural background or my sexual orientation.
I have been going back for holidays and believe things are only going to get worse.
I love the food, the smell of Malaysia but i think my kids and the rest of us are better off in our new country
LesAbbey – 31
I can lay back and enjoy the Wikileaks but Thaksin’s supporters must be dreading each cable from the Bangkok embassy coming out. What happens when they get to things like the CTX scandal?
In case you didn’t know the Bangkokbiz news had retract and apologize for the news (which they got awarded for) for being inaccurate and misleading couple of years ago (I think in 2008), if you want to I believed its still on their website but this is ages ago so it could already been deleted.
Furthermore, the cable thus far did more damage to the establishment themselves than to Thaksin. The only negative thing that came out of the cable regarding Thaksin was “Thaksin was corrupted so as his opponent” that phase alone doesn’t quite explain anything (who didn’y already know all that?). Furthermore, the person who said this go out and bash other nations like Japan, Malaysia, and India.
On the other hand, we get to see the in side of back door discussing with people that we will never know what they are up to, ala the Privy Councilors.
I am a rare malaysian indian who made a decision to call Australia my new home. I was brought up in KL, and both my parents are patriotic malaysians who worked in the civil services all their lifes.
Trust me, I was very patriotic in my schooling days and will celebrate merdeka cleberation on Dataran every year. But things changed after SPM when i realised the racism part of malaysia. I saw my malay msulims friend were offered up to 4 different courses in the IPTA, and i was left with none. My parents could not afford overseas educiation for me and i had 2 other younger siblings.
I managed t scrape through a College degree in Engineering, and when comes to employment, i was the last to be considered becuase i am a non-malay, non muslim, and dont speak chinese dialect. The government agencies totally never responded to my application, and i wonder why.
Then i move to australia, and the headhunter told me, he was lucky to represent me because of my education and job background. To make things short now i am working for BHP Billiton as and engineer with 5 figure aussie dollar salary.
My question malaysia is, why can BHP hire me and Malaysian govenment and private sector find it difficult to offer me a job.
Secondly i got a place in University of Queensland which is ranked 30 in the world but i can even secure a place in a local malaysian university.
Thirdly i dont wany my children to be discriminated like how i was, and i dont want them to tell me, “Dad, you knew malaysia is racist, why u never do anything about it”.
Now i am proud to call my self australia (not australian malaysian indian), and Malaysia is just a place i was born in, and i am not going to bother to contribute in any way to our racist malaysian govenment. The only contribution i can make is fly through air asia every 3 years.
Evelyn’s research brings to fore key issues that have been assumed but not proven – or what every Malaysian knows but cannot say for sure. The causation or correlation can run several ways but importantly it provides empirical evidence of what are some of the key issues that push or pull the brain drain. Najib’s administration would do well to look at this study, enhance it and take corrective policy measures. Otherwise 1 Talent Corp, will be another pork barrel for people close to the administration to have plum jobs and international travel at the expense of the Rakyat.
I am one of the Chinese diaspora that left the country in 1969, got my degrees in the west , raised my family & stayed, returning periodically. I wish I can say the daily events I witnessed going down in the country as mildly comical & farcical, if not for the tragic fact that such a promising future for the country’s young has been flushed down the proverbial toilet by the years of mismanagement.
The Country was blessed at independence. Relatively under populated, endowed with envious abundant natural resources & world class agriculture management & infrastructure, hard working & entrepreneurial working culture, sound education, administrative & judicial systems left by the British, plus races that generally got along, with no major divisive religious fault lines.
Fast forward to 2010. The world is now an intensely compact & competitive planet, thanks to the internet & globalization.
And what do we have in Malaysia ?
Instead of focusing on rallying and uniting the population to bulk up to compete against other nations who are rapidly advancing up the learning curve in leaps & bounds, we are suffering a thousand cuts of internally inflicted wounds.
Who can & can not use the A word. Which race is the “chosen” & “privelaged” to receive the bigger slice. How do we handicap the faster running so the weaker can catch up. When is best time to use what language to teach maths & science. Constitutionally when do we not insult the monarchies.
The forgoing silliness is not going to end any time soon. All the “talent Corp” mumbo jumbo is just more of the same feel good – do squat largess for some crony to have some fancy title & spend the rakyat’s hard earned money.
I don’t believe that Santa lives in the north pole, and babies are delivered by fairy storks. I am staying put.
Good luck to those who are more hopeful. But then Badawi was also supposed to be the messiah.
With some imagination there are a potentially huge range of ways that close scrutiny of this kind of data could help us to better understand how countries like Thailand are thought about, reproduced, debated, etc, etc. Google is also making the raw data available so that if you have the statistical wherewithal you can have a crack at slicing and dicing the numbers yourself.
The spike of activity in relation to Burma around the time of WWII and the immediate post-War newly indepent years presumably reflects the Japanese invasion and the Allied war effort and its aftermath in a changing world where colonialism began to beat a retreat and American interest increased considerably in the country with the additional factor of the CIA involvement in the KMT occupation of eastern Burma .
It declined in the 60s with the military takeover and subsequent self isolation. Very little got out, even the anti-Chinese riots of 1967 and the consequent communist invasion on New Year Day 1968.
The Myanmar trend only began post-1988 starting with the official change of the country’s name. The new generation of Burmese is more inclined to use the term Myanmar referring to the people and their language as well as the country which also applies to outsiders to an extent despite its continued use by the US and Britain. This I guess would also in part explain the continued decline of the term Burma since the UN and other English language users conform to the official name Myanmar. I bet not every writer in the US and Britain will toe the official government line either.
It would be interesting to see if the two curves cross in the next say ten years. My guess is not if real political change happens and Myanmar reverts to Burma. It’s even worse than the Germans insisting on Deustchland instead of Germany, since the difference between Myanmar and Burma is only that of formal and colloquial in the Burmese language. Myanmar still sounds very stiff and formal to me.
IMHO, the surge in “Burma” references in the 40s and 50s is not very hard to figure out. It reflects war memoirs – think “Burma Road, ” “the Hump,” ” Merrill’s Marauders” etc, etc, etc. Aside from the OSS and their British comrades, there weren’t such memoirs to be written about Siam/Thailand.
From my own experience, which is, however, not based on systematic research, I ntocied that ethnicity is a highly significant variable. Especially Malaysians with an Indian background see no real perspectives for themselves (or the country) in Malaysia. It starts already with the difficulty to get a higher education and limited career opoortunities, even for those with an excellent education. The situation for Chinese seems to be quite similar. Both groups are discriminated in a double sense. Firstly, they are non-Malay or Bumiputra (not all Bumi-. are Muslims!), and secondly, they are non-Muslims. While the pro-Malay policy might be acceptable, the Islamization policy is far less acceptable for the non-Muslim Indian and Chinese.
It would be good, to have some data on time series of out-migration and ethnicity. I guess that quite recently better educated Malay leave Malaysia, which creates other problems. Perhaps the recent response of the government results from the out-migration of these Malay.
The effects of this brain drain are obvious, because it seems that not only skilled workers etc. leave, but in particular the highly educated specialists, which were supposed to be the backbone of Malaysia’s development towards a “konowledge economy”!
I was transfered to US last July. Whenever I go back to Msia, I’m constantly asked by friends if I’ve decided to stay in US. As of now, I still want to go back. Why? Because I know I can contribute to my country and this is the only way that the 1.5 mil Malaysian living abroad can stop this country from spiralling down to a parial state.
Note to Evelyn Wong : I’m staying at Rancho Cucamonga CA, about 20 mins from your college. I’ll be happy to catch up with another fellow Malaysian here. Please contact me if you decided to have another lively discussion about this topic over coffee.
I find it so tiring that every topic of conversation about contemporary Thailand ends up reiterating the same old arguments about Thaksin.
The Privy Council places less trust in Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn than the public? Ah, but they place less trust in Thaksin.
Abhisit’s military is torturing red-shirt and muslim detainees? Ah, but Thaksin’s extrajudicial war on drugs was even nastier, wasn’t it.
The royalty is being used as a tool to censor the media? Well, as we all know, Thaksin wasn’t exactly tolerant of the media either.
Pardon me, but it’s just so damn bloody-minded. Move on already! Such fixations on one man isn’t healthy and certainly can’t cure every subsequent ill that affects Thailand.
The Rakyat will be the judge and I’m counting on the fact that eventually the Rakyat will mature – and not just worry about “bread & butter” issues but higher order principles.
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Wikileaks and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
LesAbbey – 38
Western countries are not less corrupt than Thailand because their leaders are cleaner. It’s because they have more effective control systems in place that are preventing them from becoming corrupt.
The Thai response to Wikileaks?
[…] Lire la suite de la source originale: The Thai response to Wikileaks? […]
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
nearly all my peers (in the 40s) planned to migrate and will execute their plans in the next 5 years. reason, we have a rotten education system that trains the young to replicate rather than to think and be skillful.
on top of that, the manner to which wealth and opportunities are distributed is unbearable. the poor are not getting the help they need to ‘leap out of the fire stove’ and likely condemned for another generation.
before going out to retrieving the drained brain, stop the brain drain instead. statistics telling us those migrating are increasing in number each month. and with them, they take their skills, experience and MONEY elsewhere.
Perhaps, as my good muslim friend says, all this is due to Alhamduillah.
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
[…] Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?. […]
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
As long as the Malaysian government continue to promote and defend ethnic based policies that favors the majority race, you will continue to see “brain drain” from the country.
All is not lost as the country welcoming these skills workers will benefit from their contributions. Some one once said, “brain drain is better than brain in the drain.”
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
Born and raised in the silver state ( now a disgraced silver state), I was offered a place in an Australian University after my F5. But my parents were too poor to even buy me a bus ticket to the next town.
I had to cycle to work, about 10 kms one way and mum used to pack lunch. We needed the money so we could put food on the table.
But we preserved, I completed my Phd from UK and rest of family members are professionals in their own fields
I forsaw this coming, but it came too fast, the corruption, declining education system.
I bribed the cops, when they were wearing ” Saya tak rasuah” for small errors like cutting on a double line etc. I paid my dues, my taxes only to be marginalised when the UMNOputras were having a good time looting the country.
I decided to leave with my young kids. My new country treats me well, I work hard, pay my dues and the government is transparent. nobody asks me on my cultural background or my sexual orientation.
I have been going back for holidays and believe things are only going to get worse.
I love the food, the smell of Malaysia but i think my kids and the rest of us are better off in our new country
Wikileaks and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
LesAbbey – 31
I can lay back and enjoy the Wikileaks but Thaksin’s supporters must be dreading each cable from the Bangkok embassy coming out. What happens when they get to things like the CTX scandal?
In case you didn’t know the Bangkokbiz news had retract and apologize for the news (which they got awarded for) for being inaccurate and misleading couple of years ago (I think in 2008), if you want to I believed its still on their website but this is ages ago so it could already been deleted.
Furthermore, the cable thus far did more damage to the establishment themselves than to Thaksin. The only negative thing that came out of the cable regarding Thaksin was “Thaksin was corrupted so as his opponent” that phase alone doesn’t quite explain anything (who didn’y already know all that?). Furthermore, the person who said this go out and bash other nations like Japan, Malaysia, and India.
On the other hand, we get to see the in side of back door discussing with people that we will never know what they are up to, ala the Privy Councilors.
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
I am a rare malaysian indian who made a decision to call Australia my new home. I was brought up in KL, and both my parents are patriotic malaysians who worked in the civil services all their lifes.
Trust me, I was very patriotic in my schooling days and will celebrate merdeka cleberation on Dataran every year. But things changed after SPM when i realised the racism part of malaysia. I saw my malay msulims friend were offered up to 4 different courses in the IPTA, and i was left with none. My parents could not afford overseas educiation for me and i had 2 other younger siblings.
I managed t scrape through a College degree in Engineering, and when comes to employment, i was the last to be considered becuase i am a non-malay, non muslim, and dont speak chinese dialect. The government agencies totally never responded to my application, and i wonder why.
Then i move to australia, and the headhunter told me, he was lucky to represent me because of my education and job background. To make things short now i am working for BHP Billiton as and engineer with 5 figure aussie dollar salary.
My question malaysia is, why can BHP hire me and Malaysian govenment and private sector find it difficult to offer me a job.
Secondly i got a place in University of Queensland which is ranked 30 in the world but i can even secure a place in a local malaysian university.
Thirdly i dont wany my children to be discriminated like how i was, and i dont want them to tell me, “Dad, you knew malaysia is racist, why u never do anything about it”.
Now i am proud to call my self australia (not australian malaysian indian), and Malaysia is just a place i was born in, and i am not going to bother to contribute in any way to our racist malaysian govenment. The only contribution i can make is fly through air asia every 3 years.
Sorry Malaysia i made up my mind.
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
Evelyn’s research brings to fore key issues that have been assumed but not proven – or what every Malaysian knows but cannot say for sure. The causation or correlation can run several ways but importantly it provides empirical evidence of what are some of the key issues that push or pull the brain drain. Najib’s administration would do well to look at this study, enhance it and take corrective policy measures. Otherwise 1 Talent Corp, will be another pork barrel for people close to the administration to have plum jobs and international travel at the expense of the Rakyat.
A few other relevant articles on brain drain.
1. Tracing the brain drain (read here)
2. Foreign spouses and brain drain (read here)
3. Malaysia: Higher education goals (Read here)
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
[…] Evelyn Wong, Guest Contributor New Mandala December 20th, […]
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
I am one of the Chinese diaspora that left the country in 1969, got my degrees in the west , raised my family & stayed, returning periodically. I wish I can say the daily events I witnessed going down in the country as mildly comical & farcical, if not for the tragic fact that such a promising future for the country’s young has been flushed down the proverbial toilet by the years of mismanagement.
The Country was blessed at independence. Relatively under populated, endowed with envious abundant natural resources & world class agriculture management & infrastructure, hard working & entrepreneurial working culture, sound education, administrative & judicial systems left by the British, plus races that generally got along, with no major divisive religious fault lines.
Fast forward to 2010. The world is now an intensely compact & competitive planet, thanks to the internet & globalization.
And what do we have in Malaysia ?
Instead of focusing on rallying and uniting the population to bulk up to compete against other nations who are rapidly advancing up the learning curve in leaps & bounds, we are suffering a thousand cuts of internally inflicted wounds.
Who can & can not use the A word. Which race is the “chosen” & “privelaged” to receive the bigger slice. How do we handicap the faster running so the weaker can catch up. When is best time to use what language to teach maths & science. Constitutionally when do we not insult the monarchies.
The forgoing silliness is not going to end any time soon. All the “talent Corp” mumbo jumbo is just more of the same feel good – do squat largess for some crony to have some fancy title & spend the rakyat’s hard earned money.
I don’t believe that Santa lives in the north pole, and babies are delivered by fairy storks. I am staying put.
Good luck to those who are more hopeful. But then Badawi was also supposed to be the messiah.
Coverage of Suu Kyi release
Here is one more: The People’s Age
Google Ngram from Siam to Myanmar
Thanks for these comments,
You’re right: I don’t think there are any huge surprises in some of these Ngrams.
It is the prospect of analysing more unexpected word uses/choices over time where this technology could become really interesting. On Thailand here are some quick illustrations of how often certain concepts or words have been deployed: topics of study (politics, agriculture, history and culture), transliterations of Bhumibol compared to Phumiphon, political leaders, kings, and major settlements, etc.
With some imagination there are a potentially huge range of ways that close scrutiny of this kind of data could help us to better understand how countries like Thailand are thought about, reproduced, debated, etc, etc. Google is also making the raw data available so that if you have the statistical wherewithal you can have a crack at slicing and dicing the numbers yourself.
Best wishes to all,
Nich
Google Ngram from Siam to Myanmar
Nich and Dom,
The spike of activity in relation to Burma around the time of WWII and the immediate post-War newly indepent years presumably reflects the Japanese invasion and the Allied war effort and its aftermath in a changing world where colonialism began to beat a retreat and American interest increased considerably in the country with the additional factor of the CIA involvement in the KMT occupation of eastern Burma .
It declined in the 60s with the military takeover and subsequent self isolation. Very little got out, even the anti-Chinese riots of 1967 and the consequent communist invasion on New Year Day 1968.
The Myanmar trend only began post-1988 starting with the official change of the country’s name. The new generation of Burmese is more inclined to use the term Myanmar referring to the people and their language as well as the country which also applies to outsiders to an extent despite its continued use by the US and Britain. This I guess would also in part explain the continued decline of the term Burma since the UN and other English language users conform to the official name Myanmar. I bet not every writer in the US and Britain will toe the official government line either.
It would be interesting to see if the two curves cross in the next say ten years. My guess is not if real political change happens and Myanmar reverts to Burma. It’s even worse than the Germans insisting on Deustchland instead of Germany, since the difference between Myanmar and Burma is only that of formal and colloquial in the Burmese language. Myanmar still sounds very stiff and formal to me.
Google Ngram from Siam to Myanmar
IMHO, the surge in “Burma” references in the 40s and 50s is not very hard to figure out. It reflects war memoirs – think “Burma Road, ” “the Hump,” ” Merrill’s Marauders” etc, etc, etc. Aside from the OSS and their British comrades, there weren’t such memoirs to be written about Siam/Thailand.
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
From my own experience, which is, however, not based on systematic research, I ntocied that ethnicity is a highly significant variable. Especially Malaysians with an Indian background see no real perspectives for themselves (or the country) in Malaysia. It starts already with the difficulty to get a higher education and limited career opoortunities, even for those with an excellent education. The situation for Chinese seems to be quite similar. Both groups are discriminated in a double sense. Firstly, they are non-Malay or Bumiputra (not all Bumi-. are Muslims!), and secondly, they are non-Muslims. While the pro-Malay policy might be acceptable, the Islamization policy is far less acceptable for the non-Muslim Indian and Chinese.
It would be good, to have some data on time series of out-migration and ethnicity. I guess that quite recently better educated Malay leave Malaysia, which creates other problems. Perhaps the recent response of the government results from the out-migration of these Malay.
The effects of this brain drain are obvious, because it seems that not only skilled workers etc. leave, but in particular the highly educated specialists, which were supposed to be the backbone of Malaysia’s development towards a “konowledge economy”!
Why is Malaysia experiencing a brain drain?
I was transfered to US last July. Whenever I go back to Msia, I’m constantly asked by friends if I’ve decided to stay in US. As of now, I still want to go back. Why? Because I know I can contribute to my country and this is the only way that the 1.5 mil Malaysian living abroad can stop this country from spiralling down to a parial state.
Note to Evelyn Wong : I’m staying at Rancho Cucamonga CA, about 20 mins from your college. I’ll be happy to catch up with another fellow Malaysian here. Please contact me if you decided to have another lively discussion about this topic over coffee.
Wikileaks and Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn
I find it so tiring that every topic of conversation about contemporary Thailand ends up reiterating the same old arguments about Thaksin.
The Privy Council places less trust in Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn than the public? Ah, but they place less trust in Thaksin.
Abhisit’s military is torturing red-shirt and muslim detainees? Ah, but Thaksin’s extrajudicial war on drugs was even nastier, wasn’t it.
The royalty is being used as a tool to censor the media? Well, as we all know, Thaksin wasn’t exactly tolerant of the media either.
Pardon me, but it’s just so damn bloody-minded. Move on already! Such fixations on one man isn’t healthy and certainly can’t cure every subsequent ill that affects Thailand.
Surveillance in Burma
[…] (Linked to New Mandala: new perspectives on mainland South East Asia: http://www.newmandala.org/2010/12/08/surveillance-in-burma/ […]
The 13th General Election in Malaysia
@ Neptunian,
The Rakyat will be the judge and I’m counting on the fact that eventually the Rakyat will mature – and not just worry about “bread & butter” issues but higher order principles.
To this end, I do hope that Malaysians like yourself can support worthwhile causes such as MyOverseasVote and the Malaysian Civil Liberties Movement.