Mobility and Modernisation: The Federal Land Development Authority and its Role inModernising the Rural Malay. by Colin MacAndrewsReview by: Mah-hui LimThe Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Nov., 1980), pp. 197-199Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2055103 .

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BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTHEAST ASIA 197

the Buddhist theologian, Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, who in no sense can be seen as an instrument of the state. The work of Buddhadasa most certainly belies Ling's asser- tion that "critical or radical religious thought or action seems to be at very low ebb indeed" (p. 120). The right-wing religiopolitical movement under Kittivuddho Bhikkhu also appears to derive its political role far more from his charisma than it does from the power of the state working through the Sangha.

It is only in the last chapter, "Buddhists at War," that Ling finally takes up one of the issues that is indicated by his title the relationship of Buddhism to aggres- sive political action. This chapter can be seen, at best, as a prolegomena to what should have been a much larger inquiry. Given the vast numbers of people who died in the wars between Burma and Thailand (to mention nothing of the horrendous contemporary case of the murder of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Buddhist Cambodians by other Buddhist-at least by background-Cambodians), one would wish for a much more penetrating consideration of how the incorporation of Buddhist ideals of avoidance of aggression into the "inner psycho-dynamics" of individuals is overridden. Ling's vague invocation of a Freudian notion of giving vent to a "good deal of anger" in situations of war hardly suffices as an adequate answer.

CHARLES F. KEYES

University of Washington

Mobility and Modernisation: The Federal Land Development Authority and its Role in Modernising the Rural Malay. By COLIN MACANDREWS. Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1977. xiii, 212 pp. No price.

This book attempts to evaluate the success of Malaysia's Federal Land Develop- ment Authority (FELDA) in helping to bring about modernization. A policy- oriented study, it is based on conventional modernization theory, with its familiar assumptions. Fundamentally, it sees social change as a process in which a society moves from some traditional to the modern stage, the latter being invariably defined in terms of selected indicators reflecting the values of Western industrial capitalist society. In this case, specifically, modernity is achieved when rural Malays are transformed from subsistence to commercial farmers; become recipients of higher cash incomes and are socialized into their uses; indulge in new consumption habits, such as the acquisition of radios and cars; attain a greater level of geographical and occupational mobility; succumb to a controlled labor process; and are able to use money as capital (pp. 80-85). Never mind that, as this occurs, the Malay peasant loses control of his labor process, produces increasingly for the world market rather than his own needs, becomes subject to the violent fluctuations of world commodity prices, and falls victim to consumerism, for these are the hallmarks of modernity.

The first part of MacAndrews's book provides the historical, economic, and political context of land development in contemporary Malaysia; it surveys land development policies in the precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods, em- phasizing the increasing role of the state in modern times. It then traces the establishment of FELDA and the organizational changes it has undergone in the past two decades. The second part of the book evaluates the performance of FELDA as an "agent of change" at two levels: the overall level, and the level of individual land schemes. Four such schemes, two for rubber and two for oil palm, provide case studies for this evaluation. The book concludes with a summary of findings and a

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198 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

short discussion of the applicability of the FELDA model to other countries under- taking land development.

Although this is largely a straightforward descriptive work, one may still take issue with a number of its assertions and conclusions, many of them made too hastily or without adequate factual foundation. MacAndrews's assertion that the second major factor (after uneven regional development) explaining Malay poverty is "un- doubtedly cultural" (p. 29) ignores historical and contemporary evidence to the contrary. Thus, for MacAndrews the reasons for the restriction of Malay peasant entry into rubber cultivation are "unclear, but it would appear that as padi was the traditional crop par excellence of the Malay community British officials were at- tempting, by introducing a restrictive policy, to halt a Malay smallholder flight out of padi cultivation into rubber" (p. 15). Preoccupied with this supposedly benign paternalism of the British authorities, MacAndrews fails to mention the colonial state's systematic discrimination (well understood by Bauer thirty years ago) against the Malay peasantry and in favor of the plantation interests. His culture-of-poverty thesis, meanwhile, cannot explain the success of those many Malay peasants who, despite such discrimination, became more efficient producers of rubber than the plantation industry, until rubber restriction schemes were introduced to nullify their advantage. And although he cites Charles Hirschman's work, MacAndrews ignores Hirschman's major finding that most of the differences in income, occupa- tional, and educational achievement between Malays and non-Malays are attribut- able not to cultural factors, but to structural ones-such as the father's occupation, the place of birth and residence, and discrimination.

MacAndrews places much emphasis on FELDA's role in promoting occupational mobility. But while he sees Malaysia as marked by fairly rigid occupational strati- fication, he does not make clear what he understands by that term, precisely why he finds it applicable to Malaysia, or on what grounds FELDA's role and achievements in remedying that rigidity may be unique (as he claims they are). By occupational mobility, MacAndrews means three things: movement to new jobs, increased op- portunities for supplementary employment, and intergenerational upward educa- tional mobility. But the first index says nothing of mobility, only whether FELDA has provided new jobs. As for the second, one cannot credit FELDA with creating new opportunities for secondary employment unless it can be shown that settlers did not have such opportunities before joining FELDA schemes. It is common, how- ever, for peasants to have two or more jobs; a 1974 study by Huang showed that more than two-thirds of Malay peasant farmers did. As for the third indicator, intergenerational educational mobility clearly has little to do with FELDA but is found throughout Malaysia because of expansion of the educational system. More- over, it is hard to claim that FELDA has been a channel for upward mobility for many settlers on its land projects: 42 percent of those in his own case studies had previous occupational experience in business, the army, industries such as mining, or crafts such as carpentry. For them, becoming farmers may well have been down- ward mobility.

In view of FELDA's size and importance, MacAndrews's account would have been strengthened had he provided a more systematic and detailed analysis of its contributions; its costs (in 1970 it was the federal treasury's leading spender, incurring debts of U.S. $117 million and returning only U.S..$2.4 million); the wide variations in incomes and production among its 167 land schemes; the still unsettled issue of whether settlers are to acquire landownership rights; and its

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BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTHEAST ASIA 199

effectiveness in meeting the ever-growing problems of landlessness and un- employment. It is known that the agricultural sector has failed to reach its employ- ment creation targets, and while an estimated 10,000 families become landless annually, FELDA has settled only 34, 100 families in eighteen years.

The most useful and interesting sections of this book are those parts of the case studies that throw light on the problems of the illegal sale of produce by settlers to outsiders, the unexpected growth of a class of rich peasants who now hire wage labor to work their lands, and the limits of crop diversification programs. But it remains a disappointing and disappointingly uncritical study, offering little of interest to the general reader and little that is new to those already familiar with the issue of land development in Malaysia.

MAH-HUI LIM

Temple University

Public Expenditure in Malaysia: Who Benefits and Why. By JACOB MEERMAN.

New York: Oxford University Press (for the World Bank), 1979. xx, 383 pp. Figures, Tables, Appendixes, References, Index. $14.95 (cloth); $6.95 (paper).

In recent years, the concern for "basic needs" in developing countries has in- creased interest in the distribution of the benefits of economic growth, including the distribution of government services. This book presents a thorough quantitative study by a World Bank economist of the distribution to Malaysian households of the benefits of certain large public expenditures designed to fulfill basic needs. Included in the analysis are public spending in Malaysia for education, medical care, public utilities, and agriculture.

The study makes an important methodological contribution to public expendi- ture analysis in developing countries and thus is of major interest to practicing economists in the fields of public finance and economic development. Briefly, Meerman seeks to measure the distribution of the benefits of allocatable public outputs (services provided by government that can be directly allocated to individual households) through the calculation of costs of producing those particular benefits. Using detailed household data on the consumption of public services (derived from a small sample household survey of peninsular Malaysia in 1974 and extrapolated to the national level), he "charges" recipient households with the average cost (derived from govern- ment cost data) of providing each unit of the services consumed-such as a year in school, a hospital or clinic visit, electricity, piped water, or an agricultural loan. This "charged cost" then measures the benefit accruing to individual households from public expenditure on these services. For descriptive statistical and multiple regres- sion analysis of their relative benefits, the households are subdivided by per capita income, race, region, and town size. The public costs of per capita benefits by household classification within each subdivision are compared with the implicit norm of equal per capita costs (and benefits) per household.

As the author himself points out, this study can be seen as "primarily an exercise or an operation in measurement.... Analysis of policy issues receives less attention" (p. 5). Certainly, there is a rigorous, even laborious, attention to reporting the detail of the measurement procedure, combined with a carefully qualified analysis, which the noneconomist reader will not find easy reading, despite the straightforward, if

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