If land and countries could be compared to girls, this country would be the one girl you fell hopelessly in love with the second you looked at her face; her every gesture and lilting laugh was an expression of stunning radiance. He remembered the air being thick with almost painful beauty, every breath a cocktail of evaporating dew and fresh rain and the sweet smell of lupin blossoms. It was a country of majestic mountains with jagged peaks capped with snow; of turquoise blue lakes caressed by gentle winds; of little towns with small market fairs and quaint corner cafes. Bright green hillocks rolled across the landscape like errant children while the towering mountains watched sternly like annoyed parents.
And so, back in his own land after only a fortnight of holiday, he thought of his paradise as he walked amidst reality. As he dodged piles of rubbish and miscellaneous McDonald’s wrapping on the sidewalk, he thought of the streets where the only litter were fresh yellow leaves scattered by the wind. As the blades of lallang weed smeared dirt and mud over his shoe, he dreamt of fields of brilliant green and peaceful grazing sheep. The emails from his friends who had made the move were beginning to persuade him. A person with your skill set would be heavily in demand over here. You’ll earn your current salary in dollars instead of ringgit within a month of coming in. Why not move? Join us. Then we can open the newspapers and laugh about Malaysian politics like happily married men laughing at ex-girlfriends cleaning coffee shop tables.
Jerome K. Jerome, author of Three Men in a Boat (To Say nothing of the Dog) wrote that ‘each person has what he doesn’t want, and other people have what he does want.’ Married men despise their wives and lonely young men yearn for those very same spouses. Flat broke families have eight little mouths to feed, while couples with enough financial ability to pay off the national debt die with no heir to their fortune. And, most prominently, while tourists and expatriates lust for the warm sunshine and heavenly food of Malaysia (Truly Asia), citizens of this very same country are leaving to seek greener pastures elsewhere.
The World Bank’s Malaysia Economic Monitor released a report in November last year describing its study on Malaysia’s brain drain, including a survey on the over one million Malaysians living abroad. The report called this group the ‘Diaspora’ and elucidated the main factors that caused them to leave Malaysia. The report has been hotly debated in Malaysia and contested, even rejected, by certain political groups.
I, for one, am withholding my opinion. Just because I have internet access and a book or two about politics or statistics does not qualify me to speak for the one million Malaysians overseas. I am not a professional political commentator. I am a 20-year old with access to a computer.
But I have come into contact with those who have chosen to set sail (or wing) beyond Malaysia borders. Many of my friends, people I have known since secondary school, are now overseas. I miss them, of course. We pulled pranks on each other, gotten into more than a few fistfights (I lost), vied for the attention of the same girls, and frantically copied homework answers from one another ten minutes before class was due to start to avoid the wrath of our teachers.
Then, come the end of Form Five, they begin to leave. Many of them migrate to Australia or New Zealand. One or two head for the United States. Communication dries up, as it always does following physical separation. Friendship dims into the background as fresh, new connections are drawn up with new friends and acquaintances. So it is natural, whenever I have the opportunity, to ask my old friends why their families have chosen to uproot themselves from this land, with its familiar scenery and familiar people, and plant themselves in fields elsewhere.
‘My parents are concerned about the state of education here. Prospects seem to be brighter abroad.’ A friend remarks matter-of-factly.
‘The entire office politics—heck, politics itself—in Malaysia is a joke. My dad is through with all of this. Why work to death and shear years off his life when the returns for his effort are so low? He says he might as well go somewhere he is appreciated.’ My friend pauses before giving a little laugh. ‘Frankly, I agree wholeheartedly.’
‘I’ve got an auntie living there. She’s given my parents stellar reviews of the place. Besides, I’ve secured a spot in a university close to her home. It would be really convenient.’ May I ask why your family members decided to emigrate in the first place? I decided to ask. She shrugged. ‘She headed there to study. After completing her studies, she saw no reason she should come back.’
Soon, I too will join my friends as part of the group of Malaysians living abroad. There’s a difference, though. Most of my friends are under the so-called FAMA (Father and Mother) scholarship to study abroad. I however am one of the Public Service Department’s scholarship recipients, sent to India to pursue studies in medicine. I am not only expected, but required to return to my homeland. The government will be shouldering the brunt of tuition fees and accommodation expenses for my five-and-a-half years of medical school, supporting me through the one year of compulsory internship at an affiliated hospital, and providing a monthly stipend of anywhere from five hundred to seven hundred US dollars depending on my university. To sum up, by the time I do return, the government would have spent up to seven hundred thousand ringgit to turn this bespectacled nerd into a halfway-decent medical officer.
There is a bond associated with the scholarship, of course. All medical graduates are attached to the government for a period of ten years, over which we are barred from engaging in any private practice. And to many of my friends, this is an unacceptable length of time. Imagine yourself half a decade down the road seeing your peers earning twice, then three times your salary, in a hospital with clean floors with a well-stocked cafeteria and with Kenny-G playing gently from the speakers in the corridor. Then look at yourself, earning just enough to get by, in a government hospital where the emergency ward treats heart attacks while the cafeteria causes them. The lure of a green field just over the fence of government bureaucracy is too much for some scholars. Some pull a few strings to be let off the hook and switch to private hospitals. Many don’t bother to return to Malaysia to begin with. The grass is always greener in every field except the one you have to stay in.
I read fellow ReMag writer Nicholas’ article onMalaysia’s investment in the Public Service Department scholarships with great interest. He commented quite astutely that the private dreams of each student do not take precedence over the needs and requirements of the country. I have to agree. While financial stability and comfort are important factors in choosing an occupation, as the recipient of a scholarship you have a commitment to those who have contributed to financing your studies.
More importantly, the notion that the grass is greener on the other side is appearing to be an illusion. Private practice is notably more alluring compared to work in the public sector. However, in a lecture at my college a few days ago, Prof. Rohaizak Muhammad (Assistant Director of PPUKM) highlighted the fact that by 2017, the year we medical students return to Malaysia, the surplus of medical graduates would have risen into the ten thousands. This includes the medical scholars who are required to serve their bond period in government hospitals. Think about it: the government that has stipulated that you must return to work may not be able to find a job for you to begin with. As for seeking jobs overseas, the prospects look even dimmer. Most corporations and healthcare bodies are experiencing a far more acute excess of professionals applying for positions in their establishment. Consider that it is now an employer’s market, and most employers are becoming increasingly selective in their screening of potential employees. Consider that this issue is compounded by the political and nationalistic issues in some countries regarding foreign talent. If the land overseas is really a gold mine, the miners have now scraped rock bottom and are digging up earth, and the mining company is about to downsize.
The core issue if you are a medical student, however, is the reason you decided to pursue medicine in the first place. I had the privilege to speak with a doctor once, and he remarked: ‘If you are looking to get rich you are clearly in the wrong job.’ Granted, there are doctors who earn large salaries and acquire enviable prestige. But if you are to slave for over two decades and strain your body to its limits and then some, just to attain that same goal, you need a stronger drive to keep you motivated. Where was that initial spark of altruism, that streak of idealistic naivete that you would someday ease the suffering of others? Perhaps every medical student should make a thorough self-examination the day he or she graduates, and ask if that selfless drive is still there.
The problems we face here in Malaysia are not peculiar to our country, in my opinion. Bad politics, a weak meritocratic system and racial discord are issues that plague almost every country in existence. Think about Greece, with its fiscal health in the red; or Great Britain, still recovering from the aftermath of the London riots. Every country, every single country, has that same coffee shop at the corner lot where its citizens rant and rave about the problems of their nation and the incompetence of their leaders.
I would not be qualified to condemn you if you leave the country for good. You are, after all, the foremost authority on the well-being of your family and yourself. Yet if you find that those issues you run away from continue to pursue you beyond Malaysia’s borders, do not feel surprised. They are not Malaysian problems. They are universal. The seeds of avarice and dishonesty are sown into every human heart and sprout everywhere like weeds in a field, hiding in between the blades of healthy grass, convincing you that the grass truly is greener across the fence.
And if it is a better life you seek, the answer could be right here at home. No matter how cynicism thrives in society, you do have the power to make a difference. Your choices may not seem to matter right now, whether it is choosing to stay in public service, or choosing to voice your opinions aloud. Yet while a single drop of rain may do nothing worse than stain a car window, an entire sky’s worth of raindrops can stop traffic. And as more and more raindrops are carried by the clouds into horizons beyond, and as the sun beats ever more harshly on the land, your one little raindrop means more now than it ever has.
‘The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.’
– Robert Fulghum
Benjamin will be leaving for India in July or August 2012.