Our country belongs to our children

IN today’s column, I want to talk about a little storybook by Enid Blyton that only now resounds deafeningly in my mind as an important contribution to the idea of nation-building.

I can never get used to the strange looks I receive whenever I go to a university in Malaysia and tell the students that this country belongs to them and that they not only own this country but also have two different kinds of “servants” – the civil servants and the ministers and prime minister.