Shared Prosperity Vision must bring clarity and coherence

THE arresting themes of the Shared Prosperity Vision (SPV) and Budget 2020, and popular reactions to them, reveal yearnings for a system that serves everyone and looks out for all underprivileged persons. They also show Malaysian tendencies to deflect or defer honest reckoning with the seemingly complicated and divisive issue of race-based policies.

It need not be so complicated and divisive. Malaysia has a chance to reset the narrative, and perhaps forge a new consensus, by first clarifying precisely where public policy guarantees basic needs and redresses poverty, and then distinguishing the specific policies targeting population groups as beneficiaries, whether bumiputra, Indians or Orang Asli.