The quantum leap that never was

When the government launched what was called the K-Economy Master Plan in 2000, it was the result of a national consultative process aimed at fully realising Vision 2020.

While that initiative never quite captured the same fanfare as the Vision 2020 speech itself, the then prime minister returned to the same theme at the Global Knowledge Conference Malaysia in 2001. He said:

If Vision 2020 was the first strategic step into the Information Age, Malaysia is now ready for the second step. We are now ready for a concerted, comprehensive and committed quantum leap which will re-make Malaysian corporations and re-invent Malaysian society. This second step will be called ‘Strategic Initiative One’ of the 21st Century.

What, then, was the real agenda for that quantum leap? Was there even one?

What was the actual plan or programme for such a concerted, comprehensive and committed quantum leap – one that would remake Malaysian companies and re-invent Malaysian society?

In my publication of 2001*, I argued that we needed to first understand what this “so-called new age” really was. What were its features? What does such a paradigmatic change actually involve? This article tries to unravel some of those features.

According to Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm is a set of theories, standards, methods and beliefs accepted as the norm by most experts within a particular field of study.

The Kuhnian paradigm consists of four critical elements:

Does Malaysia currently have a shared set of meanings and values around progress and development? Do these concepts carry similar meaning in Sabah and Sarawak as they do in the peninsula?

Do the different communities in Malaysia hold similar or different metaphysical assumptions about the same set of values? Do they share a similar worldview? If not, how do we bridge the gaps in perception?

From the answers to those two questions: do people in Malaysia hold a similar set of values about what is good, right, true or necessary, as experienced in their actual lived places and spaces?

And finally, who are the exemplars of such values and beliefs, and of the structures needed to translate them into society through real-life programmes for change and improvement through the processes of national politics?

* Mindset change: the greatest challenge of the K-Economy master-planning process, Pentadbir 25, 2001

Dr KJ John, an Aliran member, is a former senior civil servant and lifelong advocate of values-based leadership. A firm believer in truth, transparency and transformation, he has spent the past four decades serving the nation – in government, in writing and in thought.