Katta Bala. That was how his friends and followers called him. Though the name sort of mocked his height  he was just over five feet tall  but he didn't really mind. Perhaps he thought it added to the mystic surrounding him. He took to gangsterism when he was 15.

He did so as not to feel afraid. Gang membership gave him a sense of self, and belonging, and, of course, power. Before he turned 20, he was already leading a gang, a somewhat ruthless one, known only as Lapan.

I used to hang out with him, partly because he was also my relative, but mostly because I genuinely liked him; he had many stories to tell, and he was kind towards me. And moreover, since I was kind of bookish, hanging out with him made me cooler, at least that's what I thought.

Anyway, sometime in June 1991, few years after we had parted ways, he and eight others robbed a house belonging to a doctor and ran into the doctor's father, an octogenarian, who, for whatever reason, chose to fight the unwelcomed guests. They spared him no mercy: they just killed him with a screwdriver.

It didn't take much time for the police to arrest the culprits, who, like most common thieves, hadn't really bothered to cover their tracks well. A couple of months later, they were tried and found guilty of manslaughter in the second degree (and a few other counts, which I now forget). Bala was sentenced to seven years in prison.

But Bala was ebullient! Though in cuffs, his pimproll was still intact. His friends, or rather, his followers, were full of admiration: "Katta Bala is going in for murder!"

Violence and machismo

I don't know how typical is Bala's story. By some accounts there are thousands of Balas out there, wasting away their most productive years. According to commonly cited statistics, there are 38 Indian Malaysian gangs with 1,500 active members involved in extortion, drug pushing and robbery.

Also, the majority of those thugs banished to Simpang Renggam, it so happens, are of Indian ethnicity; in 2000 alone 189 of them (or 45.6 percent of the total) found their way there.

Some say it is because of want. These youngsters, having been deprived of the certainties that existed in rubber plantations, are now cast adrift, forced to scrape a living in cities that both lure them with glitter and vengefully expel them with harshness that even the hardiest may find indomitable.

Since the only game in these concrete jungles is the survival of the fittest, they form bands, essentially for self-protection and preservation, but occasionally to prey on other. Some conquer, some perish, but new players continue to enter the arena and the game continues with no end in sight.

Well, that might be true, others say. But ultimately it is the fault of the culture. Indian culture is decadent, made worse by Tamil movies that glorify violence and machismo  a classic case of life imitating art.

Solution: Get rid of these stupid movies. A ban is needed. Some go even further. Even rituals, if they are archaic and outmoded (religious or otherwise) must go. Only then will there be a new dawn.

Yes, yes, you are quite right, but it is the failure of the Tamil education system that has led us into this miasma. This view, a somewhat unpopular one, is held by a small minority of better educated, middle-class Indian Malaysians.

Ministry hijack

If only the Indian Malaysian youths were better educated, not unlike their Chinese counterparts perhaps, they wouldn't be tempted into unwholesome activities. They would have something to look forward to and would be crowding the varsity halls instead of the jail cells.

Now, it is tempting to throw into the pot all the above ingredients and make a stew out of them: all of them are responsible-lah! And, I suspect, this is what most of us do, which in reality (and rather sadly) reduces us into inaction. By blaming everything, we blame nothing!

So, when S Samy Vellu, head of the Malaysian Indian Congress and the de facto leader of Indian Malaysians, announced on Oct 12, 2000, that MIC would address this problem by devising programmes that are (in his own words), total and holistic, non-ad hoc, proactive, professional and monitored in a systematic way, one couldnt but feel overjoyed.

It was also reported that these programmes would be undertaken at three levels  national, state, and local. Finally, I found myself saying, Something truly sensible!

Moreover, the Cabinet Committee on Social Ills, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahamd Badawi, by then had already accepted MIC's proposal. All that was left was for the finance ministry to look into the specific programmes proposed by MIC and determine if the project was financially feasible and grant MIC the RM20 million it had requested.

As if recognising the gravity of the moment, Samy Vellu asserted confidently, "Our target for this year is 40,000 Indians, 100,000 in 2001, 200,000 in 2002, 300,000 in 2003 and 200,000 in 2004." (The Star, October 13, 2000).

However, trouble and confusion started almost immediately. Barely two months after uttering those confident words, Samy Vellu was crying foul: the RM20 million was allocated to MIC's social and research arm, Yayasan Strategic Sosial (YSS); it should not be allowed to be hijacked by the National Unity and Social Development Ministry! (The Star, Dec 11, 2000).

The twist

And furthermore, on Dec 16, 2000, Samy Vellu told assembled reporters that to disburse the RM20 million grant, MIC would set up a new welfare organisation the following year  and not in the same year, as one would expect if the promise to help 40,000 Indian Malaysians were to be kept. (The Star, December 16, 2000).

Curiously, we wouldn't hear anything about this RM20 million grant or MIC's solution to arrest the Indian Malaysian youth problem for another year. Not even in the exclusive interview that Samy Vellu gave to two New Straits Times reporters when the subject was broached.

This total silence was particularly baffling because gangsterism was cited as among the main reasons for the Petaling Jaya Selatan clashes that took place last March. If anything, in view of the new development, we should have heard more about the project, not less.

This unexplained, and, as it would turn out, year-long, silence would only be broken on Dec 14, 2001, when Abdullah  who also chaired the cabinet committee that accepted MIC's proposal more than 14 months ago  having finally understood (in his words) ... there has been an increase in social problems among the Indians, announced that RM20 million will be spent over four years to fight these ills.

But there was a twist. The money, would be channelled not through YSS, as earlier proposed, but through the National Unity and Social Development Ministry. (NST, Dec 14, 2001).

Now, it is uncertain if this money is in addition to the RM20 million grant that was supposedly allocated to YSS on Oct 12, 2000, or if it is in fact the same money, only now approved by the government.

In any case, Samy Vellu, undeterred by the rebuke, presented a  yet another?  working paper that outlined the measures that were needed to solve the problem. (NST, Dec 14, 2001).

MIC dawdling about

And guess what, less than a week later, Samy Vellu would announce an  again, a yet another?  ambitious five-year project costing RM13.5 million to combat social ills in the Indian community. (malaysiakini, Dec 20, 2001).

According to him, a sum of RM540,000 had already been given to the National Unity and Social Development Ministry and this sum apparently would be channelled through the YSS (one wonders what happened to the welfare arm that he promised would be created a year earlier) to conduct 30 programmes nationwide.

"Grassroots leaders are the catalysts for change," he also announced, "We have ... asked local leaders to act as our partners."

That was slightly over a month ago. To my knowledge, no grassroots leader has been contacted about this matter. In fact, barely a week ago, one such person from, well, let me just say a well-established social group with a good record, wrote to me lamenting how he is yet to hear anything from MIC or YSS, even though he had in fact submitted a working paper to YSS with the objective of working with or in YSS.

Seriously folks, what do our leaders think we are? Pakadaik-kaaikal? Play items with no brains nor memory? If the target set by Samy Vellu more than 15 months ago had been met, the programmes would have touched the lives of at least 140,000 Indian Malaysians.

But no, no such thing ever happened. All the talk about total and holistic, non-ad hoc, proactive solutions are forgotten; MIC continues to wallow in inaction and inefficiency.

In the meantime, Indian Malaysian youths continue to rot in mental and physical prisons. And what do our leaders do? They dawdle about, deluding us into thinking that they are doing something, when in reality little, if anything, is being done!

Good behaviour

RM20 million! Where are you? How many Balas do you need before you finally show your face? Or are you nothing more than a hoax, a dangling carrot perhaps that exists only on paper and in words and nowhere else?

By the by, my relative, Bala, was injected back into the wider society a number of years ago. He wasn't the Katta Bala I knew; he was a wreck of his former self, full of regrets and doubts.

When I last met him in 1998, he was also more ready than ever to preach the virtues of good behaviour, only that there wasnt anyone around to listen to him.

ES is a freelance writer and the editor of VettiPechu where this article first appeared.