A study of modern Malay literature of the immediate post-war years inevitably points to the role of Singapore as the centre of literary activity. After the war, Singapore ranked as the most important port in the region, attracting trade and business from all over the world. As a cosmopolitan city, it was a focus for foreign tourists, artists and scholars and held the promise of a lively cultural life. Its many libraries, the University of Malaya (1949) and Nanyang University (1955) combined to make it an ideal centre for literary activity. However, Singapore's importance, especially in the context of the development of Malay literature of the period, lies not only in its strategic location as an international sea-port. It is also tied up with the larger and more important overall climate of the day. In Singapore, political, social and economic forces combined to create an environment which brought into being a style of literary activity which was to leave a distinct mark in the history of modern Malay literature.

The 1940s were significant in the Asian region as a period of intense struggle for independence from colonial rule, with Indonesia gaining its independence in 1945, India in 1947, and Burma in 1948. Under the influence especially of the political struggles in Indonesia, the 1930s saw the growth in Malaya of a number of political organizations in Pahang, Negri Sembilan and Perak. In May 1937, Ibrahim Yaakub and a few others including Ishak Hj. Mohammad founded the Kesatuan Melayu Muda (KMM – Young Malays Association). Openly anti-British and radical in outlook, the organization advocated fighting for independence by aligning itself with Indonesia. During the Japanese occupation, progressive political movements were encouraged and Pembela Tanah Air (PETA – Defenders of the Motherland) was formed. This was a paramilitary group supported by the Japanese. After the Japanese surrendered and British took over control of the country, the Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Sa-Malaya (PKM - Malay Nationalist Party) was founded.

It is possible to distinguish four types of tropical forests: wet evergreen or rainforest, moist deciduous forest, dry deciduous forest, and open woodland. Rainforests and wet deciduous forests may be grouped together as tropical moist forests (TMF). About two-thirds of the world's TMF consists of rainforests that develop in areas receiving between 4,000 to 10,000 mm. of rainfall per annum. They are evergreen and are genetically and ecologically very rich. Hoist deciduous forests develop in areas of lesser rainfall (1,000-4,000 mm. annually).

One of the results of the U.N. World Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 was an increased international awareness of the seriousness of the current trends in the loss of forest cover and growing stock in the developing countries of the tropical world. Among the recommendations of the Conference pertaining explicitly to this issue was one which called for the continuous monitoring of the world's forests in collaboration with the FAO, UNEP, and UNESCO.

In the decade after the Stockholm Conference a number of studies of the world's TMF were published. These were 1argely attempts to evaluate and synthesize heterogenous data of varying quality and reliability. Although the final figures and conclusions arrived at by the authors varied in detail, all were unanimous in their views that the world's TMF were being depleted rapidly, in many cases beyond critical thresholds (see Persson 1974; Sommer 1976; Myers 1980; the Global 2000 Report 1981).

Estimates of the rates of deforestation varied considerably. Sommer (1976) reported that the total area of TMF in the mid-1970s was 935 million hectares. This was 40 per cent less than their previous global coverage. His computation of the annual TMF loss was 11 million hectares (1.2 per cent per annum). In a later study Lanly and Clement (1979) put the annual loss at 5.6 million hectares. This figure covered only those TMF that were permanently removed. At the other end of the scale, Myers (1980) estimated that 20 million hectares of TMF were being destroyed or seriously degraded each year.

Sources

The sources on boria are fairly limited, consisting of short articles, passing comments in wider studies of theatre, and scattered notes. Boria was first mentioned by H.T. Haughton (1897, pp. 312-13). According to him it was first brought to Penang in 1845 by the 21st Regiment of Madras which had been transferred there to garrison the fort. A song and dance form, it was played by the Indian Muslims of the regiment for ten days in the month of Muharram when they had holiday leave to celebrate the annual Shi'ite festival of mourning for Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammed. Under the designation of the Muharram festival therefore, sources on boria date back to 1845 according to Haughton. In 1558 J.D. Vaughan (1970, pp. 116-75) mentioned it as an activity of the Jawi-Pekan of Penang. Another significant early source is the Penang Riot Commission Report of 1868 (hereafter referred to as the 1867 Riot Report). In this repct investigation into the cause and effects of the Penang riots 1867 revealed that two rival Malay associations, the Red Fia and White Flag societies, formed a few years earlier to perform in the Muharram festival were allied to Chinese secret societies and were involved with them in the riots. The committee's proposals in the report led to the future confinement of activities to religious festivities in their own village areas. Though there is no information in the report on boria as a drama form, it does provide us with a contemporary source on the locations and political activities of some of its actors and performers.

R.J. Wilkinson (1910), a Straits Civil Service Officer and noted Malay scholar, discussed boria as a form of Malay amusement. He compared the boria of Madras to that of Penang and established that the resemblance was only in name, for the show as then known in Penang had a totally different form.

In 1985, further research was carried out to focus on two areas: 1. the relocation of certain industries from other countries, in particular from Japan, to the ASEAN countries; and 2. the environment necessary to speed up the process of transfer. The research studies attempted to identify constraints perceived to be responsible for the slow pace of redeployment and to formulate measures at national, bilateral, and multilateral levels to enhance the process of industrial development in ASEAN.

In this research, industrial restructuring is defined as the process of bringing a country's industrial activities in line with its existing or emerging comparative advantage in order to make more efficient use of its resource and skill endowments. It also involves the manipulation and adjustment of economic parameters such as investment incentives, prices, wage levels, exchange rates, and tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Consequently, the country research studies aimed at generating information and recommendations, based on the experiences of various firms, for industrial development in the ASEAN region. A key indicator of successful redeployment of industries to the ASEAN countries based on comparative advantage is the ability of the recipient country to compete in the world market for these types of manufactures, evidenced by a rising share of manufactures in the country's export total.

Background on Selected Industries

The common industry chosen by the research teams from the ASEAN countries for their case studies is the electronics/electrical industry. This industry is chosen because of its significance in the industrial development strategies of the ASEAN nations. It not only accounts for a large segment of industrial investment and employment, but also reflects very significantly the dependence of the ASEAN countries on such investments from Japan and other developed countries. Furthermore, it has been perceived that there are within this industry economic activities in which ASEAN countries have or are gaining comparative advantages. This in turn implies potential opportunities for economic co-operation between ASEAN and Japan.

Market-places are for circulating goods outside the traditional system of reciprocity and redistribution. At the early stages, trading that was conducted outside the village or town was made with foreigners to whom there were no social obligations, as depicted by Polanyi in the case of ancient Greece (Polanyi 1971, p. 104). The spatial separation of trade and other modes of circulating goods indeed mirrored the historic incompatibility of two different normative conceptions which constituted the basis for the exchange of goods. It was felt that the gift, to members of the same community, contained a social content inasmuch as the transfer of the gift confirmed the social bonds with kin, neighbours, and fellow villagers, thus contributing to the social cohesion and economic self-sufficiency of even smaller communities. Trading for money has always conveyed the notion of making profit at the expense of others; among friends and neighbours, it would have discredited the social content of the good (Malinowski 1922; Mauss 1966; Polanyi 1971, pp. 78-115). This notion did not apply, however, in transactions with foreigners, who were regarded as having a different set of values.

When the market principle penetrates and gradually dominates various aspects of community life, the market-place comes to be a central village institution which now not only serves the trading function but also has social and cultural purposes. In Minahasa, after the abolishment of the mapalus — the mutual aid groups involved in agricultural production which also provided the arena at festivities for confirming social and cultural relations — the marketplace, in addition to other new institutions such as local associations, took on some non-economic functions. For despite economic integration and social transformation, the villagers continued to feel the need for an informal public place in which to exchange all kinds of local news, including private and political gossip and slander (Frohlich 1940; Bohannan and Dalton 1968; Skinner 1968).

As the market-place mirrors various aspects of village life, the pasar as a research subject provides valuable access to a number of issues in the social sciences which relate to the village.

COMPETITION AND REGULATION

The poor performance of the interisland shipping industry has been seen to be the outcome of the often conflicting forces of competition and regulation. Competition has been a sanction against inefficiency because the market is highly contestable. Besides a large number of firms already in the industry, new entry has been facilitated by, in practice, fairly low barriers to entry and a large pool of firms able to diversify into interisland liner shipping should profitable opportunities become apparent. These structural conditions have predictably given rise to both price and non-price competition unimpeded by any form of cartelization. Over time more efficient firms with lower costs relative to their quality of service have been able to increase their share of cargo and capacity at the expense of less efficient firms. This process has been referred to as the ‘transfer mechanism'. Insofar as this mechanism has been effective, the industry has been able to rationalize itself.

The spontaneous improvement in efficiency through the forces of competition has been impeded rather than assisted, however, by the impact of regulation. Although efficiency has been a declared aim of regulatory policy, some measures have weakened the effectiveness of market sanctions. Thus, licensing policy has endeavoured both to reduce the number of firms in the industry and to restrict new entry. Exit has also been impeded by allowing less efficient firms, which in some cases have not even met licence requirements, to retain control of lucrative public facilities in the form of front-line godowns. Some less efficient firms have also benefited from the provision of subsidized investment funds through P.T. PANN. These effects of regulation help to explain why competition has not been more effective in reducing the dispersion of efficiency within the industry.

Yet if regulation has weakened the effectiveness of competition, so has competition frustrated the implementation of government policy. The attempt in 1974 to consolidate the many independent shipping firms into about a dozen groups was a failure — the groups were formed as required but never functioned as co-ordinated units and were soon disregarded.

Over the years, Malay literature developed a measure of stylistic sophistication with blatant didacticism fast disappearing by the time of the 1960s. Stereotypes persisted, however, as did the dual preoccupation with the plight of the poor and the conduct of the leaders of the country, which largely characterized the literature of previous years. By and large, the latter concern tended to dominate the literary scene. In giving expression to this concern, however, the literature of the period was to show a slight variation in focus. In line with the change of leadership from the British to local bureaucrats on the political scene, the literature shifted its focus to this new breed of leaders. It presented them in their position as the sole administrators of the country, and their response to this new role. In the depiction of this new administrative class, the perception of Malay leaders seen in the 1950s prevailed. When portraying the MCS officers, who were variously referred to as Pegawai Kanan (Senior Officer), Pegawi Division Satu (Division One Officer) or Tuan DO (Mr DO or Mr District Officer), writers tended to dwell on their English or Western education which adversely gave rise to a new life-style of “vice and moral depravity”. Descriptions of these young leaders pointed to them as defenders who had betrayed their people and become strangers and alienated from their own society. Concomitant with this, phrases such as berkiblat ke Barat (facing towards the West) and bukan Melayu lagi (no longer Malay), highly perjorative in connotation, became common usage when these leaders were described, both in and out of fiction. The Wakil Rakyat(s) fared no better as targets for negative portrayals. They were perceived as “irresponsible and devious leaders” who put their own interests above those of the masses. They were seen as particularly glib, and excelling in making promises they had no intention of keeping and were portrayed as having a propensity for illicit sex.

Competition has the twofold virtue of eliminating inefficiency and of doing so by a process internal to an industry. Provided firms are subject to strong market pressures, an industry will be self-regulating as far as performance is concerned. Whether a market structure is conducive to effective competition depends very much upon the ease of entry. If there is easy entry, firms already in the industry will lack market power either to earn long-run excess profits or to operate in the long-run with excessive costs. In contemporary jargon, such a market would be described as highly contestable.

The interisland shipping industry is a good example of a highly contestable market. The number of firms already in the industry is large and new entry is easy. This chapter will first identify the main sectors of the industry and then examine in detail the dry cargo liner sector.

THE SECTORS OF THE INDUSTRY

Regulation No. 2/1969 divides the interisland shipping into several separately licensed sectors. These sectors are distinguished according to characteristics of supply, primarily the type of vessel with some regard to the nature of its employment (that is, whether'tramp” or “liner”). Despite some substitutability of different vessel types in meeting shipper demands, these sectors are nevertheless a workable basis for economic analysis. Table 3-1 indicates their relative importance according to their share of interisland trade in 1981. It should be noted that the customs documents from which the figures are derived appear heavily to understate the role of small-scale shipping.

The largest individual sector, accounting for no less than 40 per cent of the total cargo flow, is the carriage by tanker of crude oil, petroleum and other refined products. However, because domestic oil tanker shipping is a monopoly of the state oil company PERTAMINA, this sector belongs more logically not to the interisland shipping industry but to the vertically-integrated oil industry. This study will therefore be confined to the other 60 per cent of interisland trade which may loosely be referred to as non-oil or dry cargo.

The ASEAN economics are open and trade oriented, with the degree of trade dependence varying inversely with population size among member countries. Compared with other developing countries, each has a relatively large external sector and high exports to GNP ratio. The characteristic feature is the peculiar position of dependence on the West and Japan for trade, capital, technology, and even decision-making to generate domestic economic growth. This peculiar position of dependence reflects: 1. the inter-relatedness of investment (both foreign and domestic, imports and exports (most of these economies are dependent on machinery and equipment from the industrial countries which ultimately have to be accounted for by increased exports); and 2. the sensitivity of current output to the impact of external changes.

The Growth Performance of ASEAN in the 60s/70s

For nearly three decades up to the early 1970s, industrial countries experienced continuous and sustained growth. This extended period of economic growth was in part aided by trade liberalization measures which stimulated vigorous expansion of world trade. While the industrial countries concentrated on manufactured and capital goods, the developing countries as a whole were relegated to the export of primary products and were not able to share proportionately in this expansion of world trade. Nonetheless, the scope and vigour of this expansion promoted export growth in developing countries.

In the 1970s, dramatic changes in the world economic scene with important implications for trade and growth started to emerge. Beginning with the breakdown of the international monetary system established under the Bretton Woods Agreement, currency instability became the order of the day. This was followed by the two major oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 which changed the costs of production, production structure, and the balance of payments position of countries the world over. The world industrial market economies went through two recessions separated by a four-year period of modest growth. The first recession of 1974–75 though deeper than the second was quickly overcome in 1976 by a conventional combination of fiscal and monetary expansion. However, the results were not very satisfactory as inflation persisted at high levels.