MELBOURNE (Bernama): A leading Australian agricultural economist has paid tribute to former prime minister Tun Abdul Razak for his vision in promoting land development schemes and improving smallholdings in Malaysia in the 1960s.

“Tun Abdul Razak was a personal hero of mine,” Dr Colin Barlow told the 18th biennial conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia at the University of Adelaide in South Australia Thursday, when he presented his paper entitled “Malaysian Agriculture in Transition 1960-2010″.

Dr Barlow said soon after arriving in Kuala Lumpur in 1963 to work at the Rubber Research Institute, he realised rural agencies and research bodies lacked the weight to improve Malaysian agriculture and much had to be done.

“What was needed in this 1960s situation was to focus much more on bettering individual and group smallholdings. We needed a person with authority, having a common touch and in tune with rural people’s aspirations.

“And we found him in Tun Abdul Razak. He became the architect of giving practical application to popular desires – a personal hero of mine.”

Dr Barlow said Tun Abdul Razak, then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Rural Development, was ‘an individual combining great vision with skills in leadership and administration.’

He facilitated the organisation of replanting and new land development schemes, he said.

“Tun Abdul Razak engineered major improvements to rural education and health, along with roads and other infrastructures, proceeding in the 1970s to pioneer wider national transformation through the New Economic Policy,” he said.

Dr Barlow, who has been involved in rural development for many years, especially in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, told the Adelaide conference “a further crucial initiative” of the 1960s in Malaysia was the establishment of the Federal Land Development Authority (Felda), which was fashioned after difficult beginnings into a highly successful body”.

This opened up and managed many new planted areas, first under rubber and later oil palm, he said.

He said Malaysian agriculture, which has been described as a “third engine of growth”, has potential for further expansion, but it depended on the intentions of future governments.

Dr Barlow has written several books on Malaysia, his most recent titled “Malaysian Economics and Politics in the New Century” (Edward Elgar, 2003, edited with Francis Loh Kok Wah).

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