Poverty eradication is at the core of rural development programs in post independent SEA yet poverty
... One of the major problems faced by many countries in Southeast Asia is poverty. ... Poverty can mean hunger, lack of shelter and clothing. ... There are many aspects of poverty, it changes over time, place and space. ... Therefore, poverty eradication has been the focus of many rural development programmes in many countries in Southeast Asia since their independence. ... Rural can be defined as "happening in or connected with the countryside" whereas development can be seen as "a new event or piece of news that is likely to have an effect on the present situation" (Longman Dictionaries: 1997). Rural Development can be defined as "a strategy to enable a specific group of people, poor rural women and men, to gain for themselves and their children more of what they want and need. It involves helping the poorest among those who seek a livelihood in the rural areas to demand and control more of the benefits of rural development. ... However, poverty has been a major problem since its independence (Table 1 and 2). It can be seen from the Table 1 that the Malays have a high percentage of poor in both rural and urban areas compared to other racial groups. Table 1: Incidence of Poverty, rural and urban by racial community in Peninsular Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia Urban (%) Rural (%) Malay 51. ... 6 Source: Post Enumeration Survey 1972 (taken from Mobility and Modernisation: A Study of the Malaysian Federal Land Development Authority and its role in Modernising the Rural Malay (thesis), In 1930 Malaysia has a total population of about 16 million. ... Of this total, 75 % of the population lived in the rural and less developed parts of the country . There was a widespread of landlessness, unemployment and underemployment in the rural sector. At the same time, Malaysia is an ethnically mixed society with the more developed and western parts of the country inhabited by Chinese communal groups while the Malay ethnic groups who were numerically larger and politically more important were situated in the less developed and rural sector of the country. Therefore, the country established a rural development programme in the 1950s. The main objectives of the programme are to eliminate problems of regional inequality between the rural and urban areas, to induce rapid change and development in the rural section of the country and most importantly, to eradicate rural poverty.