THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 59

while the middleman takes seventy cents($. 70)." "The policy of the government is not based on Islam but on property only. " Later in his speech he mentioned the large houses and Mercedes cars of government officials and the way in which they had abused the Koran for their own profit. "They'll be the first to enter hell!" he added. In this fashion a populist understanding of Islam that extends naturally to issues of income distribution, employment, and other dass issues as well as to matters of piety and religious law provides an ideal medium of political protest. Nearly three decades of stubborn opposition suggest that the issues that underlie political opposition are a by-product of Malaysia's pattern of development and will, barring much heavier repression, continue to find institutional expression in one form or another.

MIDDLE GROUND: KEDAH AND THE MUDA IRRIGATION SCHEME

The Muda region, named after the Muda River, has been since at least the fourteenth century the major rice-producing area on the peninsula. Most of that cultivation takes place within the five hundred or so square miles of the Kedah/ Pedis alluvial plain, with its vast expanse of fertile, dense, marine-day soil. (See Map 2) On an exceptionally clear day, from atop four-thousand-foot Gunung Jerai (Kedah Peak), which lies at its southern extremity, it is possible to take in the entire forty-mile-long rice plain bounded on the west by the Straits ofMalacca and on the east by intruding foothills of the Central Range. The view is of one enormous rice paddy interrupted only by cross-hatching tree lines that indicate the typically linear villages of the region and, more rarely, by a larger urban agglomeration, such as the state capital of Alor Setar. Depending on the stage of rice cultivation during the main, monsoon-fed season, one may view what appears as a vast shallow lake of flooded paddy fields not much differentiated from the straits that border it, a sea of variegated greens, an expanse of golden ripening grain, or a great stretch of drab soil and stubble left after the harvest.

The political and social history of the Muda Plain has marked contemporary class relations in at least two significant ways. We must first keep in mind that we are dealing with a society composed largely of pioneers and newcomers-a frontier society-until well into this century. Despite the fact that paddy has been grown here since the fourteenth century, much of the Muda Plain was only recently cleared, drained, and brought under cultivation. What continuous settlement there had been was profoundly disrupted by the Siamese invasion of 1821, which reduced the population (through emigration) to roughly fifty thousand, or half its preinvasion level. 24 Kedah did not recover its furmer population until near the turn of the century, when a period of comparative peace and new drainage schemes stimulated a substantial immigration. It is in this period

24. R. D. Hill, Rice in Malaysia: A Study in Historical Geography (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), 54.

N

I	25	0	25

MILES

SOUTH

CHINA

SEA

PROVINCE

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SINGAPORE

MAP 1 • The Muda Irrigation Scheme Area in Peninsular Malaysia

THAILAND

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MAP 2 • Kedah and the Muda Scheme Area

62 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

(roughly 1880--1910) that many of the villages on the plain, including Sedaka, were settled and when paddy land definitively became a commodity that could be bought and sold. Initial grants of land for colonization and canal digging were usually given by the Sultan to favored aristocratic retainers, but they were quickly superseded and outnumbered by a "non-aristocratic, capitalist, 'commercial' land-owning group. " 25 The importance of this frontier history is simply that class in rural Kedah is pretty much a straightforward affair of rich and poor, big and little, rather than being compounded by ancient feudal distinctions between lords and serfs, aristocrats and plebeians, as they are in those areas in Southeast Asia much longer settled and in close proximity to royal courts. 26

The second notable feature of regional history, and indeed of Malay history generally, is that the state has not generally been an effective instrument for the exploitation of the peasantry. As Gullick concludes in his study of precolonial Malay states, "flight" was the peasant's most common reaction to oppression, 27 and owing to the mobile, frontier character of Malay society and the limited coercive power at the disposal of the court it was usually a successful, though painful, remedy. Attempts by the court to mobilize corvc~e labor (Krah) for the building of a road across the peninsula in 1864, for example, touched off a mass emigration to the south, and it appears that much, if not all, of the huge Wan Mat Saman Canal from Alor Setar, begun in 1885, had to be dug with paid Chinese labor despite the fact that its guiding spirit was the chief minister (Menteri Besar) of the Sultan. By the turn of the century at the latest, the growth of trade and of the Chinese population provided alternative sources of revenue that made it even less necessary to squeeze the Malay peasantry. Virtually all revenue collection in Kedah at this time was leased by auction to entrepreneurs who then endeavored to turn a profit by collecting more revenue than the rent for their monopoly or "farm." Opium and gambling farms were easily the most

significant sources of state		revenue, bringing	in	more	than three	times the
revenue from duties on rice and paddy export. 28				It was the Chinese poor and
25.	Ibid., 53.
26.	Compare, for example,	this situation with	Kessler's		fine analysis	of politics

in the east coast state of Kelantan, which shows how much of the strong opposition to the ruling party there derived not only from class issues but was compounded by a lively resentment against the aristocratic families in the state capital, who had come to dominate the colonial bureaucracy in their own interests. One can detect something of the sort in Kedah as well, but it is not nearly so pronounced. Kessler,

Islam and Politics.

27. John M. Gullick, Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malays, London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, no. 17 (London: Athlone, 1958), 43. The limited extraction of the precolonial Malay state was due not to any lack of ambition or would-be rapacity, but rather to a lack of means to enforce its will.

28. Sharom Ahmat, "The Structure of the Economy of Kedah, 1879-1905,"

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 43, no. 2 (1970): 13.

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 63

not the Malay villagers who thus bore the brunt of colonial fiscal policy. Even after independence, as we shall see, the state, in fiscal terms at least, has rested rather lightly on the Malay peasantry. Here again, the rather unique pattern of development in Malaysia largely avoided the familiar and often brutal struggle in most agrarian kingdoms between a state voracious fur corvee and taxes and a peasantry fighting to keep its subsistence intact. Even today the fiscal basis of the Malaysian state reposes on export-import taxes, excise taxes, concessions and loans, and commercial levies far more than on any direct appropriation from rice producers. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the modern Malaysian state depends on paddy growers fur food supply and political stability, but not fur its financial wherewithal, which is extracted in ways that only marginally affect peasant incomes. Hostility, suspicion, and resentment toward the state are hardly absent, but these attitudes lack the long history of direct oppression that they have taken on elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

By 1970, the rural population in the Muda region had reached well over half a million, the vast majority of whom were Malays engaged almost exclusively in rice growing. The much smaller urban population (112,000) was scattered through nineteen townships in which Chinese and Malays were represented in nearly equal proportions. Well befure double-cropping, Kedah politicians were fund of referring to their state as Malaysia's "rice bowl," inasmuch as it has by far the largest paddy acreage of any state in the country and has consistently been the major supplier to the domestic market. 29 Much of its commercial importance in the paddy sector is due to its traditionally high yields per acre and its comparatively large farm size, which have combined to produce a large marketable surplus above subsistence needs. Farm incomes, though low compared with those outside the paddy sector, were traditionally well above the norm for paddy farmers as a whole on the peninsula. To pursue a comment made earlier, if one had to be a paddy farmer somewhere in Malaysia, one could not do much better than on the Kedah Plain.

The rather favorable ecological and social conditions in the Muda area make it apparent that it has hardly been singled out as a promising site fur the more dramatic furms of class conflict. Here one finds poverty but not great misery, inequalities but not stark polarization, burdensome rents and taxes but not crushing exactions. The last hunQred years ofKedah's history are filled with the

29. jelapang padi Malaysia (Malaysia's paddy granary). For the history of Malay Settlement and rice production in the area, readers are invited to consult Hill, Rice in Malaysia; K. K. Kim, The \\'!estern Malay States, 1850-1873: The Effects of Commercial Development on Malay Politics (Kuala Lumpur: Oxfurd Univ. Press, 1972);

Sharom Ahmat, "The Political Structure of the State of Kedah, 1879-1905," journal ofSoutheast Asian Studies 1, no. 2 (1970); R. Bonney, Kedah, 1771-1821: The Search for Security and Independence (Kuala Lumpur: Oxfurd Univ. Press, 1971); Zaharah Haji Mahmud, "Change in a Malay Sultanate."

64 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

peasant migrations and flight, land grabbing, and banditry offro~tier society and more recently with protests and political opposition; but one looks in vain fur the long history of peasant rebellion to be fOund elsewhere in Southeast Asia. One advantage of studying class conflict in such a setting is precisely that it is something of a hard case. If we encounter a rich domain of class-based resistance even in a region where a majority of the rural population is probably better off than it was a decade ago, then it is reasonable to suppose that· the unwritten history of resistance in other rice-growing areas of Southeast Asia might be correspondingly richer.

Despite the blessings of good soil, a favorable climate, and relative prosperity, other aspects of the social structure and economy of the Kedah Plain were troubling. If the soil was suitable fur paddy, it was not suitable fur much else and the result was an increasing pattern of monoculture, with its attendant vulnerabilities. If the average farm size was substantial (4.0 acres, or 5.6 relong), most of the region's farmers worked smaller plots, which left them well below the poverty line and provoked an annual stream of migrants to towns and plantations where work was available during the off-season. If yields were above average, so was the rate of tenancy (35 percent), which meant that many farmers had only a tenuous hold on the means of their subsistence. 30 If nearly half of the paddy households owned the land they worked, their numbers had been steadily diminishing over the past six decades as the cycle of debt and crop failures pried the land from many hands. 31

The Muda Irrigation Project, begun in 1966 and in full operation by 1973, was intended to solve some, if not all, of these problems. Basically, it consisted of two large dams, headworks, main and secondary canals, together with the institutional infrastructure to make possible the double-cropping of rice on some 260,000 acres. As elsewhere, the "green revolution" in .Muda was coupled with the introduction of new fast-growing, high-yielding strains of rice, intensified fertilizer use, new technology and mechanization, credit facilities, and new milling and marketing channels. Nearly all the official principals involved-the

30. The data in this paragraph are derived from the standard source on the agricultural economy of the Muda region before double-cropping, S. Selvadurai, Padi Farming in Wert Malaysia, Bulletin No. 27 (Kuala Lumpur: Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 1972).

31. The inequities in landholding and hence the poverty of a large section of the Muda population, which the irrigation scheme was intended to address, were the historical deposit of initial land grabbing compounded by this cycle of debt. As early as 1913 the British Advisor to the Kedah, W. George Maxwell, observed that "The majority of the padi planters are at present in the hands of Chinese padi dealers." Unfederated Malay States, Annual Report of the Advisor to the Kedah Government,

December 11, 1912, to November 30, 1913 (Alor Setar: Government Printer,

1914), 23. See also Federated Malay States, Report of the Rice Cultivation Committee,

1931, H. A. Tempany, Chairman (Kuala Lumpur: 1932), 40.

of Projects in

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 65

World Bank, the Malaysian government, and the officials of the scheme itselfwere convinced by 1974 of its success. Double-cropping had been achieved in 92 percent of the project area, new varieties of rice had been nearly universally adopted, and the new impetus to production had placed self-sufficiency in rice within reach. The glowing report card issued by the World Bank, the major financial backer, was widely quoted.

The project has resulted in an approximate doubling of average farm incomes, both fur owners and tenants.... Paddy production which was 268,000 tons in 1965 increased to 678,000 tons in 1974 and is expected to reach 718,000 tons by 1980 ... the rise in employment resulting from the project has been of great benefit to landless labourers and other unemployed groups. . . . The economic rate of return is now 18 percent compared with the 10 percent estimated at appraisal. 32

From the vantage point of 1974, the project seemed a nearly unqualified success. A number of major studies documented that success in terms of production, technology, employment, and incomes. 33 From the vantage point of 1980, the evaluation of the project, especially in terms of employment and income, is far less clear-cut, although there is no doubt that without the project the Muda peasantry would be far worse off both relatively and absolutely.

What fOllows is essentially an attempt to establish the nature and degree of the major shifts in land tenure, employment, income, and institutions that have been brought about, directly or indirectly, by the "green revolution" in Muda. These changes can, and have been, documented. Once the basic contours have been sketched, they can serve as the raw material with which the human agents in this small drama must somehow come to grips.

Many of the dramatic changes in the Muda region since double-cropping began in 1970 are visually apparent to anyone familiar with rural Kedah earlier. Quite a few of these changes are attributable not to double-cropping but to the government's concerted political effort to supply amenities to rural Malaysmosques, prayer houses, electricity, roads, schools, clinics. Others stem more directly from the increases in average incomes that double-cropping has made possible. Once sleepy crossroads towns now bristle with new shops and crowded

32. International Bank of Reconstruction and Development, Malaysia Loan 434MA: Muda Irrigation Scheme Completion &port, no. 795-MA (Washington, D.C.: June 1975), ii, quoted in S. Jegatheesan, The Green Revolution and the Muda Irrigation Scheme, MADA Monograph No. 30 (Alor Setar: Muda Agricultural Development Authority, March 1977), 3-4.

33. See, in addition to Jegatheesan, Green Revolution, Food and Agriculture Organization/World Bank Cooperative Program, The Muda Study, 2 vols. (Rome: FAO, 1975), and Clive Bell, Peter Hazell, and Roger Slade, The Evaluation

Regional Perspective: A Case Study of the Muda Irrigation Project (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, forthcoming).

66 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

markets. 34 The roads themselves, once nearly deserted, are alive with lorries, buses, automobiles, taxis, and above all Honda 70 motorcycles-the functional equivalent of the Model T-now as common as bicycles. 35 Many houses that once had attap roofs and siding now have corrugated tin roofs and plank siding. 36 Within those houses are an increasing number of sewing machines, radios, television sets, store-brought furniture, and kerosene stoves. 37

The visual transformation of the Muda region, striking though it may be, is surpassed by a series of changes that are far less apparent. They can in fact be described as beneficial absences, as catastrophic events that were once common and are now rare. Before double-cropping, for example, one-third of the farm households in the region rarely grew enough rice for the annual subsistence needs of the family. If they were unable to earn the cash necessary to purchase rice on the market, they were reduced to subsisting on tapioca, maize, and cassava (ubi kayu) at least until the next harvest was in. Following a crop disaster in the region-and there were many (1919, 1921, 1925, 1929, 1930, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1959, 1964)--most of the rural population found itself in the same boat. Double-cropping in this respect has been a great boon. Even smallholding tenants with a single relong (. 71 acre) can now grow enough rice at least to feed a family, though they may be desperately short of cash. It is a rare peasant these days who does not eat rice twice a day. 38 The provision of irrigation water and the use of fertilizer not only raised yields somewhat but has also made those yields more reliable, season by season. The new agricultural regime is hardly invulnerable, as witnessed by the cancellation of the irrigated season in 1978

34.For quantitative details showing the scheme's effect on the regional economy, see Bell et al., Evaluation of Projects; chap. 7.

35.The number of motorcycles registered in Kedah and Pedis jumped from 14,292 in 1966 to 95,728 in 1976, an increase of more than sixfold. In the same

period the number of private cars grew more than fourfold, buses nearly fourfold, and commercial vehicles nearly threefold. Economic Consultants Ltd., Kedah-Perlis Development Study: Interim Report (Alor Setar: December 15, 1977), 90.

36.See the statistics on housing materials and years of double-cropping in Food and Agriculture Organization/World Bank Cooperative Program, Muda Study, 1: 2(:), and 2: tables 19, 20.

37.Ibid., 2: table 21.

38.A strong case can be made, however, that this benefit has come at a considerable cost in nutritional diversity.· Double-cropping has eliminated many of the vegetables that were previously planted between seasons. Small livestock such as ducks, geese, and chickens are also rarer now that off-season grazing is cut short and now that pesticides threaten waterfowl. Rice-paddy fish, once a poor man's staple, are both less plentiful and often contaminated with pesticides. For those who can afford to buy vegetables, fish, and occasionally meat from the market, the effect is

negligible. For those of slender means, however, the effect is likely to be a diet that is at best monotonous and at worst nutritionally deficient and/or toxic.

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 67

due to a shortage of water, which gave Muda's peasantry a painful reminder of the old days. Nevertheless, the prospect of going without rice has been largely removed from the fears of even poor villagers.

The closely related scourge of malnutrition and its inevitable toll in human, especially children's, lives appears from sketchy data to have been sharply reduced, though not eliminated. Figures for the incidence of nutrition-related diseases and for infant and toddler mortality from such causes show a marked decline that correlates well with the progress of double-cropping. 39 Between 1970 and 1976 the rate of infant mortality in the Muda region was cut by nearly half, from a figure that was above the rates for the nation and for Kedah as a whole to a level below both. It is ironic testimony to "progress" on the rice plain that anemia and malnutrition, the seventh most common cause of death in 1970, had disappeared from the top ten by 1976, while motor vehicle accidents had moved from sixth to second place.

Another beneficial absence that can be largely attributed to double-cropping was the decline in out-migration during the off-season. Both temporary and permanent migration were systematic features of the regional economy before 1970. This was reflected in the fact that the population within Muda grew at only half the rate of natural increase, and the rates of out-migration seemed to be highest in the paddy districts. 40 It was, moreover, a rare smallholder or tenant family that did not have to send someone out, at least temporarily, to raid the cash economy between rice seasons. The beginning of double-cropping in Muda brought temporary relief and fostered a process that might be called "repeasantization." Many villagers, for the first time, were afforded the luxury of remaining at home the entire year. Small farms that were inadequate for subsistence with only a single crop now became viable enterprises. It was not just a matter of reaping two harvests from the same plot but also the opportunities for wage labor that two seasons provided. Adding to the good fortune of wage laborers were the restriction of Thai migrant laborers in 1969 and a tobacco boom in the poor, labor-exporting state of Kelantan, which reduced dramatically the competition for employment. As we shall see, however, this welcome respite was only temporary. Combine-harvesters had by 1978 eliminated much of the new work that irrigation had made possible and laborers from the land-poor classes in Muda were once again on the road.

39. Ajit Singh, "Laporan Kesihatan Kawasan Kedah-Perlis, 1970-1977" (Alor Setar: Jabatan Pengarah Perkhidmatan Perubatan dan Kesihatan, October 1978, mimeo). These figures are not decisive because only three districts are examined, one of which is the district of Kota Setar, the location of the major urban area in the region. The declines in nutritionally related mortality are far more striking fur Kota Setar than for either Kubang Pasu or fur Yan (the district in which Sedaka is located).

40. Economic Consultants Ltd. Kedah-Perlis Development Study, 17.