This chapter has an inspirational event. During this pandemic, the authors have been volunteering among the Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia, concomitantly finding that marginal people are unsecured for the severe food crisis. In doing this volunteering, a few questions were raised: What is the state's responsibility for the marginal people's food supply? Why does the state ignore its presence? Is there any philosophical reason? And how can these activities be theorized? Finally, how can these people survive? How can it be theorized? The authors endeavoured to answer these questions from the critical paradigm by adopting the philanthropic accountability model. In this empirical study, they argue by applying or testing the Ubuntu for politics and policy about a practical way forward in this new normal for a happier, sustainable, and healthier community.
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This chapter is, to an extent, a practice of the Ubuntu Model (Gade, 2012; Chowdhury et al., 2021) in the Malaysian context. If we feel the aim of social work, in effect, the social sciences, is to “make for individual and/or societal happiness (some refer to this as well-being or community well-being at the collective level) and planetary sustainability (Musikanski, Phillips, Bradbury, de Graaf & Bliss, 2020, p.2). This chapter is an academic and practical endeavor in the New Normal era. In the Pandemic, we realized even before the Pandemic (Phillips, 2012) that the major focus is life and/or the food--the question of survival (Long, 2020; Adams, 2020; Gupta & Pal, 2020; Ali, 2020; Smith & Judd, 2020)) regardless the geographical boundary, either if western (Mook, Murdock & Gundersen, 2020) or in the East. This study, along with the Ubuntu model, is creating a legacy of goodwill (Phillips, Seifer Antczak, 2013, p. 139) for a ‘Sustainable communities’ in Malaysia. For sustainability, enhancing democracy is a basic goal of cooperatives [in Malaysia]. At the same time, democracy is a central core tenet of community development theory, and is “valued as a means, not as an end, serving the instrumental purpose of broadening the inputs available in the system (Cook, 1994, p. 11 in Phillips, 2012, p.192).” Large numbers of people in Malaysia are still at risk of food health as a consequence of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Understandably, unemployment or lack of savings is the justification. It is indeed, however, surfaced scenario. Rather, we do agree that policy strategies are reason to global food security (Glauber, Laborde, Martin, & Vos, 2020; Vos, Martin & Laborde, 2020; World Bank, 2020; Thomas, 2012; Caduff, 2020; Khan & Naushad, 2020).
From our volunteering experience in Malaysia, we realized that countries such as Malaysia, where thousands of foreign workers dwell and are already lost their jobs, struggle, and will intensify in the days ahead. Keeping aside the deadly numbers, the most attendant issues are for those who are living in the world’s marginality (Congressional Research Service, 2020; Nuno, 2020). In this chapter, we are focusing on the food crisis. “Food is central to individual and community well-being and represents a nexus for exploring community development (Phillips, 2012, p. 198) as a referral point for furtherance. We agree, yet that, “[n]o one can accurately predict the final financial damage from COVID-19” (Khan & Naushad, 2020, p. 25) but we are in a New Normal stage, a new order, where the old is unfit. The old normal is dominated by profiteering ethics, justice, and a social system. Amongst all the dire needs in the New Normal, food is premiering as it is directly associated with life (WHO, 2020; Glauber et al., 2020; Galanakis, 2020). In developing nations, academics are diligently and critically examining the appalling issue of food security and, in turn, proposing the way forward for the New Normal (for example, in Sri Lanka, Ranasinghe, 2020; in China, Wang & Sue, 2020; in Amazonian nations, Kaplan et al., 2020; in Kenya, Odhiambo, Weke & Ngare, 2020). Narrowing down the issue, few scholars (Wenham, Smith & Morgan, 2020; Peterman, et al, 2020) are focusing on the gender issue as a marginal community. As we indicated the State’s recently taken policies and implications are the major reason for food issues. However, both academia and policy are ignoring the Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia, one known study appeared (Mia & Griffiths, 2020), though Mia and Griffith’s chapter derived from secondary data, therefore, failed to give a compacted way forward except a conclusion call to be humanitarian for not returning to Bangladesh. Not only from an academic point of view but, we consider the community’s standpoint, and from a humanitarian ground, perhaps, this study is pertinent and claims originality concerning both academia and community welfare. To us, it is impossible to condone food insecurity at this time. We will turn now to see the context, and how our academic position is connected with the community.