As soon as I joined the Rural Development Ministry, I initiated a survey/research study to identify problems that affected Indians who tend to be displaced due to the development of estates. Rubber and palm oil estates were being sold, fragmented and taken up for various kinds of developments or projects which did not give due emphasis on how the Indians who lived in these places were to be ‘rehabilitated’. This study was conducted by a team headed by Prof D Ramasamy (now second Chief Minister of Penang) of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia with an allocation of RM150,000. The study provided the necessary data for my community development projects.