In the aftermath of the ethnic violence of 13 May 1969 and under the emergency rule of Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak’s National Operations Council, the government sought to overhaul its development planning approach. Intense policy deliberations progressed, but with marked differences between the long established (January 1962) ‘EPU school’ (Economic Planning Unit), which advocated a more growth-led approach, and the more recently established (July 1969) ‘DNU school’ (Department of National Unity), which pressed for expansive state intervention, with the foremost priority reducing racial inequalities. (This bifurcation engendered the two main strands of the subsequent debate.) The latter, which had engaged a Harvard advisory group, helmed by Just Faaland, and whose views converged ideologically with those of the new Prime Minister Razak, prevailed (Faaland, Parkinson, and Saniman, 1990). In the second half of 1969 and 1970, a series of six policy papers forcefully advocated vigorous actions to redress racial inequalities—in the context of economic growth and alongside poverty reduction. The first early draft of the NEP, the third paper in this series, circulated by DNU to government departments in March 1970, set out the new objectives and priorities for national development (Faaland, Parkinson, and Saniman, 1990).