India can never create a Singapore with its existing DNA

When I reached the office of the Straits Times, Singapore’s main English language daily, for work one afternoon, I was surprised to see and feel a palpable tension in the newsroom. An office assistant soon put me in the picture. An Indian moneychanger, she said, had been murdered.

I was taken aback. A moneychanger had been murdered? Why should there be such hyperactivity among editors and journalists?

Was he one of Singapore’s leading moneychangers? Or, was he perhaps an Indian community leader?

My colleague underlined that none of this was true. He was, if anything, an obscure trader whom no one outside his immediate circle really knew.

First murder in 10 years

“The reason this is big news, Narayan, is because this is the first murder in Singapore in 10 years!”

It would be an understatement to say I was shocked beyond belief. When I moved to Singapore, I did know about the city-state’s reputation for very low crime.

And migrating from a country where homicide is a way of life (and often fails to make news), I did not bargain that not a single murder had taken place in Singapore for a full decade.

It took me time, but by the time I quit Singapore I came to respect that small country’s visible strengths which make it a global envy.

This is why I was amused when Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his hosts during his just-ended visit to that country, “We also aim to create several Singapores within India.”

India will never be there 

One doesn’t know if he really meant it or it was his way of showing his respect for an obvious success story. Or perhaps he had only Singapore’s economic aspects in mind.

Whatever may be the economic outcomes of Modi’s trip, I can say with certainty that India will never be able to replicate Singapore. No amount of economic and financial clout India achieves can enable it to give birth to even a semblance of a Singapore.

Singapore may be half the size of Delhi and having barely six million people, foreigners included. Today it’s a high-income economy with a business-friendly regulatory environment, strongly placed in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and efficient public services. It is the regional hub of wealth management.

Once a rough trading port, Singapore is now not only the largest and busiest port in Southeast Asia but also an economic and financial empire, outrunning almost all European countries.

More than financial success

But Singapore is much more than this. It also ranks very high in the human capital index.

It has low unemployment and a very low crime rate. Women walking alone at night face no danger. Corruption is negligible.

Equally important, if not more, the government spends considerable energy in promoting and ensuring inter-ethnic contact involving the Chinese, Malays, and Indians. There is equal use of official languages (Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and English) in the public space.

Each ethnic group gets the same number of religious holidays per year although the Chinese constitute 76 per cent of the population, Malays 14 per cent, Tamils 8 per cent, and others the remaining 2 per cent.

This population ratio has to be maintained in state-run housing blocks too in terms of house allotment. With some 40 per cent of all residents foreigners or foreign-born, ethnic diversity is seen as a significant economic asset, not a negative. Polygamy is allowed among the Malays while monogamy is otherwise the rule.

Minorities not discriminated against

During the period I lived in Singapore, there was no instance either in my workplace or in the neighbourhood (both dominated by Chinese) where I felt discriminated against because I was an Indian.

It is not that there are no social tensions or that Singapore has no ills. But in a country where children are introduced during school tours to religious places of all hues and where the authorities and the ruling party do not discriminate against any religion, the message that goes down is that no one community is superior to another.

An unknown neighbour (I believe a Chinese) complained to the police that there was too much noise from my apartment every night. Two policemen did knock on my doors one morning and checked the house thoroughly.

They were surprised that except for my mobile phone, I did not even possess a radio, music player, television, and the like. And I did not sing at night. They realised it was a false complaint.

There was no attempt to browbeat me because I belonged to a “minority” community, albeit a foreigner, and the complainant was from the “majority” community.

All religions equal

 Singapore is not just about the economy and infrastructure. It is not just about skilling, digitalisation, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cyber-security, services, tourism, and law and order.

In Singapore, mosques and Hindu temples don’t get attacked or vandalised; ruling party leaders do not use uncouth language about smaller religions and their adherents; there is no discrimination between members of religious communities; the Malays are not dubbed covert agents of neighbouring and Muslim-majority Malaysia; there is no attempt to thrust the language of the majority on others; no leader promotes the religion of the dominant community to wilfully make the others feel small.

Minorities kept in perpetual fear

The other day, the principal of a privately-run primary school in Uttarakhand had the audacity to dismiss a five-year-old Muslim boy for bringing non-vegetarian food as lunch and for allegedly – this is shockingly unbelievable – threatening to convert the other Hindu students to Islam.

This would never happen in multi-racial, multi-religious Singapore.

Despite Supreme Court rulings, hate speech goes on unchecked in India. The minorities are made to feel that they exist in this country only because of the generosity of those in power. At the slightest pretext, Muslims are shamelessly asked to go to Pakistan. Keeping the minorities in perpetual fear is almost considered macho.

Singapore is not without its flaws. There is income disparity and there are tensions over the large number of expatriates and foreign workforce. In recent times, acts of corruption and extra-marital affairs have dented the standing of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) like never before.

It’s not about size

During my stay in Singapore, I came across quite a few Indian expatriates (mostly from the IT industry and dominantly North Indian Hindus) who would get upset if Singapore was spoken about favourably vis-à-vis India.

“Oh, come on, Singapore is like an Indian municipality,” they would say, contemptuously referring to its size. My retort always was the same, “Ok, let us have one Indian municipality running like Singapore.”

That has not happened. And it will never happen. In such dire circumstances, it is almost impossible for India to replicate a Singapore and its many values. Not until India changes its gears wholesale - and wholeheartedly.