I finished reading the fantastic book Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn by Amanda Gefter yesterday. In the book, she presents the arguments that lead to the conclusion that in physics, there is nothing that is invariant in all reference frames. In other words, there is no ultimate reality; all reality is observer-dependent. This point of view particularly resonates with me because I believe that every person has a perspective on things that to him or her seems correct. Of course, in our cultural and social norms, we do have a pseudo-ultimate reality enshrined in our traditions, laws and etiquette, but these are man-made constraints and not inviolable otherwise.
What is the point of this? The point is that while many eulogies and obituaries will be written for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first prime minister who passed away this morning, my perspective of living in Singapore while not being born and brought up here helps me understand the enormity of what he managed to accomplish. My point of view of what Singapore is today is influenced by the fact that having grown up in Mumbai, I can see the different directions the story could have gone if not for this man of iron will.
Let's start with the similarities. Mumbai and Singapore are both islands of roughly the same area (600 vs 700 sq. km.). Both were ruled by the British before independence, both have the advantage of being natural ports that helped foster initial settlements and trade. Both attained independence within two decades of each other. Emerging from the convoluted process of gaining independence, both were tried by communal tensions (Mumbai indirectly due to Partition, Singapore between the Malay and Chinese communities).
Of course, this isn't to say that Mumbai and Singapore are identical. Mumbai is a part of a much larger country and policies that influence the nation may not have a directly beneficial effect on the city. Combine this with the tri-level governance of nation, state and city and the sheer force of population makes it a wondrous story in its own right.
On the other hand, the lack of being part of a larger country was also a big handicap for Singapore. With no natural resources, no agriculture, no oil, no minerals, no drinking water, there was virtually no hope for this tiny city-state to survive. The only three things the new nation possessed were its port, its existing British infrastructure in the downtown area and its people - a largely uneducated and illiterate populace of immigrants.
As a commenter on Reddit said, given these initial conditions, I would have restarted my game of Civ4. Enter one of the greatest gamers ever seen - Lee Kuan Yew. After crying on television about Singapore being thrown out of the Malaysian Federation, he set about the task of building Singapore up. He was a visionary like no other.
While most emerging nations are hesitant about foreign investment fearing foreign influence, he encouraged it because he saw that Singapore had nothing it could export or manufacture on its own. Backed into a corner, he encouraged foreign companies to set up base in Singapore, offering them tax incentives and ease of doing business. The experience gained by the population from working in these companies helped local banks and technology companies climb to be shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best in the world. Think about that: the man saw that the only option was to take which most other countries in its place feared, and he took it and played it so that it benefited the country.
Faced with a severe housing shortage in the 50s and 60s, he set up the Housing Development Board (HDB) to make sure that most people could own their houses and feel they own a part of the nation. It is thanks to his vision that fifty years later, Singapore ranks as one of the highest in the world in terms of home ownership rate (>90%). While the technicality of the term "home ownership" may be debated - all HDB flats are technically on a 99-year lease from the Board - it is nevertheless a long-term security that citizens possess. Contrast this with MHADA, where the mere name conjures up pictures of run-down, cramped buildings.
Faced with a lack of drinking water and importing water from Malaysia, he invested in creating water catchment areas on the island, recycling water as well as desalination technologies (all of which were years away from being commercially viable) as a result of which Singapore aims to be completely self-sufficient water-wise by 2061. Think about that: An island with barely any drinking water and limited land aims to have enough water to support a population of millions. Facing a local populace not tied together by language, he made education in English compulsory (along with a mother tongue language) as that is the language of science, technology and business worldwide. Contrast that with the language politics that we see in India with English and Western culture looked upon as destroying all that is good and holy. To attract top talent to government and keep it corruption-free, he pegged cabinet members' salaries to that of top-earning executives in private companies. Look at the beauty of that idea: if you can earn that much, there is less need for you to be corrupt when you wield power and earning that much can be an incentive for you to get into government, not just the need to do good for the people.
I could go on with other examples of vision and foresight that LKY had, but there was also the other less positive side of things. He ruled with an iron fist, bankrupting opponents (thereby making them ineligible to run for office) via costly lawsuits, controlling the media and imprisoning whoever was considered to be an internal threat to Singapore. We still see the lingering effects of these even though some of the policies have loosened thanks to the democratization of speech via the Internet. Nevertheless, the way I look at it, his view was that the ends justify the means. We try something and if it works, fine; if not, throw it away, try something else.
Yes, in terms of conventionally defined Western freedoms, Singapore lags far behind. This however begs the question: are such freedoms good for their own sake? I will leave the philosophers and the policy-pundits to debate this, but I believe that from the survivalist tendencies that Singapore emerged, this was the best way forward and we are gradually seeing a change in the idea of freedoms here. Freedom of expression and speech engender creativity and the incipient arts and culture scene and the increasingly vocal political space are examples of areas where boundaries are being pushed and modified. It will be a test of the current generation of leaders if they can maintain the trajectory that Singapore was launched on, while still adapting to the times.
As more or less an internal observer with an external background, I see LKY's policies' influence wherever I go. Whether it is taking a flight out of Changi (he pushed for an airport at the edge of the island, when multiple studies advocated the expansion of an existing inland airport like Sahar), taking the MRT to work (the largest public works project of its time, pushed by LKY because he believed that land was too precious for an all-bus system), heading into the research cluster of Singapore (born out of the Industrial Research Unit under the Economic Development Board set up by him), having lunch at a food court or hawker centre (LKY's government organized the food services sectors by setting up markets and formal hawker centres in housing and commercial estates) or going for a walk along the park connector (LKY pushed for greening Singapore to such a degree, that the motto for the National Parks Board today is not Garden City, but City in a Garden), I see the gigantic influence he has had on the place I live. More importantly, I am also able to see how easily things could have gone south. Giving in to special interests, pandering to communities on the basis of race or religion, copying principles from other countries without pausing to consider local applicability or rejecting viable ideas because they didn't emerge internally would all have sabotaged one or more of these.
And that prescient understanding of Singapore and its position in the world along with an iron will while being open to trying new things is what made him such an effective leader. Singapore is truly poorer for having lost its greatest caretaker and his loss will resonate for years as people stop to ask, "What would LKY have done?"
RIP, Lee Kuan Yew.
What is the point of this? The point is that while many eulogies and obituaries will be written for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's first prime minister who passed away this morning, my perspective of living in Singapore while not being born and brought up here helps me understand the enormity of what he managed to accomplish. My point of view of what Singapore is today is influenced by the fact that having grown up in Mumbai, I can see the different directions the story could have gone if not for this man of iron will.
Let's start with the similarities. Mumbai and Singapore are both islands of roughly the same area (600 vs 700 sq. km.). Both were ruled by the British before independence, both have the advantage of being natural ports that helped foster initial settlements and trade. Both attained independence within two decades of each other. Emerging from the convoluted process of gaining independence, both were tried by communal tensions (Mumbai indirectly due to Partition, Singapore between the Malay and Chinese communities).
Of course, this isn't to say that Mumbai and Singapore are identical. Mumbai is a part of a much larger country and policies that influence the nation may not have a directly beneficial effect on the city. Combine this with the tri-level governance of nation, state and city and the sheer force of population makes it a wondrous story in its own right.
On the other hand, the lack of being part of a larger country was also a big handicap for Singapore. With no natural resources, no agriculture, no oil, no minerals, no drinking water, there was virtually no hope for this tiny city-state to survive. The only three things the new nation possessed were its port, its existing British infrastructure in the downtown area and its people - a largely uneducated and illiterate populace of immigrants.
As a commenter on Reddit said, given these initial conditions, I would have restarted my game of Civ4. Enter one of the greatest gamers ever seen - Lee Kuan Yew. After crying on television about Singapore being thrown out of the Malaysian Federation, he set about the task of building Singapore up. He was a visionary like no other.
While most emerging nations are hesitant about foreign investment fearing foreign influence, he encouraged it because he saw that Singapore had nothing it could export or manufacture on its own. Backed into a corner, he encouraged foreign companies to set up base in Singapore, offering them tax incentives and ease of doing business. The experience gained by the population from working in these companies helped local banks and technology companies climb to be shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the best in the world. Think about that: the man saw that the only option was to take which most other countries in its place feared, and he took it and played it so that it benefited the country.
Faced with a severe housing shortage in the 50s and 60s, he set up the Housing Development Board (HDB) to make sure that most people could own their houses and feel they own a part of the nation. It is thanks to his vision that fifty years later, Singapore ranks as one of the highest in the world in terms of home ownership rate (>90%). While the technicality of the term "home ownership" may be debated - all HDB flats are technically on a 99-year lease from the Board - it is nevertheless a long-term security that citizens possess. Contrast this with MHADA, where the mere name conjures up pictures of run-down, cramped buildings.
Faced with a lack of drinking water and importing water from Malaysia, he invested in creating water catchment areas on the island, recycling water as well as desalination technologies (all of which were years away from being commercially viable) as a result of which Singapore aims to be completely self-sufficient water-wise by 2061. Think about that: An island with barely any drinking water and limited land aims to have enough water to support a population of millions. Facing a local populace not tied together by language, he made education in English compulsory (along with a mother tongue language) as that is the language of science, technology and business worldwide. Contrast that with the language politics that we see in India with English and Western culture looked upon as destroying all that is good and holy. To attract top talent to government and keep it corruption-free, he pegged cabinet members' salaries to that of top-earning executives in private companies. Look at the beauty of that idea: if you can earn that much, there is less need for you to be corrupt when you wield power and earning that much can be an incentive for you to get into government, not just the need to do good for the people.
I could go on with other examples of vision and foresight that LKY had, but there was also the other less positive side of things. He ruled with an iron fist, bankrupting opponents (thereby making them ineligible to run for office) via costly lawsuits, controlling the media and imprisoning whoever was considered to be an internal threat to Singapore. We still see the lingering effects of these even though some of the policies have loosened thanks to the democratization of speech via the Internet. Nevertheless, the way I look at it, his view was that the ends justify the means. We try something and if it works, fine; if not, throw it away, try something else.
Yes, in terms of conventionally defined Western freedoms, Singapore lags far behind. This however begs the question: are such freedoms good for their own sake? I will leave the philosophers and the policy-pundits to debate this, but I believe that from the survivalist tendencies that Singapore emerged, this was the best way forward and we are gradually seeing a change in the idea of freedoms here. Freedom of expression and speech engender creativity and the incipient arts and culture scene and the increasingly vocal political space are examples of areas where boundaries are being pushed and modified. It will be a test of the current generation of leaders if they can maintain the trajectory that Singapore was launched on, while still adapting to the times.
As more or less an internal observer with an external background, I see LKY's policies' influence wherever I go. Whether it is taking a flight out of Changi (he pushed for an airport at the edge of the island, when multiple studies advocated the expansion of an existing inland airport like Sahar), taking the MRT to work (the largest public works project of its time, pushed by LKY because he believed that land was too precious for an all-bus system), heading into the research cluster of Singapore (born out of the Industrial Research Unit under the Economic Development Board set up by him), having lunch at a food court or hawker centre (LKY's government organized the food services sectors by setting up markets and formal hawker centres in housing and commercial estates) or going for a walk along the park connector (LKY pushed for greening Singapore to such a degree, that the motto for the National Parks Board today is not Garden City, but City in a Garden), I see the gigantic influence he has had on the place I live. More importantly, I am also able to see how easily things could have gone south. Giving in to special interests, pandering to communities on the basis of race or religion, copying principles from other countries without pausing to consider local applicability or rejecting viable ideas because they didn't emerge internally would all have sabotaged one or more of these.
And that prescient understanding of Singapore and its position in the world along with an iron will while being open to trying new things is what made him such an effective leader. Singapore is truly poorer for having lost its greatest caretaker and his loss will resonate for years as people stop to ask, "What would LKY have done?"
RIP, Lee Kuan Yew.
