This article was written by Medha Roopam after a visit to Singapore during our IAS Professional Training Phase-II. Views are her personal.
Introduction
Singapore is a nation worth
visiting once in a lifetime. To know they were at the same development phase as
India when they got independence, and how they sprinted to reach where they are
today only in a matter of five decades is inspiring and almost feverishly
romantic. Visiting the country made me believe in the power of dreams and that
a lot is possible and even sky is not the limit.
To further elaborate, I’m heavily
inspired by Singapore, but not impressed by Singapore. Though this statement
may sound contradictory, it’s not. I will in my essay talk about it along with
five best practices I would try to implement in my country. To put things more
in perspective, I am from Uttar Pradesh cadre and hence I would probably work
in various cities of Uttar Pradesh and may be serve the central government
while on central deputation. This will also affect my perspective, my learning
and prospective implementation.
1. Carefully Planned Economic
Policies (MACRO LEVEL)
In 1950’s about 70-80% of
Singapore’s population consisted of squatters or slum dwellers. Absentee
landlords controlled much productive land, and the country had negative savings
rate along with heavy unemployment. This is a common statistic of many
districts of India, especially in Uttar Pradesh. Then how did this country
achieve a rapid growth in GDP per capita? What did they do, to become one of
the fastest growing tiger economies of Asia? They did this through carefully
planned economic policies of the government. They very categorically used free
markets where it supported their economic growth and consciously distorted
markets by incentivizing or dis-incentivizing wherever required to fuel
development.
In India we find that economic
developments are slow, we fail to capitalize markets when we can, and the past
decade has proved that we have been stingy in pushing bold economic reforms
which could put our country at a more holistic development path. Some points
which Singapore used to launch itself –
1)
Strong External Trade Orientation
2)
Diversification of trading network
3)
Services given greater prominence
4)
Skilling Workforce heavily
5)
Business and work friendly tax system
External trade was given boost in
Singapore by giving support to strong, rules based multilateral trading system
which got its total trade to 300% of Singapore’s GDP. We in India took so much
time to get rid of the license raj, and we still lag behind in pushing reforms
like GST and multibrand retail along with riders which favour our rural
economy. What stops us from making multibrand retail a reality along with
strong rural favouring riders like compulsory procurement of raw materials from
the rural areas, compulsory employment for Indian youth and compulsory training
and skilling in CSR?
Even though a very small country,
Singapore has 20 regional and bilateral FTAs with 31 trading partners. They
also have 41 Investment guarantee agreements to improve investor confidence.
Though these numbers don’t matter, but overall the entire atmosphere is very
enabling, corruption free and efficient. They have halved their corporate and
personal income tax rates in the past 20 years to encourage investment and
growth. Even then they don’t have fiscal deficit and have been in surplus from
past five years.
Fast economic policy development
is something I want to be able to implement in my country. I may not be able to
do it now when I’m at the field, but I want to be able to do something about
this when in central government at high posts. The strength which comes from
economics even enabled Singapore to have a say in the arctic circle group! We
in India need to strengthen our economic institutions and channelize with
planning our economic policy. A nation like ours which has a huge population, a
huge market and an approaching demographic dividends can perform miracles and
wonders with its growth story if planned. I hope India can take this chance
that economics is offering us.
2. Artificial Tourism (MICRO
& MACRO level)
Its amazing to think that
Singapore has become a top destination for Indian tourists to visit even though
everything is man-made! They don’t have historical monuments like us, they
don’t have a country specific historical culture spanning million of years like
us, they don’t have diversity of dance forms and festivals like India and they
don’t have environmental diversity like us. Then how did they manage to do
this? This is why I said Singapore is inspiring. The perfectionist nature of
Singapore, the way they built one concrete jungle after another, beautifying
their spaces, foresting with manmade gardens.
Though inspiring, it is not
impressive like I mentioned at the beginning of my article. Slowly and heavily
it hits the tourist how unnatural and artificial is the world created by Singaporeans.
Indian tourist may keep Singapore in the must visit category, but the global
tourist may easily decide to give it a skip. Manmade sparsed gardens, manmade
orchid greenhouses, manmade waterfall in gardens by the bay, manmade habitat
made for animals in zoo or the Jurong bird park, artificially controlled water
reservoir, artificial beech at beachfront, man made park of universal studio,
artificial aquariums, artificial skypark that’s all the country has.
It cannot match the natural endowment
of a country like India ever, but again, this quality of creating something out
of nothing by the Singaporeans is something to learn from. Imagine if we are
able to invest well in tourism, imagine the returns it will give, higher than
probably any country of the world! English speaking is common in India,
multiple historical destination exist, cultural destinations are plenty,
environmental destinations are numerous and a few manmade also destinations
exist. But still we lose 2.4 trillion ie 6.4% worth of our GDP – a very high percentage of potential
tourist only due to low sanitation in the country.
Singapore has reached perfection
in this sphere. They even keep plastic bags outside every building for tourists
to cover wet umbrellas! If we look at the state of Uttar Pradesh, there is not
much national tourism except religious tourism. But during our Uttar Pradesh
darshan I realized there are so many beautiful areas which we can turn into
good tourist destinations like Sarnath, Ayodhya, Allahabad, Mirzapur, and
Mathura. We on the other hand unable to exploit tourism potential in Agra
district itself which holds a wonder of the world. Agra is visited during the
day and international tourisms prefer to drive back to Delhi. The Yamuna
expressway has only added to this peril. So much can be done in the district to
make the tourist stay over the weekend. That will generate revenue and
reputation for the city.
A lot has been done in Sarnath
too, conservation at its best. But looking at Singapore I realize that is not
enough. We need to think of the tourism as a service which should give the
tourist all possible information along with facilities and ease. Everywhere in
Singapore they distributed self explanatory maps and to-do lists. Imagine if we
are actually able to maintain well and showcase all the beautiful monuments of
Agra to the tourists – Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, It-mud-daulah, Sikandra, Red
fort, Mehtab Bagh, Guru ka Tal, Jama Mosque, Chini ka Rauza, Tomb of
Mariam-uz-Zamani, Moti Tomb, Ram Bagh and Musamman Burj. Can anyone stop the
city from becoming world’s most preferred travel destination? We have heritage,
but first we need to learn to take care of it and then we need to showcase it
to create an upward economic spiral for the city and country to grow better.
Nothing is stopping us, we have all the right ingredients, we just need to begin
consciously implementing tourism policies with highest priority.
3. Integrated Public transport
(MICRO level)
The transport strategy of
Singapore is amazing. They are successfully able to discourage private
transportation and encourage public transportation to the highest level its
possible. And as I have used their public transportation system for seven days
I can confidently say that they have a world class transportation system. Even
if we don’t go into the nitty gritties of their policy, even to a common man or
tourist it’s evident how simplified their system is. The same metro card is
used in metro and bus system. Every bus stop has full detail of which buses
pass from there. Taxi system is very organized. Any taxi which sees you, has to
stop for you and cannot say no to you regardless of the destination you want to
go to. There are zebra crossings where cars mandatorily stop to let pedestrian
to cross. Its hassle free, its continuous and worth emulating in India.
The success of their policy is
visible from the following statistic : Even though Singapore per capita income
is high, there is 1 car for every 9 people in the country. That means 1 car for
every 3 families. Daily number of trips via their bus system is 3.89 million
per day which is the highest in a mode of transport in Singapore. Using
government investment and PPP at many places they built the entire system – including
shelters, stations, stands, lanes etc. Their fares are regulated by a watchful
public transport council, their bus lanes are used only by buses which helps
keep up the speed of this mode of transportation, they encourage cycling to
complete last mile journey by having a lot of cycles and cycle parking
stations.
Even the traffic congestion is
controlled by ‘congestion pricing’ where the vehicles have to pay according to
the congestion they are causing. This is a brilliant example of using markets
to manage a system well. On the other hand deliberate distortion in the cars
market has made owning a car extremely expensive, discouraging private travel,
again using interference in market well.
We can implement all this in the
exact similar manner in Delhi and Lucknow. Delhi has gotten closer by the
coming up of OLA cabs and other private players, Lucknow can totally be made a
passenger friendly zone, if these points are strongly focused upon and
implemented. Dedicated cycle tracks have been made in Lucknow, but again the
policy is incomplete, complete planning along with solving of practical
problems is imperative if we want to have an excellent public transportation.
Even and odd policy will also stand the test of time only if the public
transportation is made efficient and user friendly along with cost effectiveness.
4. State managing of
multiculturalism
It may be true that the culture
and history of Singapore promotes multiculturalism on its own. But it has been
able to sustain that and take it forward only due to state interference. This
point really is relevant for India, especially for my state of Uttar Pradesh
which sees a lot of riots and communalism. Initially when I heard their policy
I was taken aback by the discrimination they do, but I realized what they did
was positive discrimination, which has helped their cause. I’m not fully
convinced whether the methods they followed should be taken up exactly in its
raw form in India.
Before elaborating further on
their policy, let me first give the figures of their ethnic variety – 74.1%
Chinese, 13.4 % Malay, 9.2% Indians and 3.3 % others. Now the state instead of
taking the approach that all are the same for us, they follow a discriminatory
policy. The various ethnic groups are highly aware of their identities. But the
state intervenes to ensure positive discrimination. For example, no school will
have only Malay students or Chinese students, the admissions are regulated by
the same quota as the percentages of their population in the country. Means
every school will have roughly around 74.1 % Chinese, 13.4% Malay and 9.2%
Indians. This is true even for housing. No housing colony will have only
Indians or Malay, every housing colony will have a healthy mix of all the
ethnic groups, this is ensured by the state. Even the selling of a flat from an
Indian can only be done to another Indian to ensure maintenance of the ratio.
This helps in acceptability and high
tolerance of all ethnic groups towards each other. They learn to stay mixed and
respect each other. Even the minorities don’t feel insecure as their quotas are
secure. We as Indian tourists saw the warmth given by the Chinese and Malay
people, indicating live and let live policy. This is reflected even in their
ministers council which has 3 Indians in top posts and even 2 Muslims in the
council. Little India, Arab Street, China town showcase their culture and all
ethnicities enjoy all these areas!
Can this be followed in totality
in India? Or does this quota system create a ethnic self awareness more than
what’s required? Singaporeans are heavily aware of their ethnicity, which I
found very evident even in 5 minute conversations with them. Isin’t that a bad
thing? Kerala has roughly 33% each of Hindu, Muslim and Christian and maintains
a better harmony than rest of the country. The state there does not do positive
discrimination. Infact there is a common Kerala culture running through all the
different religious communities. Is that better? I feel that in housing even if
we don’t have a written policy on positive discrimination, we in the field
should try to discourage the system of separate residential area for separate religions.
That is very healthy and breeds communalism. Instead we should promote
intermixing of all communities. Hence even if we don’t probably follow
Singapore in letter but we should in spirit.
5. Public Housing
More than 80% of Singaporeans
live in Public Housing. This number is incredible. Their housing development
board was inaugurated in 1960 with the mission of ‘Every family owns a home’. They acquired
farming lands, leveled the hills and filled low lands. The government played
the big brother in this dimension and micro controlled everything to build
beautiful residential areas with the just right pockets of greeneries, grocery
stores, supermarket spaces, sports areas, children’s areas, library, police
stations, community clubs, religious centres, commercial clusters, light
industry nearby to source woman labour and planned to keep polluting industries
at the fringe areas of the town.
They kept public transportation
also intersparsed like the MRT, Bus stands, LRT and educational institutions in
close vicinity to every residential area. They shifted to prefabricated concept
in construction methods in the 1980s. This increased their speed and reduced
the cost. They kept upgrading and rejuvenating their old towns simultaneously.
They consciously moved the slum population – the 90% of population which used
to stay in 10% of land in 1950s, providing alternate housing to them for
resettlement.
This extreme planning was added
to by other important factors like financing avenues for citizens from the
Central Provident Fund, utmost transparency in allotment of the houses with
priorities laid out clearly, subsidies for the low income families, ensuring
quality of construction and good public amenities along with ethnic diversity. Every
house was even designed to include a safe shelter in case of bombing. That
amount of effort has gone into their planning and has been beautifully
replicated throughout the country.
Can India do the same? Yes, with
various policies like Prime ministers rural awaas yojana functioning and many
housing projects being taken up here and there in pockets of the country, there
is a promise held by the nation. If one looks at the well built housing
projects of Tamil Nadu the results are self explanatory. Its true government
can face a crunch of availability of government land, but that doesn’t stop the
municipalities and government from ensuring that any private township comes up
in a holistically planned manner with conditions prefixed by government. These
conditions could include enough area set aside for green spaces, public
transportation avenues construction along with other infrastructural
developments. In fringe areas of Lucknow and even in Ghaziabad, so many
residential colonies are coming up, we can regulate and convert those into beautiful
spaces for our citizens. Rajiv Awas Yojana, now known as PM Urban Awas yojana
holds a promise for resettlement of slum people into livable and vibrant homes
at a huge scale in the entire country. These projects should be taken up in
priority and decent good quality homes should be built by the government
initiative with a lot of focus. We can implement a lot if not all out of the
Singapore public housing sphere.
Conclusion
These five dimensions are not the
only ones I would want to implement in India. I would also want to implement the
perfectionism and the finishing touch the administrators of Singapore put, in
every task and policy they take up. That is the reason that their results show.
Policies were good no doubt, but their implementation was flawless. Many of our
Indian policies are the best in theory, very well written, but we fail in their
implementation. That is something we need to change. This Singaporean perfect implementation along with a finishing touch
will be my final learning cutting across all other learnings. I know now that
the horizon we see from India isn’t enough, there is bigger horizon we need to
conquer and hopefully we will.
Thankyou
