Singapore: From Medha's Diary..

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