Volume 23, 2014 - NUSS · 2016. 12. 27. · Viswa Sadasivan 21 - 29 Singapore’s Education and Its Multicultural Heritage: Forging a New Dialogue Arun Bala 30 - 42 It’s Not Just

Commentary:Volume 23, 2014Singapore Challenged: The Uneasy and Unchartered Road Ahead

Editor: Associate Professor Victor R Savage

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1COMMENTARY VOLUME 23, 2014 SINGAPORE CHALLENGED: THE UNEASY AND UNCHARTERED ROAD AHEAD

Contents

Editorial

3 - 12 Singapore Challenged:The Uneasy and UncharteredRoad AheadVictor R Savage

The National Narrative:Singapore Dialogues

13 - 20 A Narrative for WinningViswa Sadasivan

21 - 29 Singapore’s Education and ItsMulticultural Heritage:Forging a New DialogueArun Bala

30 - 42 It’s Not Just the SingaporeLiterature Prize, But AlsoLiterature in Singapore That’sIn CrisisKoh Tai Ann

Sustainable Singapore

43 - 50 Reflections on Singapore’sDemographic FuturePaul Cheung

51 - 58 Singapore Challenged:The Natural and LivingEnvironmentEuston Quah andChristabelle Soh

59 - 64 Singapore’s Interest in LNGand Becoming a RegionalGas HubLee Tzu Yang

The Model City in Question

65 - 71 The New Singapore DreamKishore Mahbubani

Green Conversations

72 - 81 500 Shades of GreenGeh Min

82 - 90 Singapore:The New Serengeti?Bernard Harrison

Foreign Relations

91 - 95 Unwise for Singapore andMalaysia to have Bad Ties inthe FutureOoi Kee Beng

2 COMMENTARY VOLUME 23, 2014 SINGAPORE CHALLENGED: THE UNEASY AND UNCHARTERED ROAD AHEAD

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• contributing positively to Singapore’s political and intellectualdevelopment and helping to cultivate a more gracious social andcultural environment.

As the foremost graduate society, NUSS strives to promote theinterests of its stakeholders by providing appropriate platforms forall to socialise, build networks, improve connectivity and exchangeideas through a multitude of recreational, academic, political, socialand cultural activities.

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Associate Professor Victor R Savage is the current Director of AlumniRelations, National University of Singapore (NUS).

Editorial

Singapore Challenged:The Uneasy and

Unchartered Road AheadVictor R Savage


Editorial

Singapore Challenged: The Uneasy and Unchartered Road Ahead

Introduction

“Will Singapore be around in 100 years?I am not so sure….An earlier generationof Singaporeans had to build this placefrom scratch — and what a fine job wehave done….But after that, the trajectorythat we take will depend on the choicesmade by a younger generation ofSingaporeans. Whatever those choicesare, I am absolutely sure that if Singaporegets a dumb government, we are donefor. This country will sink intonothingness” (Lee Kuan Yew, 2013:212).

The above statement by the FoundingFather of modern Singapore, Lee KuanYew would seem dismal, worrying andyet, could be prophetic. After 50 yearsof independence (SG50 in 2015),Singaporeans at all levels need to takestock of the City-state’s achievements,issues, benchmarks and futurechallenges. Given its current status asperhaps one of the best run governmentsin the world, its booming economy, itsgleaming global city status, it wouldbe difficult for younger generationSingaporeans today to believe that thismodelled, success story of abundanceand first-world status could go all wrongin decades. We have seen, in a short spellof three months, how the Irish successstory fell apart and how Iceland had afinancial meltdown — it underscores anominous warning that economic successis tenuous, social confidence is brittle andpolitical stability is fragile especially forsmall countries.

The global status of Singapore readsimpressively for 2013 — according to theStandard Chartered Development Index,Singapore ranks fourth globally forsustainable development; it is the third-largest foreign exchange centre in theworld after New York and London; it isthe top convention centre in the worldfor 11 years running; and it is rankedthe 16th most peaceful country in theworld in the Global Peace Index. In hiswelcome speech to Prime Minister(PM) Lee Hsien Loong in April 2013 inWashington DC, President Obama saidthat “Singapore is one of the mostsuccessful countries in the world”. Inshort, the City-state has become avisible international brand name for asuccessful city-state that is eco-friendly,economically vibrant, politically stableand with a good quality of living.

Yet, maintaining this ‘success’ story is noeasy proposition for whoever takes overas the government in Singapore. Thedomestic political pressures are buildingup and international competition iscoming from all quarters as Singaporeembeds itself in a globalised marketplace. Every astute Singaporean is wisingup to the question of how Singapore isgoing to maintain and sustain itself, overthe next several decades. The pessimistssee Singapore’s golden times ebbing soonwhile the optimists believe Singapore willstill survive because countries regionallyand globally are unable to developsustainably. However, Singaporeanscannot bank on the misfortunes of other


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countries and cities to competeinternationally. If the City-state is tosustain itself it needs to continuallyreinvent itself and ensure it remainscompetitive and relevant in the globalexchange of political and economicactivities, goods and services.

Given that some Singaporeans areincreasingly cognisant of the globalimperatives and regional challengesfacing the City-state, I thought it wasopportune to hear from a spectrumof Singaporeans, covering a varietyof economic, political, cultural,environmental, educational and socialinterests about what they see asSingapore’s current challenges and theirprescriptions for the management of theCity-state. One issue which our coverdesign highlights is whether Singaporewill continue to excel well and be able topunch beyond its weight. Given that theNUSS is celebrating its 60th anniversarythis year, it seemed timely to look intoSingapore’s future prospects from an‘insider’s’ perspective. All the writerswere chosen for their expertise in variedarenas and hopefully, they bring tothese commentaries, perceptions,analyses and reflections which arepertinent to Singapore’s future nationaltrajectories. Commentary remains arelevant platform and arena for debate,dialogue, and discussion. Enjoy this issue— there is a lot to imbibe and much moreto reflect on.

To better appreciate the following

discussion, one needs to be reminded ofthree significant developments inSingapore. Firstly, the curtains seem tobe closing on the person who developedmodern Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Hemarks the end of an illustrious and activecareer as the Founding Father of modernSingapore. The question is whetherSingapore can still develop without hisphysical presence, political tutelage, andglobal influence? Only Mr Lee has had thepolitical gravitas to criticise, speak freelyand frankly on the world stage and stillbe respected.

Domestically, however, one wonderswhether he has put in place a politicalsystem that will transcend his long reinon political power? In Huntington’s terms,one would ask whether the first-generation leaders have provided theinstitutionalisation of political processesand institutions. In his recent book, TheGreat Degeneration, the British historianNiall Ferguson (2012) argues that the“profound crisis of the institutions”undergirds the biggest current problemof Western politics. All around the region(Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia,Myanmar, Thailand, Timor Leste, and thePhilippines) the evidence of an inabilityto institutionalise democratic politicalprocesses is threatening to underminegovernments, political systems and thestate’s development programmes.

Secondly, the general election in 2011and the Ponggol by-election in 2012which set back the ruling party’s electoral


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majority in parliament had definitelychanged Singapore’s political landscapedramatically in more than 40 years. Thequestion on everyone’s mind is whetherthe ruling party’s electoral slide willcontinue in the next general election andcause damage in the party’s ability to findcompetent persons to run thegovernment. Do we accept Lee KuanYew’s oft-repeated warnings thatSingapore does not have enough capablepersons to form one cabinet much lesstwo competent ruling parties? So doesthat mean the Achilles heel of Singaporelies in a crisis of future leadership?Singapore is a global player on a worldeconomic stage and there is no moreroom for parochial thinking and localperceptions if the City-state is to sustainitself at current global benchmarks.

Thirdly, the silent majority ofSingaporeans are waking up with newdemands and severe criticisms ofeverything in Singapore — a crumblingtransport system, housing shortages,swelling foreign labour, demographiccrowding and expensive health care. ThePrime Minster, no less in his 2013National Day Rally speech, acknowledgedthat Singapore is in a major transition, awatershed period and much needs to bedone to meet these challenging domestictimes. Managing the new Singaporepolitical equation is no easy task and itseems like loose talk to compare thefirst generation of leadership with thecurrent government leaders. Timeshave changed, society has changed,

and political management challengestoday are a lot more complex than 30years ago.

The 2013 National Day Pledge:New Socialism

Any older generation Singaporeanlistening to PM Lee Hsien Loong’s 2013National Day rally speech will think it asdéjà vu. The government after a dallianceand courtship with the market economyand laissez-faire capitalism has returnedto its socialistic roots. It realised thatwages are widening, costs are increasing,inflation is rising and many Singaporeanscannot afford basic necessities or aquality life that they have come to expect.This is an ironic situation for a countrywith the highest per capita of millionairesin the world. Like many countries, theSingapore governance system cannottame globalisation but it has to adapt toit. The prescription was a return to the1960’s People’s Action Party’s socialisticpolicies.

The three tenets of socialism health,housing and education were resurrectedand the government poured in newinvestments and subsidies albeit with onetwist — there is no free ride as it still hadto accept Milton Friedman’s economicdictum of no free lunch. Hence, PM Lee’s2013 speech was all about coming backto socialistic basics — give its citizensmore housing, health care and educationat affordable and subsidised prices. Thesepublic services now include also


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subsidised intra-urban transportation fordisadvantaged groups. It has becomeincreasingly clear that the noises andcriticisms by older generation and lowerincome Singaporeans are tied to fears ofhaving no social security, no basic safetynet in the tide of rising costs, inflation andwidening income gaps. If the governmentis providing a budget of mass citizenpacification, then failure seemsinevitable. The future must be aninformed civil society where governmentand the governed can build a commonground on humanistic concerns forsocial equity.

Will the People’s Action Party (PAP) winback its lost voters and constituencies inthe next election? Will its socialisticgamble provide a rejuvenation of thePAP? T ime will tell. The challengehowever, is that if the PAP loses anothertwo more Group RepresentationConstituencies (GRCs) in addition to itscurrent losses, the ruling Party might findit hard to put together a competent andexperienced cabinet to run the country.That would be a scary domestic scenario— and the future of Singapore’s dynamiceconomy and stable political system willbe undermined. While it took 30 to 40years to develop a First World country, itwill take only a couple of years todismantle it if we do not have acompetent government, if ourgovernance system is impervious to theground swell of discontent, and ifSingaporeans do not see the larger globalpicture in their demands for change,

subsidies and affirmative action forSingaporeans.

However, the more pertinent question iswhether the government and societyhave the political, economic and socialresilience to weather the domestic andglobal storms of the future. Withoutnational resilience, Singapore will havegreater difficulty adjusting to challengesin future which are not coming only fromclimate change. Chinese resilience hasbeen raised on a strong Confucian ethosand a diet of pragmatism. Their mostimportant book, The Book of Changes orI-Ching, began with human-naturechanges followed by human to humanchanges, and thereby, prepared theChinese for creating, adapting andmanaging change. In Singapore, onewonders whether Singaporeans willadjust easily to adverse changes or hassociety’s resilience been eroded withprosperity and politically-stable qualityliving?

The City-state’s Political Dilemma

One of the underlying issues of ournational challenge lies in the verynature of the country’s political andgeographical status. Unlike other citiesand states, the Singapore case is quitedifferent. Singapore is both a city andan independent state. In globalcomparisons, Singapore sharesbenchmarks and billings with both urbanas well as state comparisons. Statecomparisons put Singapore at a clear


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advantage because of the City-state’ssmall size (in area and population) ascompared to larger countries. WhileSingapore might fare well vis-à-vis othercountries, it is less impressive whencompared with other cities. Singapore’sper capita GDP might be better than theUnited States, but the City-state is about40 percent of New York’s per capita GDP.

Yet, as sociologists argue, thegovernment’s habit of emphasisingSingapore’s ‘uniqueness’ could also be adisadvantage. If Singapore is notcompared with other cities and states,the City-state may be deluded that it isbeyond comparison and hence, it dimsthe political problems and economicchallenges faced. Indeed the WorldWildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), inresponding to the government’scriticisms of global benchmarking theCity-state in terms of its ecologicalfootprint, has dropped Singapore from itsbenchmarking exercise — this makesSingapore only the poorer for its absence.When you read many of the internationalpublications, Singapore is often notfeatured in many of the globalcomparisons on many issues. Hong Kongseems to be the preferred city andeconomic unit of comparison.

This does not mean that Singapore isnot being used by internationalorganisations in many comparativestudies. Clearly Singapore continues totop the charts in many areas — and itdemonstrates that the continuing

institutional political mandate ofstriving to do well in all sectors has paidgood economic dividends. Singapore, inshort, is a global brand, and has a goodpolitical corporate name in the worldof cities and nation-states. Yet,domestically the government’s quest tostrive for the best has been also a subjectof domestic and international debate.Internationally, there are naggingnegative impressions of Singapore’sbrand of democracy which thegovernment has strenuously defendedover the years.

Singapore however faces manyseemingly endemic domesticchallenges that are not easily solved:natural population growth is dwindling;population is rapidly ageing; the urbanpopulation base is small; economicproductivity per capita is relatively low;and income disparity is on the rise. Forexample, the Gini coefficient hasincreased from 0.457 in 2003 to 0.478in 2012 which demonstrates thatincome inequality is widening. Infairness, this income disparity howeveris not a Singapore preserve. In hisblockbuster book, Capital in theTwenty-F irst Century, the Frencheconomist, Thomas Piketty shows therich get richer over time in allcapitalistic economies. Clearly thepolicy solutions of income disparity arenot easily solved politically. However,taming rising expectations in adeveloped city-state are equallydifficult governance issues.


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The cosmopolitan city versus nationalisedstate has become the seed ofSingaporean discontent with regard toforeign labour, permanent residents andimmigration/citizenry issues. Many ofthese national challenges stem from thedemographic situation as well as theeconomic competition in the globalmarketplace. There is no easy way out tothis issue — do Singaporeans want to bea global, open, cosmopolitan city like NewYork and London or a national stateveering towards ‘nation-state’ identitylike Japan’s. While the Finance Ministeris working on upgrading indigenousproductivity, Singapore’s demographicsituation remains stubbornly reticentabout growth. Curbs on foreign labourare hurting many SMEs and industries —and in the long run Singapore’scompetitive edge might lose out. On theother hand, can Singapore afford to beinsular and xenophobic when the City-state relies on trade that is 300 timesher GDP?

Times have changed in the last 40 yearsand the nature of governance inSingapore needs radical rethinking andcautious implementation. The ‘top-down,government knows best ’ idea ofgovernance has to make way for aninclusive system of governance with allnational stakeholders (private sector,civil societies, Non-GovernmentalOrganisations (NGOs), academics)engaged in decision making andimplementation of public programmes.Government leaders have to realise

that the deeply-ingrained politicalWeltanschauung (the unquestioningassumption of the order of events orfacts) needs adjustment, change, andadaptation. Governance underscores animportant axiom in state managementwhere all state and non-state playersshould be involved and whereresponsibility is shared. The idea thatpolitics is only for politicians andgovernment leaders is passé and naïvethinking. In democracies, every citizen isa political entity with rights, views andvotes; but more important is the need forall stakeholders to realise that the upkeepof the national ‘common good’ and‘common-pool resources’ require attimes sectoral and personal ‘sacrifices’and the minimisation of ‘free-riders’ inthe state system. In many developingcountries, unfortunately, the power elitesare the prime free-riders while the poorermasses have to make the major nationalsacrifices. The nature of such nationalpolitics has become the tinderbox ofriots, strikes, revolts and rebellions in theArab World, South Asia and SoutheastAsia.

The current Singapore political transitionthrows up issues of the future of politicalleadership — can leaders separate foreignpolicy from domestic politics? In a city-state such as Singapore, politicalleadership is a lot more taxing, nuanced,challenging and stressful. While citymayors in countries concentrate on local,urban and community issues, stateleaders have to deal with national issues


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in relation to changing geopoliticalsituations, regional politics and globalcompetition. Mixing urban and state,local and global issues are not alwayspolitically and economically satisfactory.Clearly an ageing population growsconservative, becomes more localised inperceptions and is risk-adverse. However,in a city-state such as Singapore, domesticand local issues often require foreignpolicy considerations and vice-versa. Thewhole Japanese political storm of theUnited States (US) troops in Okinawashows that if Okinawan domestic politicswins it can undermine Japan’s nationalsecurity and sovereignty. Singapore hasno luxury like Japan because city andstate, domestic and foreign policy arefused — both political leaders and citizensneed to be educated on negotiatingpolitically-sensible decisions and policyoutcomes for Singapore’s sustainability asa state. In short, if domestic politics wins,the state could be undermined in theglobal political and economic arena.

Future Options

The global economic change taking placeprovides some hope for Singapore’sfuture trajectory. There are two areas forgrowth and optimism: digital informationtechnology and environmental greenoptions. The Cambrian biologicalrevolution seems to be resurrecting itselfin a new human revolution in digitalinformation technology — what AlvinToffler calls the “Third Wave” and TheEconomist refers to as creating a new

Ecosystem (startup colony) ofentrepreneurship, creativity andinnovation. States and cities, whichhave the entrepreneurial ecosysteminfrastructure, are better able tocapitalise on this new synergy forcreativity, entrepreneurship andinnovation. Singapore has Block 71 inAyer Rajah Crescent with 200 official andinformal startups. The government’sinvestment in incubators andentrepreneurs has produced results —there are 800 internet firms in Singapore.Singapore can ride on this global wave bycapitalising on the historical and currentintersections of four great civilisationalinfluences: Chinese, Indian, Middle-Eastern and Western — sources ofunfolding potential creativity andinnovation.

With climate change becoming apertinent topic even in a business andleaders forum such as Davos in 2014, thestakes are growing high about findingsolutions at all levels. Global warmingprovides a daunting problem forgovernments, but the silver lining is itsattraction in catalysing new energyinnovations, green businesses andenvironmental policy solutions.Singapore’s long-term ‘clean and green’policies, its water sufficiency initiatives,and ‘city in the garden’ image makes itan attractive base for green ideas,environmental innovations and creativeenergy business propositions. It is nowonder that over 1,000 shades of greenbusinesses are operating in the City-state.


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It also has the ability to market itsproducts and policies overseas. Yet, theimportant message of sustainability liesin the correct balance in human-naturerelationships and ensuring a livelihood ofmoderation, thrift and a culture of non-material satisfaction. Given urbanisationgrowth around the world (over 52percent of population), Singapore’s urbanmodel is one global laboratory ofexperimentation, research, study andinquisition. It is a City-state attractingpoliticians, governments, bureaucratsand academics — trying to uncover theblack box of its success.

Both areas of new innovationsunderscore the city-state’s ethos ofsustainability which is grounded indeveloping the national creative quotientof its people. However, is this possible ina tightly-run political environment?Singapore is successful in churning outgood students due to our goodeducational system and universities.Students might produce good grades, butwill they become independent thinkers,innovative leaders and creative people?Over the years, expatriate professorsoften tell me that our students are greatat producing facts and figures but theylack ‘educational entrepreneurship’. Yet,Singapore’s comfortable environment iscertainly attracting attention of foreigncreative peoples and encouraging youngSingaporeans to think beyond the box.While the government might be ableto manage a constrained politicalenvironment, Singaporeans alternatively

express themselves in the Cybersphere.

In Singapore, we have controlledcreativity or managed innovation. Oneexample of the managed creativity is theopening of Lucasfilm’s Sandcrawlerbuilding in January 2014 in Singapore’sFusionopolis, which demonstrates theAmerican organisation’s faith inSingapore’s creative contributions. PMLee Hsien Loong hopes that the Lucasinvestment will help to provide the“creative spark” to inspire people andpromote creativity. However, thequestion is whether Singapore’scontrolled environment can provide a‘creative ecosystem’. For some, the testof domestic creativity is whether the City-state can produce a Noble laureate.

The other downside of the City-state’sentrepreneurship initiatives is the lowsocial status experimental endeavourshave. The Singapore government hasbeen too successful in providing a stablejob environment — hence, parents wanttheir children to take professions ingovernment, teaching, multi-nationalcorporations (MNCs), and banking inSingapore. Traditionally, Singapore’s oldrich have made their wealth inconservative long-term economicinvestments — plantation, landownership and banking. Without foreigninvestments, Singapore industrialisationprogramme in the 1960s onwards wouldhave been a flop if it relied on Singaporeinvestors. The social stigma ofentrepreneurial failure is something not


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socially acceptable, which is differentfrom Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea,Thailand, India and other nouveau-richsocieties. The new InformationTechnology (IT) ecosystem also favoursadaptable younger populations andundermines experienced workersbrought up in a different workingecosystem. Unfortunately, Singapore’sageing population is said to provide many‘obsolete’ workers in the new ecosystem.Unemployment will continue to increasebecause experienced ageing workers donot have the IT skills and the fact is thatan IT ecosystem reduces labour. Theseare issues that many developed countrieswith ageing populations have to confrontand manage.

Reflections

The essays in this volume demonstrateboth optimism and pessimism. There isoptimism in Singapore’s success story andits global branding and high status in theinternational community of nation-states. Singapore can continue toleverage on these positive globalperceptions and goodwill. Our ForeignAffairs Ministry (MFA) strives to keepgoodwill and cordial ties with all states inmany camps and power relationships.However, keeping neutrality in thegrowing political schisms between Chinaand the US and Japan as well as theinternal bickering pressures in ASEANmight be a lot more difficult in the comingyears. Singaporeans must be aware thatwhile domestic issues are pertinent to

their domestic housekeeping, externalaffairs and influences are equallyimportant for Singapore’s sustainability.Singapore after all rides on two percentof the global economy for its economicsustenance.

In concluding this editorial on Singapore’sfuture trajectory and challenges, let meend with a quote from the great Britishphilosopher Isaiah Berlin (2013:15) inunderscoring that there can be nopermanent national solutions to any ofsocietal ills and problems one faces:

“…the study of society shows that everysolution creates a new situation whichbreeds its own needs and problems, newdemands. The children have obtainedwhat their parents and grandparentslonged for – greater freedom, greatermaterial welfare, a juster (sic) society; butthe old ills are forgotten, and the childrenface new problems, brought about by thevery solutions of the old ones, and these,even if they can in turn be solved,generate new situations, and with themnew requirements – and so on, for ever –and unpredictably”.

References

Berlin, Isaiah (2013), The Crooked Timberof Humanity, London: Pimlico

Ferguson, Niall (2012), The GreatDegeneration, London: Allen Lane

Lee, Kuan Yew (2013), One man’s view ofthe World, Singapore: Straits Times Press


The National Narrative: Singapore Dialogues

A Narrative For WinningViswa Sadasivan

Mr Viswa Sadasivan, an NUS alumnus (Class of ‘83), is currently the CEOof Strategic Moves, a corporate strategy, strategic & crisis communicationconsultancy and training firm. He is an expert in the field of narrativesand was a Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) from 2010 to 2012.



A Narrative For Winning

Of the lessons in political commentarythat the late S Chandramohan taughtme, one stands out. He was thenDirector of the current affairsprogrammes division of the SingaporeBroadcasting Corporation. In the draftof my script for a special edition of thethen popular weekly current affairsprogramme, FEEDBACK, I described thethen Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yewas a “politician”. Chandra told me thatI was wrong; the term politician ispejorative and refers to those who usepolitical power to further interests thatare less than noble. He said thatSingapore has political leaders whohave the “ intellectual sophisticationand emotional integrity” to deliver onpromises. Chandra emphasised thateven though some of their policies andactions could appear undemocratic andeven draconian, closer examinationwould show that they were based on a“logic of accountability”.

This logic, in turn, is based on a “socialcontract” between the government andthe people — an understanding that inreturn for prosperity and progress, thepeople agree to hard work, governmentcontrol and reduced freedom. The crucialpoint, Chandra explained, was that thisagreement was predicated on a deep andmutual acceptance of a “socio-politicalnarrative” that defines who we are, whatwe stand for, where we have come from,and where we would like to be.

So what was this narrative?

There were two national narrativescreated in the 1960s. The first was thenarrative for merger with Malaya:

We are a small country with no naturalresources and limited human capability– survival is possible only if wecompensate for that which we lack bymerging with a larger, more establishedcountry. We will benefit from a commonmarket, having a hinterland and thesecurity of a more established armedforce. It would be a bonus if we mergedwith a country with which we alreadyhave cultural and kinship ties. Malaya fitsthe bill.

This narrative unified a series ofcompelling arguments that werepresented to the people during the 1963campaign leading to the People’s ActionParty (PAP) government’s victory in thereferendum on Singapore’s merger withMalaya. The narrative was used as aleverage to create a collective reflex notonly amongst a disparate people, butalso between the people and thegovernment. It deepened trust in theruling party and helped build faith in PMLee Kuan Yew’s leadership and vision.

In fact, this faith became so entrenchedin the months that followed that itwithstood the ultimate test whenSingapore was unceremoniously severedfrom the Federation of Malaysia. Virtuallyovernight, the merger narrative went upin smoke. Clearly, part of the reason whyPM Lee was highly emotional during the




televised press conference on 9 August,1965 was the loss of face in having tobacktrack from all he had said before topersuade the people that merger was theonly way for Singapore to survive.

This must certainly constitute a rareoccurrence in political history when anarrative that was imbibed by the peoplehad to be dismantled and promptlyreplaced by another narrativepromulgated by the same leader! This isusually the recipe for the ignominiousdemise of a political leader. It was clearlynot so in the case of Mr Lee and thePAP government.

The new post-independence narrativeworked for three reasons: the politicalleadership had already established acredible level of trust with the people bydelivering on promises made since 1959;the leaders saw it as their duty to walkthe ground day and night to persuade thepeople to accept the government’sagenda and belief system; and perhapsmost importantly, the new narrativecapitalised on the prevailing sense ofhaving been abandoned and was,therefore, emotionally relevant andcompelling.

The new narrative had to serve twopurposes: it had to get the people tostand unquestioning, behind theirleaders, and to be a clarion call forcharging ahead towards success,almost to prove a point to detractorsand to ourselves.

If Mr Lee and his ‘lieutenants’ were thecaptain and the crew of the ship thatsailed the rough seas, carrying us in it,the new narrative was the wind behindthe sail.

This narrative formed the basis of themuch talked-about “social contract” thatgave the government the licence to rulewith minimal resistance from the ground.Also, with the new narrative that waspredicated on faith, the government hadthe latitude to go with its instincts whensailing into the unchartered waters of the1960s and 70s. Starting from scratch andforced to blaze new trails for a nation in-the-making, the political leaders, oftenhad to lead with messianic zeal! Togetherwith a team of able public servants, theysystematically and painstakingly built keyinstitutions such as the EconomicDevelopment Board (EDB), the MonetaryAuthority of Singapore (MAS) and theHousing and Development Board (HDB).

What connected them was their ferventbelief in the new Singapore narrative,which was essentially this:

We have become independent and canrely only on ourselves. We have learnedthat dependence comes with a price.The hard truth is that countries act toprotect their own interests. We aresmall, vulnerable and have no naturalresources. Our survival depends onrapidly building ‘core muscles’ – oureconomy, security and social compact.Our small size can be our strength – like




a sampan, tossed about on rough seas,nimble enough to quickly change course,unlike an ocean liner. We must embracepragmatism. Our mantra - Hard-workand Discipline. We must be prepared tosacrifice for the future, and this includespersonal freedoms and liberties.Meritocracy and equal opportunities willbe our governing principles. To this end,the government will relentlessly seek newsolutions and provide a good home forthe people. In return, the people need tofollow faithfully. This is our socialcontract. We cannot be limited by whatwe have, but must be galvanised by whatwe can become — a success story thatwill silence our detractors, and inspirefuture generations. There is no reasonwhy we can’t achieve this. We needto believe.

To illustrate the inimitable mood in theSingapore of the 1960s as well as theunquestioning faith that comes withbeing fully invested in a narrative, here isan often-recounted conversation thattook place in the 1960s betweenAmerican economist and Nobel Laureate,Milton Friedman and former cabinetminister, S Dhanabalan, who was then asenior economist with the EDB:

“Friedman: What are you going to donow that you have lost the MalaysianCommon Market?

Dhanabalan: We don’t know what we’regoing to do but I want to assure you thatif you came back in 10 years’ time, you

will see that we have succeeded.

Friedman: What kind of answer is that foran economist?

Dhanabalan: I’m sorry but the truth is, wehave not the slightest clue what we willor should do. We just have the will andthe determination. We will not onlysurvive, we will prosper.”

This indomitable belief with which theleaders led, was matched by the faithwith which the people followed thegovernment. This was the basis for the“social contract” which was at the coreof the narrative.

This contributed to the social andeconomic progress and prosperity ofthe first three decades sinceindependence in 1965. The people’swillingness to suspend civil liberties foreconomic progress allowed leaders toget away with what would have beendeemed seriously politically incorrect inmost contexts. Take these remarksmade by PM Lee Kuan Yew in his 1983National Day Rally speech:

“If you don’t include your womengraduates in your breeding pool and leavethem on the shelf, you would end up amore stupid society… So what happens?There will be less bright people to supportdumb people in the next generation.That’s a problem.”

There were no consequences for PM Lee




or the PAP government. They continuedto ride on the power of the post-independence narrative. However,time does not stand still. Circumstanceschange and people change - so mustnarratives.

The PAP government’s reluctance toreshape the narrative was a significantcontributor to, what I see as, a gradualerosion of its stature and standing inthe eyes of the people from the 1990still May of 2011.

With affluence, better education andgreater exposure, Singaporeansbecame less wi ll ing to accepteverything that the government did orsaid. Having benefited from a betterquality of life, the appetite for issues offairness, right and wrong, and justicegrew steadily. Singaporeans not onlystarted having opinions, but alsodeveloped a desire for expressingthem. The internet provided theplatform for this. The gap between thepeople and the government narrowed.The old “social contract” had reachedits run-out-date.

However, the PAP government failed tosee the need to develop a fresh,concrete and equally potent nationalnarrative and ‘sell it’ with the sameevangelistic fervour as it did in the1960s. One could argue that with all thenoise generated on the internet and theheterogeneous nature of societytoday, it is far more difficult to pitch a

narrative that will be received withoutsome measure of ambivalence. Yes, itis more difficult, but not impossible.There are three prerequisites:acknowledging that ground sensibilitieshave shifted; discerning the deeperconcerns from the symptoms; andhaving the interest and will to changethe governing approach.

“Tweaking ” the system or makingincremental changes do not work whenpeople have been waiting a long timefor the government to not just listen,but demonstrate that it is listening.What is needed is a bold and distinctlydifferent new narrative that isunequivocal in substance andarticulated persuasively in one voice bythe leaders — one that not only strikesa chord with the people but is alsosomething the government is capableof and committed to delivering.

Failing to acknowledge the growingdiscord between the government andthe people’s sensibilities invariably hasconsequences. Take Mr Lee Kuan Yew’soff-side remark during the hustings ofthe 2011 General Election on theconsequences if the Aljunied GroupRepresentation Constituency (GRC)were to go to the Opposition:

“…If Aljunied decides to go that way,well Aljunied has five years to liveand repent….”

This remark in the language of the old




narrative, spoken with misplacedconfidence that the people continuedto have unquestioning faith in theirpolitical leaders was, many believe, thesingle most significant factor leading tothe PAP losing Aljunied GRC in 2011.The electoral result and the reaction ofthe populace to the remark amountedto a summary rejection of the post-independence narrative. Never beforehad the signal been clearer.

Since May 2011, we have seen adiscernible shift in the way thegovernment operates. It clearly appearsto be listening and responding more. Thegovernment is more prepared than everbefore to re-examine issues that wereconsidered taboo or at least indulgent inthe old narrative: direct assistance for theneedy, HDB flats for singles, and morehelp for special needs schools. There hasalso been a dramatic, almost uncanny,improvement in the government’s abilityto address and solve problems, especiallywith housing and transportation. Thesehave helped the government regain faith.We have also seen a multifold increasein public and stakeholder engagements,further demonstrating the government’swillingness to listen to the people. Inaddition, the PM and virtually all cabinetministers and PAP MPs have a presenceon Facebook. In short, there has been aprofusion of ‘conversations’ since the2011 General Election.

However, we have yet to ‘see’ a distinctnew narrative emerge. Perhaps PM Lee

Hsien Loong’s 2013 National Day Rallyspeech came closest to articulating it. Aslong as we do not hear a compelling newnarrative, the government will continueto be identified with the post-independence narrative. This is likely toalienate today’s populace, especiallythe young.

The government’s reluctance to moveaway decisively from the old narrativeof three decades is understandable,especially since it has producedtangible results. The new narrativedoes not need to be a total rejection ofthe old one. For example, meritocracy,equal opportunities, efficiency, andeven having a strong, decisivegovernment, are all qualities that mostSingaporeans sti l l value. What isimportant is that the core of the newnarrative must resonate strongly withthe defining considerations of thepeople today – our identity, a sense offairness and justice, balancingprogress and prosperity with equitableopportunities and aspirations, and amore partnership-based principle ofgovernance.

In short, a good narrative is one thataddresses three factors: it must be in syncwith the logic of the audience andstakeholders; there must be a clear senseof empathy for the people’s coreconcerns; and it must be congruous withthe ethical considerations of the day.

The sooner a coherent and bold new




narrative is designed in a way thatresonates with ground sensibilities, thebetter chance of gaining a buy-in fromthe people. This is the best way to moveout of the current level of flux and finda new operating equilibrium. Likesocieties, organisations which havetaken pains to develop a powerfulnarrative that goes beyond statingwhat they do well, to defining whatthey stand for, have found success.After all, mindshare is the basis forsustainable market share. Similarly,in an increasingly competitivemarketplace, product or pricedifferentiation has limited scope —people increasingly want to beassociated with products, concepts andideals that make them feel good.

This is what differentiates the men fromthe boys, so to speak — a certainmaturity and sophistication in definingwhat your organisation stands for. TheBody Shop stands firmly against animaltesting, Apple for innovation boldness,and AirAsia pushes a revolution in theregion where “now everyone can fly”.These are not iconic organisations merelyflashing clever slogans. The sentimentsconveyed by these catchphrases are atthe core of the narrative of theorganisation — something that unifiesthe sensibilities of the internal andexternal stakeholders. This, in turn,engenders loyalty, which is anincreasingly elusive concept today.

The National University of Singapore

(NUS) has systematically moved up theglobal rankings over the past decade. Inits earlier years, it focused on being agood teaching university. In the last sevenyears, the differentiator has shifted toresearch. In a few years, NUS may verywell get into the top 20 list. Teaching,research and facilities will be merehygiene factors then. Universities in this‘club’ talk more about what they standfor, such as the fascinating ways theirfaculty, alumni and students contributeto making this a better, more excitingworld. Why the university has decided onits course and its causes and howcommitted it is to them, form the core ofthe narrative which is imbued in everymember of the university family. Thiscreates pride of association.

Mission and vision statements are staticdescriptions of what you do and aspireto achieve. In most cases, these fail tocapture the imagination of stakeholdersbecause they do not usually present thecontext — they do not tell us where youstarted, why you decided on this course,what trials you faced in your journey,what kept you going, what your finaldestination is, and why this is importantfor you and your people.

If we examine greatness — The RomanEmpire, The Taj Mahal, Nelson Mandela,The Ford Corporation, The Beatles,Mahatma Gandhi, The French Revolutionand Singapore — the common factorwould be the strength of the narrative.People have always rallied behind ideas




and ideals, more than products andservices. Today, with so much devastationand disillusionment, with all the noiseand single-minded aimlessness, thesearch for what is meaningful that giveshope and is authentic has intensified.

More than ever, the narrative is key —those who have the instinct for it are thetrue winners.



Singapore’s Education andIts Multicultural Heritage:Forging a New Dialogue

Arun Bala

Dr Arun Bala is Senior Research Fellow with Asia Research Institute,National University of Singapore. His published works include TheDialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science (PalgraveMacmillan, 2008) and Asia, Europe and the Emergence of ModernScience: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries (ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).


Singapore’s Education and Its Multicultural Heritage: Forging a New Dialogue


Introduction

In recent years, a number of educationistshave called for a re-orientation inteaching and pedagogy that would drawupon the cultural resources of the majorAsian traditions that have shapedSingapore history — especially itsChinese, Malay-Islamic, and Indianheritages. Such a fresh alignment isrecommended by the educationist,S Gopinathan, who argues that thepresent stage of globalisation isconducive to knowledge indigenisation ineducation, particularly because there isample evidence in recent pedagogicalliterature that adopting such an approachcan not only enhance learning but alsomake it more meaningful and, therefore,powerful and transformative. He adds:

This is in part a response, both to a betterunderstanding of learning processesbequeathed by cognitive science, and ofthe recognition that the older subject-centred curriculum and teacher-dominated pedagogy will not providestudents with the learning skills andopportunities that are needed to meetthe challenges of twenty-first centuryliving. Much greater attention is nowbeing paid to the need for students tocritique and question codified knowledgeas represented in textbooks, to adopt aproblem-solving stance, and for studentsand teachers to co-construct knowledge.1

Gopinathan maintains that such aprocess of co-construction of knowledgecan greatly profit by drawing uponreservoirs of cultural knowledge thathave hitherto been marginalised. Apartfrom the role that indigenisation can playin enhancing learning, it can also be aresource for innovation and creativity indealing with the many difficultenvironmental and ecological concernsthat we confront today. The geographer,Victor Savage, emphasises this point:

Today the indigenous knowledgeembodied in preliterate cultures —especially their environmental knowledgethrough which they define therelationship between society andnature, culture and ecology — havebecome central concerns withinacademic discourse after environmentaldegradation and climate change havecome to be perceived as major globalchallenges.2

Although Savage refers to preliterateindigenous knowledge, there is also awide body of literature which documentsthe potential contributions of pre-modern literate traditions toenvironmental knowledge.3

However, there is still a generalmisconception in such calls to integrateindigenous knowledge — they oftenassume that the indigenous cultures of

1 Gopinathan, S (2012), pp 244.2 Savage, Victor (2012), pp 253.3 See example: Callicott, J. Baird (1997).




Singapore had played either no role or,at best, a marginal role in shaping modernscience and society in the past. However,recent dialogical histories of the birth ofmodern science and society suggest thatthe major cultures that came together inSingapore also profoundly influenced theemergence of science and society in earlymodern Europe. This has significantimplications for rethinking Singapore’seducation that has yet to besystematically explored.

Dialogical History of Modern NaturalScience

Let us begin by considering the dialogicalhistory of modern science. Modernscience is generally seen as beginningwith the Copernican Revolution whichmade the sun, rather than the earth, thecentre of orbit for the planets. This, inturn, is taken to have led to changes inphysics which culminated with Newton’sformulation of the laws of motion andgravity, which brought under a singleunified framework, our understanding ofthe behaviour of bodies both on Earthand in the heavens. It is traditionallyassumed that these changes were rootedin the ancient Greek tradition of science

but not in Chinese, Indian or Islamictraditions of astronomy.

However, there is now evidence that theScientific Revolution also drew onresources from the pre-Copernicantraditions of astronomy and cosmologyin the Chinese, Islamic and Indian worlds.The most advanced schools of astronomyin these cultures were the Xuan Ye,Maragha and Kerala traditions. Thesethree schools were developed in themillennium preceding the modern eraand were often (mis)taken as the darkages of European science from about 500to 1500 CE. Each of these traditions wasbuilt upon distinctly different conceptionsof the motions of the heavenly bodies.

The Chinese perceived the stars and theplanets as circling the Pole Star4 — thesingular fixed point in the heavens aroundwhich all other bodies moved.5 Bycontrast the Islamic tradition assumed ageo-centric structure for the universe,wherein all heavenly bodies — sun,moon, planets and stars — revolvedaround the earth.6 Indian astronomersdeployed a slightly more complex modelin which the then known planets —Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn

4 This is also traditionally assigned a moral salience. In the Confucian Analects 2.1, it was written: “Governingwith excellence (de) can be compared to being the North Star: the North Star dwells in its place, and themultitude of stars pay it tribute”.5 As a result, unlike the Indians and Arabs, the Chinese astronomers did not focus on planetary orbits. Theywere more interested in the predictions of stellar motions which led them to develop a strong tradition ofstar maps. Moreover, to get precise knowledge of the heavens, they built mechanical models that came tobe increasingly refined from the time of Zhang Heng (78 to139 CE).6 They also adopted the geometric approach of Ptolemy and the ancient Greeks but combined it with theIndian number system and algebraic techniques.




— orbited the sun, but the sun, the moonand the stars revolved around the earth.7

There is now increasing evidence that theCopernican Revolution was only able toconsolidate itself by drawing upon aportfolio of ideas and techniques fromthe Chinese, Indian and Islamic traditionsof astronomy. Although the threetraditions had different conceptions ofhow the heavenly bodies moved, all ofthem assumed that the earth constituteda stationary platform from which thesephenomena could be studied andpredicted.

Thus, the Copernican theory whichassumed the sun to be the centre of orbitfor the planets including the earth can beseen as revolutionary for all of thesetraditions since it gave the earth twodifferent motions by making it rotate onits own axis and also revolve aroundthe sun.

Coincidentally, these two motions alsoconnected the Chinese, Islamic and theIndian astronomical traditions with thenew Copernican theory. It is nowrecognised that the Maragha Schoolmodel is practically identical to theCopernican model from a mathematicalpoint of view, except for the reversal ofthe positions of the sun and the earth-moon system. The rotation of the earth

also explained why the Chinese saw theheavens as revolving around the PoleStar.

Finally, the heliocentric model extendedthe planetary heliocentrism of Indianastronomy to include the earth asanother planet revolving around the sun.These connections between theCopernican theory and the earlierChinese, Islamic and Indian traditions ofastronomy made it possible for theScientific Revolution to draw uponthematic ideas, observational data, andmathematical and technical practicesfrom these different Asian traditions.Consequently, even though theCopernican theory displaced these Asianmodels of astronomy it may also be seenas integrating them together within ahigher synthesis.8

The Dialogical History of ModernSociety

Just as the revolution in the naturalsciences that led to modern science drewupon the traditions of Chinese, Islamicand Indian astronomy, so did thesecultures furnish many of the ideastechnologies and institutions that shapedearly modern society. In both cases, thesereservoirs of knowledge came to bedeveloped in Chinese, Islamic and Indiancivilisations over the millennium 500 to

7 From the fifth century onwards, the Indians also adopted Greek epicyclic models on which to do theiralgebraic computations. The emphasis on algebraic methods rather than geometric methods led the Indiansto a very different mathematical orientation in approaching precision knowledge of astronomical processes.8 [0] See Arun Bala (2006), pp 145-176.




1500 CE. This was a time when a systemof trading routes were developedconnecting these civilisations with eachother, and also with Europe andSoutheast Asia. According to Abu-Lughod, there were three major tradingroutes — a land route in the norththrough the Mongol empire, a middleroute linking the Middle East with Indiaand China, and a route in the southpassing from Europe through Egypt toEast Africa, India, Southeast Asia andChina.

John Hobson argues that these linkagesmade it possible for early-modernEuropeans to draw upon a portfolio ofideas, technologies and institutionsfrom various civilisations and forgethem together to create modern society.He documents these carefully in hisstudy The Eastern Origins of WesternCivilization.

Although it is often assumed that globalcommercial capitalism was instituted bymodern Europeans, Hobson maintainsthat this was built upon theachievements of Muslims who hadpioneered it through commercialnetworks spanning the Afro-Eurasianregion. In order to accomplish this task,the Muslims had developed manysophisticated financial instrumentsincluding “the creation of a whole seriesof capitalist institutions (concerning

partnerships, contract law, banking,credit and many others), upon which notonly Islamic production, investment andcommerce rested but also global trade”.9

Equally important were transmissionsfrom the Islamic world of astronomicaland mathematical knowledge, theastrolabe, maps and the lateen sail thatmade long-distance navigation possible.Also significant were improvements iniron and steel production, advancedtextile manufacturing, better dyes, aswell as techniques for harnessing windand water energies through windmillsand watermills in industrial production.10

The Chinese contributions to modernsociety were equally important —especially in their discovery anddevelopment of technologies whichcrucially influenced the eighteenthcentury industrial revolution in Europe.Hobson writes:

“[T]he British consciously acquired andassimilated the Chinese technologies —either the actual technology or theknowledge of a particular technology. Inthis sense, Britain was like any ‘latedeveloper ’ or newly-industrialisingcountry in that it enjoyed the ‘advantagesof backwardness’ and was able toassimilate and refine the advancedtechnologies that had previously beenpioneered by early developers.”11

9 Hobson (2004), pp 44.10 Ibid. pp 43 – 44.11 Ibid. pp 192.




The Chinese contributions weregrounded in what has been characterisedas the Sung Industrial miracle. In theSung era, there were many Chinesetechnological achievements that Hobsondescribes as revolutionary, including aniron and steel revolution, a transportationand energy revolution, the rise of acommercialised economy with taxation,paper, printing, an agricultural or ‘Green’revolution, a navigational revolution, anda military revolution.

The British agricultural and industrialrevolutions were built upon theseachievements, albeit by taking them tohigher levels of articulation. The Britishagricultural revolution itself drew uponChinese innovations such as theeighteenth-century iron mould-boardplough (Rotherham plough), the rotarywinnowing machine, seed-drills andhorse-hoeing husbandry. The steamengine, coal and blast furnaces, and ironand steel production, so crucial to theBritish industrial revolution, were alsobased on Chinese inventions anddiscoveries.

Hobson notes that the Indiancontribution to the British industrialrevolution was particularly crucial in thearea of textile production. Prior to thedomination of British textiles on theglobal market, made possible not only bytheir industrial production in Britain but

also by the suppression of textileproduction in India by British imperialism,India was the world’s largest cottontextile producer and exporter. Indianinfluence on early British textileproduction is reflected in terms of Indianorigin that have now passed into theEnglish language such as, chintz, calicoe,dungaree, khaki, pyjama, sash andshawl.12

Dialogical Histories of Singapore

The dialogical histories of modern scienceand modern society reveal strikingparallels to recent attempts to rewritethe history of Singapore, not from itsfounding by the British Governor-Generalof Java, Sir Stamford Raffles, in 1819 butby its founding by a prince of the SriVijayan Empire, Parameswara/IskandarShah in the early fourteenth century.

These read the birth of Singapore from adeeper historical perspective whichcontextualises it within the tradingnetworks that linked Afro-Eurasia in thepre-modern era.13 Three recent studieswhich have taken this perspective areSingapore: A 700 Year History by KwaChong Guan, Derek Heng and Tan TaiYong; Singapore: A Biography by MarkRavinder Frost and Yu-Mei BalasinghamChow; and John N Miksic’s Singapore andthe Silk Road of the Sea 1300-1800. Thesenew histories connect Singapore history

12 Ibid. pp 85-86.13 See Wolf (1982), Abu-Lughod (1989) and Hobson (2004).




within the deeper maritime history of theStraits of Melaka, which served as animportant connecting link between Chinaand the rest of the Afro-Eurasian regionvia Southeast Asia. Singapore in thefourteenth century, at that time knownas Temasek, served as an emporiumlinking its immediate Southeast Asianhinterland with China on one side andIndia and the Islamic world on the other.

Although Temasek’s fortune declinedover time, by the time Raffles arrived in1819, he found it inhabited by only a fewvillages and selected it as a site for a newBritish port precisely because herecognised its early historical position asan emporium in the fourteenth century.He was inspired by his experience as ascholar of Malay history and his readingof the Sejarah Melayu which depicted thefounding of Melaka by a prince fromSingapore. In his study connectingancient Singapore as a node in themaritime trading networks of thefourteenth century, John Miksic writes:

“Singapore suddenly came back to life in1819. This awakening was catalysed bya man (Raffles) who was convinced(correctly as it turns out) that it waspossible to revive an ancient centre ofMalay culture and commerce. This revivalcould not have taken place unlessSingapore possessed the necessary

attributes for such developments:strategic location, fair and liberalgovernment, and most importantly ahardworking and cosmopolitanpopulation that was able to live togetherharmoniously despite a multiplicity ofcultures, languages, and religion.”14

As the British Empire consolidated itshold on India as an imperial power, andChina through its unequal treaty portsalong with the Middle East after theopening of the Suez Canal in 1867,Singapore came to be a crucial node inthe maritime trading network acrossAfro-Eurasia controlled by the Britishnavy. This also served to bring togetherdiasporic populations from China,Southeast Asia, India and the Middle Eastthat have come to constitute themelange of people in contemporarySingapore.15

Rethinking Education: Integrating theHistory of Singapore with Histories ofModern Science and Modern Society

It is striking to note the remarkableparallels in the dialogical histories ofSingapore and the dialogical histories ofmodern science and modern society. Inall of these cases, the leading culturesthat came together historically were thesame three cultures — the Chinese, theMalay-Islamic and the Indian. Moreover,

14 Miksic, John N (2013), pp 434.15 See Kwa et al (2010), Chapter 7 entitled “Raffles and the Establishment of an East India Company Stationon Singapore”. There are other historians such as Mark Ravinder Frost, Yu Mei Balasingam Chow, and JohnMiksic who endorse this view.




these were also the three cultures thatcame together in ancient Singapore(Temasek). Do these strange parallelshave an explanation? It is reasonable tosuppose that it was the maritime SilkRoad linking the Middle East, India,Southeast Asia and China, that not onlybrought populations from these regionstogether, but also facilitated theintellectual exchanges which led todiscoveries which were laterincorporated into modern science andmodern social institutions.16

We have seen the educationist,Gopinathan and the environmentalgeographer, Savage, argue that learningcan be enhanced and be made moremeaningful by linking it to processes ofknowledge indigenisation, which canalso draw upon indigenous knowledgefor environmental management.However, the process of drawing onindigenous knowledge of the Asiantraditions appears to be seen as astrategy that has no precedence in thepast. However, dialogical histories ofmodern science and society suggestthat such a process was crucial to thebirth of not only modern science butalso of modern society.

Moreover, the cultures that cametogether to shape modern Singapore,were also the cultures that shaped thenotions of modern science and modernsociety. This suggests that educational

16 A good and influential study of these maritime Silk Road linkages is Abu-Lughod (1989).

strategies for drawing on theindigenous knowledge of majorcultures in Singapore can learn from thestrategies deployed to build modernSingapore, modern science and modernsociety in the past.

Bibliography

Abu-Lughod, Janet L (1989) BeforeEuropean Hegemony: The World SystemA.D. 1250–1350, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Bala, Arun (2006) The Dialogue ofCivilizations in the Birth of ModernScience, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Callicott, J Baird (1997) Earth’s Insights:A Multicultural Survey of Ecological Ethicsfrom the Mediterranean Basin to theAustralian Outback, University ofCalifornia Press.

Frost, Mark Ravinder & Yu-meiBalasingam Chow (2009) Singapore: ABiography, Singapore: Didier Millet &National Museum of Singapore.

Gopinathan, S (2012) “ReclaimingTradition: Implications of a KnowledgeIndigenization Perspective for AsianEducation” in Asia, Europe, and theEmergence of Modern Science:Knowledge Crossing Boundaries, ArunBala (ed), New York: Palgrave Macmillanpp 239 – 252.




Hobson, John M (2004) The EasternOrigins of Western Civilisation,Cambridge University Press.

Kwa Chong Guan, Derek Heng & Tan TaiYong (2009) Singapore: 700-Year History,Singapore: National Archives ofSingapore.

Miksic, John N (2013) Singapore and theSilk Road of the Sea 1300-1800, NUSPress, National University of Singapore.

Savage, Victor (2012) “Southeast Asia’sIndigenous Knowledge: The Conquest ofthe Mental Terra Incognitae” in Asia,Europe, and the Emergence of ModernScience: Knowledge Crossing Boundaries,Arun Bala (ed), New York: PalgraveMacmillan pp 253 – 270.

Wolf, Eric (1982) Europe and the Peoplewithout History, Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press.



It’s Not Just the SingaporeLiterature Prize, But AlsoLiterature in Singapore

That’s In CrisisKoh Tai Ann

Professor Koh Tai Ann is a Senior Associate at the Centre for Liberal Artsand Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University and was a formerEditor of Commentary. Her Singapore Literature in English: an AnnotatedBibliography is now available as archive and interactive digital searchtool at https://eps.ntu.edu.sg/client/SingaporeLiterature/


It’s Not Just the Singapore Literature Prize, But Also Literature in Singapore


‘People want economic development firstand foremost. The leaders may talksomething else. You take a poll of anypeople. What is it they want? … Theywant homes, medicine, jobs, schools.’~ Lee Kuan Yew 1

‘Speaking off the cuff in 1968 in reply toa question from the audience at theUniversity of Singapore, the PrimeMinister said that “Poetry is a luxury wecannot afford” because technicaleducation was more important.’ 2

‘They say people can think forthemselves? Do you honestly believe thatthe chap who can’t pass primary sixknows the consequence of his choicewhen he answers a question viscerally, onlanguage, culture and religion?’~ Lee Kuan Yew 3

Introduction

Since the 1980s, periodic publicexpressions of dismay would surfaceregarding the continuing, even perhaps,terminal decline in the number ofstudents taking English Literature (nowLiterature in English) at O and N Levelsever since it ceased being a mandatory

subject. The latest alarm was set off lastyear by a Parliamentary question whichrevealed a further decline to a startlinglow of 9 percent (or only about 3,000students).

That English Literature was once even amandatory subject alongside EnglishLanguage and Maths and that such adecline is a matter of serious concernamong the public, testify to its perceivedcentrality in education. (In contrast, nofuss was made over an even more drasticdecline in the numbers taking History, toonly about 1,700 students.)

The decline and its causes aresymptomatic of narrow pragmaticmindsets no longer relevant to a post-industrial society and unacknowledgedcultural shifts within Singapore society.That schools and students drop thesubject can be attributed to a series ofinternal policy contradictions withconsequences which may beinadvertent or calculated, while thecultural shifts proceed from externaldevelopments, chiefly Singapore’scommitment to globalisation and toEnglish as ‘turbine engines’ ofeconomic growth.

1 Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez and Sumiko Tan, Lee Kuan Yew, The Man and His Ideas, Singapore:Times Editions, 1997. Much quoted because it sums up his and his government’s ‘common sense’ andpragmatism as to what makes for (in his words) a ‘civilised life’.2Koh Tai Ann, “The Singapore Experience: Cultural Development in the Global Village”, Southeast AsianAffairs 1980, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Affairs, 1980, p303. Mr Lee’s unscripted and veryquotable, characteristic opinion is oft-cited by academics without reference to the fact that it was personallyheard by me as a then new English Literature graduate and reported in this article, where it first appearedin print.3 Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and his Ideas. As in note 1 above.




The economic significance of the arts (as‘creative industries’, as part of a globalcity’s attractive lifestyle, and so on) seemsmore appreciated by state and societythan its role in educational and thushuman cultural development. At issuetherefore is the extent to which theliterature in English forms part of ourcultural heritage and identity. A corollaryissue, ignored or unresolved, is thecultural role and function of English,usually viewed in binary opposition to theso-called mother tongues. (I will not,however, go into this latter issue, havingpreviously dealt with it.4

In this essay, I reflect upon threeseemingly unrelated developmentsthat seem to me to i l lustrateunresolved conflicts and contradictionswhich suggest a crisis of culturalidentity in Singapore that is largelydeemed impolitic to discuss beyond thegroves of academe.

These are firstly, a recent call to ‘overhaul’the Singapore Literature Prize, which inturn inadvertently drew my attention,secondly, to the growing dominance ofSingapore literature (and drama) inEnglish vis-à-vis that in the other officiallanguages, and thirdly, the decline innumbers of upper secondary studentstaking English Literature as a subject(including the probability that neither do

they take Literature in their so-calledmother tongues, Malay, Chinese andTamil).

Is it only and merely “Whither theSingapore Literature Prize?”

“Whither the Singapore Literature Prize?”was one of the panels at the 2013Singapore Writers Festival. It being aprestigious national award, andSingapore’s biggest for a single work interms of cash prizes ($10,000 for thewinner, and proportionately smaller sumsfor the secondary Merit andCommendation Prize winners), the panelwas asked whether it really encouragednew writing, earned the main andsecondary winners recognition and mostimportantly, gained their works andSingapore literature in general, new ormore readers. The panel members, twoformer main Singapore Literature Prize(SLP) winners and the third aCommendation Award winner,representing respectively, writers in thethree official languages (except Tamil)agreed that in their experience, theaward neither helped them sell morebooks nor gained them many newreaders despite the recognition the SLPgave them as writers.

As for encouraging new writing and newwriters, or gaining these recognition, a

4 Koh Tai Ann, “ ‘It’s like rice on the table, it’s our common dish’ “: The English Language and Identity inSingapore. In Management of Success; Singapore Re-visited, Terence Chong, ed., Singapore: Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies, 2010, p.536 -560.




panel member noted that the samealready established and recognisedwriters repeatedly win the Prize, as oftenas three times in the past fivecompetitions to date. So, as The StraitsTimes report declared, ‘Is it about timeto “overhaul” the SLP?’

Chairing that session, I wondered,however, whether the trajectory of theSLP reflects that of Singapore Literaturein all the official languages and the schoolsubject, Literature in English as well.Were all in danger of losing their bearingsand sense of purpose? Are the parallelquestions, “Whither SingaporeLiterature?” and “Whither Literature inSingapore?”

Whither the Singapore LiteraturePrize? From the CIMO Model back tothe Market Model

The history of the first phase of the SLP(1992 to 2000) is premonitory of the riseof Singapore literature in English which itwas originally initiated to promote as thevehicle tacitly believed to be most likelyto promote a non-racialised Singaporeanidentity. Yet, it was trailing in quantityand quality behind the literatures in theother official languages, chiefly that inChinese and Malay. As writers haddifficulty getting published becauseliterary works did not sell, the SLPtherefore began as a competition for

unpublished manuscripts. Publication bythe publisher-sponsor, on top of the cashaward, was to encourage the winner(s)to continue writing. In retrospect, the SLPdid succeed in achieving its aims ofdiscovering and encouraging new literaryworks and writers in English in quantityand quality (more about which, later).5

Then from 2004 (after a hiatus), no longersponsored by a commercial publisher, butsupported by the National Arts Council(NAC) and organised by the National BookDevelopment Council of Singapore, bothessentially state agencies, the SLP wasradically re-constituted as an award thatmore ‘correctly’ reflects the nationalpolicy of multiculturalism. This entailssupport for and recognition of theliteratures in all four official languages:four equal CIMO categories (i.e., Chinese,Indian, Malay and Others, represented byEnglish) each with its own SLP, weretherefore introduced. Another change —opening the competition to publishedand no longer only to unpublished work— effectively jettisoned its originalpurpose of discovering while encouragingnew writers, new writing and an audiencefor such writing with publication of thewinning works.

State agencies such as the NAC and theNational Library Board now have creationand publishing grants (even much higherin cash value) to advance these aims.

5 See Koh Tai Ann, Singapore Literature in English: an Annotated Bibliography (2008) . For the updateddigital version, go to https://eps.ntu.edu.sg/client/SingaporeLiterature/




Publishers in effect became pre-selectorsof works for submission that they havejudged to be publishable, and behindthem, is the NAC which may haveprovided the publishing grant. These aremost likely to be works by establishednames, hence the phenomenon of thesame writers repeatedly winning the SLP.

Furthermore, pragmatically acknowledgingthat only a small pool of writers exists,whether aspiring or established in eachlanguage category, and given the knownrecurrent difficulty of garnering sufficiententries, let alone entries of sufficientquality (some years the SLP has not beenawarded), the formerly annual SLPcompetition has not only becomebiennial; It is also no longer betweenwritings in the same genre, but betweenprose fiction and poetry, ‘comparing (asone of the panellists noted) apples andoranges’. (Drama was excluded after1993.) Moreover, at the next round ofcompetition in 2014, non-fiction will bethrown into the mix. Perhaps, more non-fiction, such as memoirs, biographies andhistories, is now being published and aremore marketable and popular thanliterary fiction and poetry? Could the SLPeventually become the Singapore WritersPrize awarded to mostly non-literaryworks?

Whither Singapore Literature?Dominance of the Literature in English

The existence of four official languagesin Singapore and the corollary that the

literatures in all these languages enjoyequal support means that in an alreadysmall nation, resources, writers andreaders are thinly spread. At the sametime, literatures in all these languages,especially English, from other countries,compete for Singaporean readers. Thatthe SLP was originally establishedspecifically to promote and publishSingapore literature in English (the onlyofficial language not tied to race inSingapore) and grow its audience, is areminder that till the 1960s beforeseparation from Malaysia, Singapore wasthe centre of Malay literary culture, andup to the 1980s, there was more localwriting in Chinese published than that inEnglish, especially of prose fiction. Withthe support of enthusiastic journals andthe local press in those respectivelanguages, some leading writers andliterary critics being also journalists, theMalay and Chinese literary sceneswithout state support, were each livelier,broader-based and had larger readershipsthan that in English. Unlike the Chinesenewspapers, and unlike The Times ofLondon its British counterpart, The StraitsTimes significantly, did not have a literarysupplement. When criticised by aMember of Parliament that ‘the Englishpress is not doing enough to promotelocal writing’, it admitted ‘we have notdone as much as we should to encouragelocal writing by way of providing regularspace’ because of — it addedcondescendingly — ‘a dearth of qualitywriting.’ Moreover, the writing in Englishthen, was dominantly poetry, hardly a




popular form in terms of readership,while fledgling writers of prose fictioneither needed to convince publishersabout their commercial viability orself-publish.

Not surprisingly then, the inaugural SLPcompetition in 1992 crucially, was forprose fiction in English. Just as 1965 wasa watershed year for the writing in Malaywhen the literary centre moved to KualaLumpur, 1987 was analogously for thewriting in Chinese, when English becomethe sole medium of instruction in thenational school system. Already theworking language of the nation, Englishwas thus further enhanced in status andimportance, and willy-nilly both itspotential pool of writers and readers inthe language could only become bigger.Entries to SLP competitions in recentyears reflect this trend: those in Englishnumber more than those in the otherlanguage categories and the gap is likelyto increase steadily. One indicator,suggesting a wider spread in depth andrange of talent among writers in theEnglish language category, is that theawards have been won by different andalso generally younger writers, with nowriter in English winning the SLP mainaward more than once, unlike in theMalay and Chinese categories.

The SLP has indeed served its purposewhere the writing in English isconcerned. The main Prize, Merit andCommendation Awards brought tocritical notice or prominence many

writers who have gone on to write andpublish other works beside their winningtitles: Suchen Christine Lim, Tan MeiChing, Desmond Sim, Paul Tan, HareshSharma, David Leo, Boey Kim Cheng,Colin Cheong, Dave Chua, Alfian Sa’at,Daren Shiau (1992 to 1998) and late-bloomer, Rex Shelley (2000); Hwee HweeTan, Cyril Wong, Yong Shu Hoong, Ng Yi-Sheng, Toh Hsien Min, Simon Tay andEddie Tay (2004 to 2012) and others.

Meanwhile, even as Literature in Malayand Literature in Chinese are nowavailable as electives in Secondaryschools, and despite the existence since1979 of the Special Assistance Plan (SAP)schools set up to promote the learningof Chinese Language and culture and‘nurture bilingual and bicultural studentssteeped in both’, the number of newwriters and readers of SingaporeLiterature in Chinese seems to bedeclining. In 2011, the Chinese languagejournalist Leong Weng Kam lamented,“Where have the Chinese readers gone?”When in 1982, a Chinese novel by aSingapore writer could easily sell 3000copies, a bestseller now means 300 to500 copies sold. At the same time,published writers, ‘still active and alivetoday’, he noted, are mostly in their 50sand 60s. When the panel members Xi NiEr and Peter Augustine Goh complainedthat repeatedly, as often as three timesin the past five competitions, the SLPwent to the same writers, they meantthese older writers in Chinese and Malaywith established reputations who will




thus have a potentially award-winningwork to submit

Whither Literature in Singapore?Policy Inconsistencies and ResultantContradictions

In various ways, the trajectory of the SLPmirrored by that of literature in Singaporeowes much to internal policycontradictions or inconsistencies. Forinstance, implementation of the policy oflinguistic parity among the Singaporeliteratures reveals the anomaly that whilethe national language is constitutionallyMalay, Singapore (unlike Malaysia) has nonational literature in the language, thatdespite the bilingualism policy neitherthe majority of students who are Chinesetake the subject Literature in Chinese aspart of their cultural heritage nor mostMalay and Tamil students take theirrespective Literature subjects. Butbecause English — initially a colonialheritage since become global linguafranca — is the medium of instruction inthe national education system, for allLower Secondary students and thoseUpper Secondary students who takeLiterature in English, the Singaporeliterary texts studied will obviously be inEnglish. Meanwhile, the English languagepolicy having resulted in mostSingaporeans below 50 being English-literate if not also English-educated, willthe literature in English in the not-too-distant future fill a vacuum and becomethe de facto national literature, just asEnglish has become the unacknowledged

de facto national language? Yet, ironically,the policy of bilingualism in English andthe student’s designated ‘mothertongue’, implemented since 1966 inschools, is predicated on an inextricablelink between the ‘mother tongue’ andone’s ethnic culture and heritage,implying that the English language andits literature is not the heritage of theSingaporean child and thus, no suchculturally nurturing connection exists.This might explain why the subjectLiterature in English (formerly EnglishLiterature) has been allowed to declinein enrolment in all schools. The changein subject title to Literature in Englishneatly enables Singapore literature inEnglish to be included under the rubric,testifying to Singapore’s lack of a nationalliterature of its own while signalling itsembrace of world literature, to encourageostensibly, ‘a global outlook’.

Moreover, despite the bilingualism policy,the numbers taking Literature in the‘mother tongue’ are probably low, too.But it is not public knowledge whatproportion of students nationally take thenon-English Literature electives as thecomponent elective in CombinedHumanities or for that matter, how manyof the SAP schools’ ‘bi-cultural elite’destined to fill the future ranks ofteachers, journalists and other media-related professions, and those takingHigher Chinese, choose ChineseLiterature alongside their ‘ChineseCulture’ subjects and ‘enhancementmodules’ such as Contemporary Chinese




history, Chinese Drama and Translation.That the Speak Mandarin Campaign is stillbeing mounted annually some 35 yearssince its inception in 1979 and some 50years after the introduction of thebilingualism policy in schools, sayssomething about its effectiveness.Meanwhile another annual campaignfor the past 14 years has beensimultaneously urging Singaporeans to“Speak Good English” — even asLiterature which enables a more inwardgrasp of the language, languishes inschools for lack of takers.

State Education Policies Responsiblefor Decline in Numbers takingLiterature in School

Paradoxically, while Singapore literaturein English (including drama) seems to betrending upwards as a marker ofSingaporean identity, benefitting fromsupport for the so-called literary arts bycultural agencies such as the NAC and TheArts House, Literature in English as aschool subject is trending downwards. Insomewhat contrary yet pragmaticfashion, it was government language,‘meritocratic’ and social policies drivingcurricular changes in the schools since1966 that were primarily responsible forthe decline in the number of studentstaking English Literature (now Literaturein English) as a subject for O and N Level

exams in Upper Secondary. (TheHumanities in general havecorrespondingly suffered, and that isanother critical issue.)

The initial and most drastic decline innumbers was precipitated in 1978, bythe Ministry of Education (MOE)’sunexplained ‘downgrading’ of Literature.In an undeclared furtherance of MOE’soverarching bilingualism policy andsupposed boosting of English proficiency,English Language and Literature weremerged into one subject for examinationpurposes under the Revised SecondarySchool System. Before this, EnglishLiterature, like English Language, was amandatory subject for all who took theCambridge O Level exams, the two beingseen as mutually reinforcing, withLiterature enabling students to acquire amore inward knowledge of the language.Now, inexplicably, English was assigned arecommended weight of 70 percent andLiterature only 30 percent. Evidently, theMOE did not see an organic link betweenthe study of literature and languageproficiency, but regarded the former as ahindrance to the latter. Literature was andstill is perceived to be a ‘difficult’ subjectfor students, and thus responsible forlack-lustre exam results, when perhaps itmight have been poor text selection andteaching that were at fault.6 Astuteteachers were quick to complain thatwhile taught as two subjects, “English”

6 As highlighted by Lee Tzu Pheng and Koh Tai Ann in “Text Selection, Part I” and Text Selection, Part II”,Teaching and Learning: a Publication for Teachers, Vol 8 No 2, Jan. 1988; pp 15-35.




was examined as one subject. The mergerthus violated the principle of equalitybetween subjects since Mandarin andthe other ‘mother tongues’ enjoyed a 100percent weightage, English only 70percent and Literature a mere 30 percent.More seriously, for the future ofLiterature as a school subject, iteffectively penalised students who weregood in Literature as their effort wasworth only 30 percent of the marks atmost.

For all students, it meant less exposureto the educational and languageenhancement benefits of literary readingand study. This ‘down grading’ explainsthe drastic decline within 10 years from100 percent previously to just 54 percentof students taking the subject for O Levelsin 1988, a year after English became thesole medium of instruction in the nationaleducation system.

In 1994, when Dean of Arts at theNational Institute of Education (NIE), Inoticed a large decline in numbers in1993 to 43.8 percent of secondary schoolstudents and traced it to the meritocratic‘annual ranking of schools by examinationresults’ implemented in 1992, which ledto schools and students to pragmaticallydrop Literature as a subject as it wasdifficult to score in it.7

This generated a spate of news articles

as well as letters from the publicregretting the fact and extolling the well-known merits of studying the subject,culminating in a feature article entitled(perhaps prophetically) “End of Englishliterature?”

In 2002, Literature continued to be ‘adying subject in schools’. By then only21.8 percent (7,322) of the Secondary 4cohort was taking it. The latest cause forthe recent drastic decline was anotherpolicy imperative — the new subject,Combined Humanities, its mandatory halfbeing Social Studies, a hybrid of Civics andNational (or Values) Education. Evidentlya response to globalisation, it is anchoredby two core ideas – “Being Rooted” and“Living Global”. Through these two ideas,the syllabus aims to develop our studentsinto well-informed, responsible citizenswith a sense of national identity and aglobal perspective (italics mine).’ Just asin 1978, English language and Literaturewere merged into one subject, this newhybrid subject merges two subjects intoone, and thereby halves the curriculumtime given to Humanities subjects likeLiterature. Geography, the most‘technical’ of the three subjects, provedto be the most popular. Little wonder, theconsequences soon emerged. Althoughstudents can take Literature in English asa full elective outside CombinedHumanities, evidently few do — not evenwhen the curriculum was revised in 2007

7 Published as “Literature, the Beloved of Language”. In The Language-Culture Connection, Joyce E James,ed., Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, 1996; 17-33.




and the subject re-titled Literature inEnglish. Nor were they persuaded by asyllabus that cultivates ‘critical thinkingskills,’ pragmatically combines a ‘globaloutlook’ with other known benefits suchas

[building] in students socio-culturalsensitivity and awareness, as well as . ..offering opportunities for them to explorea wide range of literary texts written indifferent contexts and from various partsof the world, connecting them to otherages and cultures. It develops empathyand stimulates thinking about beliefs andvalues. These characteristics of thesubject are aptly suited to the 21stcentury, which is a time of rapiddevelopment and shifting perspectives inmany areas, including the socio-culturaland the ethical-moral. [MOE Literaturein English Syllabus (2013)]

Decline in Numbers taking Literaturein School: Implications

Inconsistencies trip over contradictions:Literature being a subject that wasimportant enough (in light of theSingapore government’s other ambitionsfor the country, that it be a ‘thinking’ and‘creative’ society with ‘a global outlook,’with English the global lingua franca asits working language) NominatedMember of Parliament (NMP) Janice Koh

was moved to ask in Parliament what ‘thetake up rate for Literature’ was. She hadbeen told by ‘educators and people in thecreative sector … that the quality ofthought and argument, and the ability tocommunicate ideas among young peoplehad gone down’ as ‘fewer students weredoing Literature.’ (It was her questionthat elicited the shocking fact that by2012, a mere 9 percent (3,000) wastaking the subject .) 8

This implies that on a personal andsocietal level – among future parents,teachers, policy and decision makers, andso on – there has been and continues tobe an educational, cultural andintellectual impoverishment through lossof an opportunity to acquire intangiblehabits of critical analysis, moral,intellectual and aesthetic values that canbecome cultural capital and the basis oflife-long skills transferable to other areasof life and work.

Taking a subject these days is not only amatter of being faced with more choicesfrom an increasingly large menu of schoolsubjects (MP Indranee Rajah and SeniorMinister of State, Ministry of Law andMinistry of Education’s explanation forthe decline). What is cause for concern isthat the choices available mark a shiftfrom the education of the whole childthrough the Humanities to the narrowly

8 See http://www.moe.gov.sg/media/parliamentary-replies/2013/02 /o-level-candidature-for-full-literature.php http://www.todayonline.com/sites/default/files/1403_AP_merged.pdf Accessed 20 Dec,2014.




and directly vocational and technical forearning a living, such as Media Studies,Principles of Accounts, Design andTechnology, Computer Applications,etcetera, which are properly, the provinceof tertiary vocational and professionalinstitutions. Indeed, so-called ‘choice’can be determined and restricted bypressures exerted on children caught inan unseen web of adult ignorance orambitions, unfounded assumptions andpragmatic policies which influence thegoals and outcomes sought in education.

As a National Institute of Educationteacher-educator (who should know) hasdecried, ‘The fortunes of Englishliterature as a secondary school subjectin Singapore have for some time beenbedevilled by adherence to a hegemonicprinciple of pragmatism which hasroutinely informed public policy andpersonal choice.’9

Decline in Literary Education /Reading: Implications for ‘language,culture and religion’

Just how seriously other nations wouldtake such a decline can be gauged fromwhat happened in the USA when in 2004,a nationwide decline in ‘literary reading’over two decades (1982 to 2002)generated great alarm and nationaldebate about its consequences, suchas loss of ‘cultural literacy’ and other

9 Angelia Poon, “The Politics of Pragmatism: Some Issues in the Teaching of Literature in Singapore”, ChangingEnglish, Vol. 14, No. 1, April 2007, pp. 51–59.

‘intellectual’ and ‘political’ effects.

An intense, nationally-mounted effortspearheaded by the National Endowmentfor the Humanities (NEA), significantlytargeted at high schools, was mounted,which successfully reversed the decline,as was reported four years later. (The NEAdefines “literary” reading as ‘the readingof any novels, short stories, poems, orplays in print or online.’) The Chairmanof the NEA expressed a national concernin terms that are as applicable toSingapore:

Anyone who loves literature or valuesthe importance of active and engagedliteracy in American society willrespond to this report with graveconcern. … [Literature] affordsirreplaceable forms of focusedattention and contemplation thatmake complex communications andinsights possible. To lose suchintellectual capability — and the manysorts of human continuity it allows —would constitute a vast culturalimpoverishment.

Of course, not every student who takesLiterature in school will necessarilybenefit from it, do more literary reading,become a better reader and acquirecritical skills; nor will one who didn’t takeLiterature be necessarily deprived: theirhome and specific social environment




could have encouraged literary reading.Besides, not every Literature teacher isskilled and motivating. However, themany students who are not exceptionsto the rule will fall through the net andjoin the growing ranks of a citizenrynotorious for poor English expression tothe point of inarticulacy, who prefer self-help books and are not literary book-lovers and readers, necessitating anannual “Read! Singapore” campaign. Arewe growing a society of better-trainedbut less-educated adults unaccustomedto the kind of complex, nuancedresponses literary works inspire, who arelikely to have ignorant, narrow-minded‘visceral’ responses (to use former PMLee Kuan Yew’s words) to issues of‘language, culture and religion’ that couldhave adverse political and culturalconsequences, and more so, in this ageof undiscriminating social media?

For children not exposed to wide,attentive reading of a literary kind athome or are otherwise in general notencouraged to read in their intellectuallyformative teenage years, school might bethe only chance for them to encounterliterature and gain the immeasurablebenefits described so persuasively inMOE’s own Literature in English Syllabus(2013) and the NEA statement (bothquoted above). Literature is not fornothing known as the “Queen of theHumanities” for it is both an educationof the imagination and an art thatencompasses life itself in all its myriadvariety, unpredictability and complexity

which, through the correspondingly richmedium of language, renders it one of themost complete and broadly educationalof human arts.

In a declaredly multilingual andmulticultural nation like Singapore wherefour official languages are recognised andall are theoretically but not effectivelyequal, where neither the language of theethnic majority, Chinese, nor the NationalLanguage, Malay, is the lingua franca, butEnglish is, the fact that Literature (andDrama, for the most part) is uniquelyinextricable from the spoken and writtenlanguage freights both art form andschool subject with a unique cultural,ideological and thus political burden. Thestate must be seen to support all fourequally, and thus their respectiveliteratures. However, the state’s ownlanguage policies and national prioritieshave created contradicting, conflictingand negative outcomes in practice andcaused willy-nilly, both the dominance ofthe literature in English nationally andparadoxically, its decline in enrolment asa subject in schools. And this essay hasnot even looked into the state of andenrolment figures for the Literatures inMalay, Chinese and Tamil as subjects andthe extent to which Singapore literaturein particular or literature in general fromother countries in these languages areactually much read.

If ‘a global outlook’ (if indeed desirable)is not to be an empty signifier, it has beensuggested that a way out of our linguistic




and culturally confused tangle ofcontradictions, and which could be alsoa viable response to the contemporaryreality of a seismic cultural shift, is toembrace cosmopolitanism in general,and in the curriculum and teaching ofLiterature in particular. In the fervourof and focus on nation building in ourfirst five decades of nationhood,cosmopolitanism was rejected as inimicalto two albeit mutually exclusive goals: thefostering of a cohesive national identityand maintenance of ethnic cultural rootsby state-defined communities. Thecurrent government embrace of theglobal that includes the local and the useof English to the point that it almostdefines the national identity, may makea step towards cosmopolitanism not toodifficult to take – if we could move awayfrom the strait jacket of the categories ofCIMO (Chinese, Indian, Malay andOthers) even as globalisation makes thepopulation more diverse, and Englisheven more dominant as lingua franca.Who knows, the Singapore LiteraturePrize might then morph into a globalaward open to writing not only bySingaporeans but also literary worksconcerning, set in and about Singaporeby any writer in the world. But thatdiscussion and what measures could orshould be taken to address our culturalcontradictions and priorities, reversethe decline in the study of not onlyLiterature but also the Humanities, willhave to wait for another occasion.



Reflections on Singapore’sDemographic Future

Paul Cheung

Professor Paul Cheung is currently Professor of Social Policy and Analyticsat the National University of Singapore. He was director of PopulationPlanning Unit of Singapore Government from 1986 to 1995 andSingapore’s Chief Statistician from 1991-2004. He just returned from theUnited Nations where he served as Director of UN Statistics Division from2004 to 2012.


Reflections on Singapore’s Demographic Future


In 1986, Dr Kwa Soon Bee, thenPermanent Secretary of the Ministry ofHealth (MOH), asked to see me in hisoffice. It was a cordial meeting and wediscussed a range of population andpublic health issues. A few days later, Iwas asked whether I would like to join theMOH and to help establish the PopulationPlanning Unit (PPU). Having just startedmy teaching career at the University ofSingapore after six years of post-graduatetraining in demography and socialplanning, I was hesitant. Eventually, Iwas persuaded and began a jointappointment at the MOH as Director ofPopulation Planning Unit (PPU). My firsttask was to help formulate the ‘NewPopulation Policy’ which was announcedin 1987 by Mr Goh Chok Tong, thenDeputy Prime Minister (DPM), to replacethe ‘Stop at Two‘policy. Since then, I havebeen a keen observer of Singapore’sdemographic trends and helped evolvesome of its population policies.

Population policy in 2013 has once againbecome a hot political issue. A wide rangeof views has been expressed on thedesired population size, and the number/percentage of migrant workers and manycritical (and sometimes cynical)comments, have been expressed in socialmedia. Critics have faulted thegovernment for pushing for a largerpopulation and, more importantly, forneglecting the citizen base in favour ofthe foreigners. This debate on ourpopulation policy is necessary anddesirable, as we need to articulate a

common future. At each debate, wehave become clearer in ourunderstanding of the Singaporeansociety, with the government adjustingits policy stance correspondingly.During the 1987 debate, the need forthe government to address issuesrelated to the costs of childbearing andraising a family was brought home. Thepolicy package thus focused specificallyon reducing the cost of bringing up afamily. Subsequent policy revisions in2006 further helped reduce theseburdens. The current debate hasalready led to revisions in ourmanpower policies and we canprobably expect more refinements toour immigration policies in the nearfuture.

As I reflect on the current debate onpopulation size and the criticalcomments that have been expressed, Isee the need to once again revisit thedemographic challenges facing Singaporeand assess our scientific understandingof Singapore’s population dynamics asthe basis for our projections andpopulation policy recommendations.Why do we now project a population of6.9 million when not too long ago we saidfour million would be ideal? Did we makea mistake in our calculations? If we areon track in our technical assessment ofour population dynamics, what then isour demographic future? How should weas citizens of this city-state face up to thedemographic challenge? This papershares some of my reflections.




A Deteriorating Age Structure

Singapore has a strong registrationsystem for births and deaths and ourdemographic information system isamong the best in the world. A solidinformation base thus facilitates ourunderstanding of the changing agestructure. We have been tracking thechanging age structure of residents overtime. In the 1980s, when I started workat the PPU, we knew that we wereentering into a period of ‘highdemographic dividend’, i.e. thedependency ratio was at its lowest dueto the much larger working agepopulation relative to the ‘dependent’younger and older populations. In the1980s, the index of dependency ratio wasabout 46 to 100, which marked thebeginning of this ‘dividend’ period. Graph1 shows vividly the trough period and theimpending surge in the dependency ratio.

We know for a fact that the future rise ofthe dependency ratio is entirely due tothe increase in older persons, especiallythose from the baby boom cohorts. Wehave been tracking the movement of thebaby boom cohorts for many years. Thereis no escape from this ‘silver tsunami’.The size of the ageing baby boomers willmake their presence felt in many aspects:the demand for health care, themanagement of their daily lives, the end-of-life issues, and the impact arising frominter-generational transfer of assets. Weare also aware that, with the rising lifeexpectancy (from 72 years in 1980 to 82in 2012), older persons will live and stayhealthy for much longer. At age 60, aSingaporean male can expect to liveanother 23 years and a Singaporeanfemale, 26 years.

While we know a lot about the impendingrise in the ageing population and the




challenges in the provision of supportservices, we are still at an early stage ofevolving new societal arrangements toaccommodate and take advantage of theskills and talents of this group of healthyand educated older persons. The futurenumber and characteristics of the olderpersons have been projected regularlyand were submitted and scrutinised bysuccessive Ministerial Committees onAgeing. Yet, I am surprised how little wehave done collectively to add meaningand fulfillment to the last 20 to 30 yearsof life of many older persons. Perhaps weare at the beginning of a process whichwill pick up momentum in time. I alsobelieve that end-of-life issues willincreasingly be discussed openly as thissociety confronts the challenges of anageing population.

The Birth Dearth

The current long-run fertility decline,which started in the 1970s, is welldocumented. The ‘Stop at Two’population policy might have facilitateda faster and more drastic decline.Nonetheless, the decline of Singapore’sfertility is in line with the rest of the Asiancities. We have thus far been using the‘Total Fertility Rate’ (TFR) as the keyindicator to track fertility trends. Thisindicator comprises of two components:the proportion of married women andthe level of marital fertility. Over time, wehave seen a delay in marriage timing andan associated decline in the absolutenumber of married women. The level of

marital fertility has also declined with thenumber of families with one or nochildren on the rise. The consequence ofthe combined effect is a sustained below-replacement TFR. These analyses werebased on the data from periodic surveysand population censuses, and I think wehave a good grasp of the level and trends,including period and cohort fertility.

The joint declines in the level of fertilityand in the absolute number of mothersdirectly impact the number of births wecan expect in a given year. The decliningnumbers of the resident births (birthsborn to resident households) and thecomparison between ‘resident births’and reported ‘total births’ are shown inFigure 2. In the past 10 years, the numberof resident births has been trendingbetween 35,000 to 38,000, and thedivergence between the ‘total’ and‘resident’ births has become greater withmore foreigners giving births inSingapore. I am not sure why thegovernment continues to use the numberof ‘total’ births in some of the analysiswhich is quite misleading.

What is of concern is the successivestepwise decline in the size of theresident birth cohorts: an average cohortwill be below 35,000 in the years to come.I do not believe anyone would agree thata cohort of 35,000 a year is sufficient tomeet Singapore’s manpower needs.Moreover, what is of interest is that only60 percent of the resident births are bornto both parents who are citizens (around




25,000 per year). In other words, four outof 10 births are born to families, with atleast one parent being a migrant. I amsurprised by this change, as theproportion was much lower in the 1980s.This is in line with the marriage trendsdiscussed below.

In Singapore, procreation occurs witha marriage and the family is oftendeemed as the most important socialinstitution. Government policies havefocused on supporting the functioningof the family in every aspect. However,the Singapore family is changing aswell. The young Singaporean families oftoday are much better educated andglobally mobile. What are the values ofchildren to the modern Singaporeanfamilies? Are two or three children stillthe ideal family size? I think we need abetter understanding of this issue in

order to appreciate the impact ofchanging values on the sustainability ofSingaporean population. With thesteady rise of childless or singletonfamilies, I think we can expectSingaporean families to get evensmaller in the future.

The nature of Singaporean families willalso evolve due to compositionalchanges. Marriage to non-Singaporeanshas been on the rise, reaching almost 40percent of all Singaporean marriages.Graph 3 shows this rising trend of cross-national marriage. I am surprised by thistrend which has important sociologicalimplications. Is this a naturalphenomenon as a result of increasedcontacts with non-citizens locally oroverseas? We know that the marriagebureaus play a role in arrangingmarriages for some of the Singaporean




with spouses from within the region. Willthis trend stabilise at 40 percent or will itclimb further? The data strongly suggestSingapore society has become moreopen or ‘globalised’ than ever before. Itwould be very interesting to see how thisglobalisation trend would affectSingaporean family values, traditionsand rituals.

A key consequence of the fertility andageing trends is that the number ofdeaths will soon outstrip the numberof births, resulting in a decline of ourpopulation size. The government hasprojected that the natural increase forcitizens will turn negative from about2025 onwards and at that point, thecitizen population will shrink. We haveknown this would happen since the

1970s; still, the fact that it will happensoon does bring a sense of foreboding. Ifwe do allow more migrants to settle inSingapore as citizens, this will delay theonset of population decline. Objectively,this sounds like a rational choice.However, as in the case of Japan, theremay be other considerations far moreimportant than just balancing the

numbers. Japan has stubbornly refusedto go for an ‘easy’ solution of importinglabour (and citizens) to ease theirpopulation concerns. In contrast, wemay have appeared to be too eager.While our choices may be limited as asmall city-state, the volume and speedof absorption are policy variablesthat could have been more broadlydiscussed.




Our Common Future

Our demographic trends are clear andsupported by undisputed evidence. Weknow as a fact that we are headingtowards a declining citizen populationwith an adverse age structure and risingdependency. This is our destiny. We willbe dependent on migrant workers in thefuture in large numbers no matter howmuch we increase our productivity.During the 1980-2000 period, ourdevelopment benefited from the‘demographic dividend’. The demand forforeign workers in this period wasmanageable. With the establishment ofthe National Productivity Board (NPB)and the push for higher ‘total factorproductivity’, there was reason to hopethat foreign inflow will not be too large.The population projections prevailing atthat time reflected this sentiment andassumed a much smaller foreign inflow,of about half to one million, to top up thecitizen population. We assumed then thata steady state for the medium term couldprevail with a four million population size.

In retrospect, I realise that the 4-millionpopulation projection in 1990 has grosslyunder-estimated the growth potential ofSingapore and our capacity toaccommodate a larger population. It is ano-brainer that population planning inSingapore must take full cognisance ofSingapore’s unique characteristics andconstraints as a city-state. Some of thephysical constraints have been minimised(such as new sources of water supply and

land reclamation), and we know that withproper planning, Singapore has thecapacity of supporting a much largerpopulation with a high quality of life. Themanpower needs have also surged dueto favourable economic growth.

The current population projection issuedby the government in the White Paperhas taken a factual assessment of themanpower needs of the future based oncurrent economic scenarios, and has thusmade a larger provision for populationincrease. Critics have argued that ourfuture economic strategy must aim for‘quality’ growth with minimaldependency on foreign workers and astronger push for productivityimprovement. This is reasonable, andindeed ‘quality growth’ rather than‘growth at all costs’ should be the guidingprinciple for future economicdevelopment. The government has givensome indications that a new economicstrategy may indeed be required. Therewill however be a limit of how much wecan substitute manpower by technology,and the fact remains that we criticallyneed a foreign workforce to support andgrow our economy.

Our demographic future will be shapedby how we perform on two key tasks.First, we have to continue to encouragethe formation of Singaporean families toslow the decline of the population andto preserve our culture and traditions.The nature of Singaporean families willchange, and it is unclear how the impact




of cross-national marriages will erode thetraditional values and practices.

Secondly, we have to find an acceptableway to deal with future populationinflows which will be sizeable. Our currentpopulation inflow is like ‘kueh Lapis’, withmany layers forming a delicate structure.This structure of work permits andemployment passes has been inexistence for many years and our societyhas accepted it. Recent reactions to theinflow seem to focus on how foreignershave impacted the lives of Singaporeans.As the foreigners begin to form a criticalmass in the labour market, Singaporeansfeel that they are being squeezed out.Many Singaporeans feel that they aredisadvantaged and even discriminatedagainst in their home country. In addition,the sheer number of foreigners incommon places such as markets, publictransport, and food outlets gives rise toa feeling of being overwhelmed byoutsiders.

I believe there is good understandingamong Singaporeans of our populationdynamics. The facts are not disputed. Weknow we need an inflow of foreigners tosustain our population and economy.However, we want this to be a managedinflow, with broader consultation on howthe inflow should be managed. IfSingaporeans continue to perceive thatthey have been squeezed out by theforeigners, this will bring forth broaderpolitical and sociological consequences.The government must be seen to be

advancing the interest of Singaporeans,rather than that of the foreigners.Unfortunately, this perception of a lackof ‘home-court’ advantage is still widelyheld. The reactions to the White Paperon Population, the riot in Little India, thestrike by bus drivers — all these aresignals that managing our futurepopulation growth will demand thegovernment to be far more attentive thanever on issues concerning the foreignworkforce. The need to forge a publicconsensus on our manpower policy andthe role of foreigners in our society ismore apparent than ever before. Weneed this shared understanding andshared responsibility to meet the futuredemographic challenges and to sustainthe growth and prosperity of our nation.



Singapore Challenged:The Natural and

Living EnvironmentEuston Quah and Christabelle Soh

Professor Euston Quah is the Head of the Department of Economics anda Professor of Cost-Benefit Analysis and Environmental Economics at theNanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also the President ofthe Economic Society of Singapore.

Ms Christabelle Soh is an economics teacher at Raffles Institution (Years5 and 6). She was a Koh Boon Hwee scholar and a recipient of theLee Kuan Yew Gold Medal for Economics (NTU) in 2010.


Singapore Challenged: The Natural and Living Environment


Introduction

The study of Economics revolves aroundthe fundamental problem of scarcity. Inthe face of limited resources andunlimited wants, how can any society beorganised to ensure that resources areallocated to the right areas? The trade-offs involved in the choices made and theresultant conflicts in objectives presenta challenge to all governments. Withrespect to Singapore, the most pertinentchallenge stems from managing highereconomic growth and the need tobalance that with conserving andprotecting the environment (broadlydefined as comprising the living andnatural environment). While all countriesface this challenge, Singapore’scircumstances make the trade-offsespecially stark.

On one hand, globalisation and theassociated reduction in barriers to tradeand capital flows have facilitated the riseof regional economic rivals. Singapore’sexport and foreign direct investment(FDI) - led growth model is under threatfrom countries such as China, which havethe advantage of cheap and abundantlabour to create both exportcompetitiveness while attracting FDI.While this only poses a problem forSingapore to the extent that suchcountries export similar goods andservices and attract similar types of FDIto Singapore, the fact that these regionalcountries are currently looking to moveup the value chain means that the

scenario of Singapore and them being indirect competition may not be that far offin the distant future. The implication isthat to achieve the same degree ofeconomic growth, Singapore needs to bemore competitive than ever. Theincreased competition from rivaleconomies has caused the trade-off interms of pursuing higher economicgrowth vis-a-vis protection andconserving the natural environmentwhile increasing the non-material aspectsof quality of life . With higher incomes andthe satisfaction of material needs, peoplestart demanding cleaner air and water,larger green open spaces, morerecreation and leisure time, increasedspaces for reflection, conservation ofheritage, the arts and culture and so on.

The theory is similar to that whichunderpins the environmental Kuznetscurve, an n-shaped curve that describesthe relationship between growth/incomeand the degree of pollution over time.Beyond a certain level of income, thedemands for a cleaner environmentwould lead to less pollution and hence, areduction in pollution as incomeincreases. Similarly, beyond a certain levelof income, people are less willing totrade-off aspects of non-material welfarefor more material aspects of growth.

What faces Singapore then is that in lightof the increased foreign competition, inorder to sustain economic growth, moreaspects of non-material welfare mayneed to be sacrificed. However, at the




same time, Singaporeans’ demands forimprovement in the quality of life haveincreased. Managing both sides andstriking an appropriate balance forms thebroad, fundamental challenge Singaporefaces today.

Trade-offs between Economic Growthand the Environment

The Energy Challenge

Economic growth entails greaterproduction (and consumption) of goodsand services. This inevitably involveshigher levels of energy consumption.How best to meet this increased energydemand is a specific challenge thatSingapore faces.

Singapore currently relies primarily onburning fossil fuels to generate energy.There are two issues with this approach.Firstly, relying on conventional sources ofenergy from burning fossil fuels resultsin higher carbon emissions. AlthoughSingapore only contributes to 0.2 percentof global carbon emissions, we havealways punched above our weight inglobal affairs and should also do so withregards to setting an example in reducingcarbon emissions. While Singapore hasdone well in this area, achieving one ofthe lowest carbon intensity (kilogrammesof carbon dioxide emissions per dollargross domestic product (GDP)) in the

world, the challenge lies in furtherdecoupling growth and carbon emissions.This requires even further reductions incarbon intensity, which may prove to becostly. The main factor behind our lowcarbon intensity is the fuel makeup in ourenergy production. Since 2000, we haveincreased the use of natural gas, the leastcarbon-emitting fossil fuel, from 19percent to 80 percent of the total fuelmix1. Increasing the share of natural gasis the low-hanging fruit. Given the highproportion of natural gas in the fuel mix,there is little scope for further reductionsin carbon intensity from this source.Further reductions in carbon intensitymay require costly technology such ascarbon capture and storage. This leads usto the second issue of cost. To maintaincompetitiveness, Singapore needs tokeep energy costs low. If cost were theonly consideration, coal would definitelybe the fuel of choice, especially whencountries such as China have anabundance of it and hence, a costadvantage stemming from lower energycosts. However, coal emits the mostcarbon dioxide when burnt and is themost pollutive of the fossil fuels. Again,the pressure to remain competitive andenvironmental considerations pull in twodifferent directions.

The problem is compounded by the factthat Singapore is renewable energy-deficient. Renewable energy could

1 National Climate Change Secretariat, http://app.nccs.gov.sg/page.aspx?pageid=167&secid=193,Accessed on 26 October 2013




potentially provide a way out of theconundrum since it does not produce anycarbon emission. However, Singapore isnot blessed with the ability to rely onthese renewable sources. We lack theland mass for wind turbines and fastflowing rivers for hydroelectricity. Solarenergy is still too costly and faces theissue of storage to allow the timing ofenergy production to match that ofconsumption. Furthermore, we lacksufficient space for the buffer zone whicha nuclear energy plant would require.

In view of the above considerations, thechallenge is two-fold. In the short run,we need to decide on an optimalenergy mix that strikes a balancebetween cost and environmentalconcerns. In the longer term, the focusshould be minimising the trade-offbetween the two. On the supply-side,we need to continually explore anddevelop less carbon intensive energysources. On the demand side, we willneed to manage energy demand fromboth households and industry.Naturally this is easier said than done.Energy needs to be cheap, clean, andsecure. The road forward is continuedmonitoring and pursuit of energyefficiency, research and developmenton clean energy including how to makecoal usage cleaner, and energy securityby continued diversity on sources ofsupply of energy (which raises anotherdifficulty and often costly trade-offbetween reliance on a narrow range oftraditional supply vis-a-vis searching for

alternative sources). The cheapest andeasiest way is to develop a sharedsmart grid involving supplies from otherregional countries which already havean abundance of natural renewableenergy resources but this again raisesthe problem of energy security wherethe supply source is not in Singapore’sdetermination. On the demand side, itis also very important that bothconsumers and producers areresponsive in the behaviours in theusage of energy. This requires a goodunderstanding and application ofbehavioural economics. There is only somuch developed and legislatedeconomic incentives can affectbehaviour. Behavioural nudges areneeded to complement theconventional economic incentives.

The Population Challenge

The long run economic growth rate isdependent on the productive capacity ofan economy. Singapore’s ageingpopulation means that all else beingconstant, economic growth will slowdown and may even turn negative. Anageing population means that entrantsinto the labour force will be outnumberedby retirees from the labour force. Thiswould cause a shrinkage of the labourforce and hence, a reduction inproductive capacity and growth.According to the recent SingaporeGovernment’s Population White Paper, inthe absence of foreign labour inflows,Singapore’s population (and hence,




labour force) will start shrinking in 20252.In the absence of productivity gains,continued economic growth requires agrowing labour force. However,Singapore’s low fertility rate means thatit is not viable for the labour force toincrease via domestic means. The labourforce requires foreign augmentation.This, unfortunately, has come with atrade-off in terms overcrowding and aresultant reduction in the quality of lifedue to congestion on public transportnetworks and a strain on the social fabric.While improvements in productivity havebeen trumpeted as the cure, there aregood reasons to doubt the viability of theproductivity targets over the nextdecade. Firstly, large gains in productivityare usually only enjoyed by developingcountries which are playing catch-up. Thisis because there are still many low-hanging fruits in the form of bestpractices and existing technology thatthey can adopt. Singapore does not fallinto this category. We have plucked mostof the low-hanging fruit and there is nolonger a technological gap between usand the rest of the developed world.Secondly, the rough empirics do not addup. The most dynamic economy in theworld is arguably the United States, whichonly saw an increase in productivity of 1.7percent over the past decade. For

Singapore, greater gains in productivitywill require an even higher level ofdynamism which is unlikely to be realisedwithin a decade. Thirdly, while there arespecific industries which have significantroom for improvements in productivity(e.g. construction), the scope forimprovement in the overall economy’sproductivity depends on the futurerelative sizes of these industries as well.It is quite likely that Singapore will notexperience significant improvements inproductivity and will miss the ambitiousproductivity targets of 2 to 3 percentannual growth in productivity over the2010 to 2020 decade3.

The implication of the above is that thetrade-off between growth andovercrowding is going to remain tight forthe foreseeable future. Where there aretrade-offs, there must exist an optimumwhere the marginal benefits of anaddition to the population (in the formof a larger labour force and growth) isequivalent to the marginal cost (inthe form of the contribution toovercrowding)4. The challenge then, forthe short term, is to find out the optimalpopulation and to adjust the foreignlabour flows to reach it. For the longerterm, the focus on productivity is stillappropriate and necessary. Long run

2 National Population and Talent Division, A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore,http://population.sg/whitepaper/resource-files/population-white-paper.pdf, January 20133 Economic Strategies Committee, Report of the Economic Strategies Committee: High-skilled people,Innovative economy, Distinctive global city, http://app.mof.gov.sg/data/cmsresource/ESC%20Report/ESC%20Full%20Report.pdf, February 20104 Quah & Soh, Optimal population: Why non-material welfare matters, 17 November 2012




5 ZeroWasteSg, Singapore Waste Statistics 2012, http://www.zerowastesg.com/tag/recycling-rate/,Accessed on 26 October 20136 The Straits Times, NEA plan seeks to limit damage from landfill expansion, 23 August 2013

solutions should, in general, try tominimise the trade-off costs insteadof simply managing the trade-off.Improvements in productivity increasesthe productive capacity without the needto import foreign labour and avoids thesacrifice of non-material well-being.

The Waste Challenge

Both energy and population presentchallenges because they areingredients necessary for economicgrowth. Waste, on the other hand,presents a challenge because it is a by-product of growth. With growth, thereis greater output and consumption —both contribute to waste. Between2000 and 2012, in line with the increasein national income, waste generated (intonnes) increased by 56 percent5.

Singapore’s current waste managementsystem primarily involves incinerationand the use of landfills. Both involvetrade-offs in the form of a worsenedliving environment. The former causesair pollution and poorer air quality. Italso adds on to Singapore’s carbonemissions. The latter causes land andpossibly, groundwater pollution.Furthermore, with land becomingincreasingly scarce, the opportunitycost of landfills in the form of foregonedevelopment projects become ever

larger. The problem is compounded bythe fact that the Pulau Semakau landfillsite is expected to reach its capacity in2016. Current efforts to expand the siteare projected to extend this to 20356.However, despite the NationalEnvironment Agency ’s (NEA) bestefforts, there will inevitably be somenegative impact on the nearby marinelife.

There is a need to reduce the amountof wastes generated. One way togenerate less waste is by accepting lessgrowth. The challenge is to find outhow much growth and consumptionSingaporeans are willing to give upto enjoy a low-waste and cleanerenvironment and implementing asuitable tax to discourageconsumption. The other way togenerate less waste is to decouplegrowth from waste generation — inother words, recycle. Recycling allowsincreased production and consumptionwithout a corresponding increase inresource usage and thereby wastegeneration. In this regard, Singaporehas thus far produced a mixed bag ofresults. While 60 percent of total wasteis recycled, a breakdown of therecycling rates by materials reveals thatthe bulk of the recycling is carried outby the industrial sector. Recycling ratesof materials more associated with




7 NEA, Waste Statistics and Recycling Rate for 2012, http://app2.nea.gov.sg/energy-waste/waste-management/waste-statistics-and-overall-recycling, Accessed on 26 October 2013

household use (e.g. plastics) aredismally low7. The challenge then is tochange households’ attitudes andencouraging greater household recycling.However, recycling itself is not a panacea.Recycling waste without increasingdemand for the recycled products will notbe sustainable. This subsequently oftenrequires huge subsidies which competewith subsidies provided to incinerationplants. Furthermore, if waste reductionwere successful, there would be lesswaste produced for recycling which inturn, will threaten recycling firms. Whatis needed is a holistic evaluation of theentire waste problem from its inceptionand generation to a cost-benefit analysisof each proposed solution. The cheapestand most efficient way to dispose non-toxic waste is to lease waste landfill sitesoutside of Singapore. However, this againis politically not suitable despite itseconomic appeal. Nonetheless, therehave been success stories in the variousimport-export waste states in the UnitedStates and this perhaps, bears studying .

Addressing the Challenges

Long run solutions to all threementioned-above challenges requiredelinking growth from the problems’sources - carbon emissions, increases inpopulation, and waste generation. Thesewill involve new technology, new meansof doing things or fundamental changes

in attitudes. These are the big ideas andinvolve a certain degree of uncertainty.While important, they provide little in theway of concrete and immediate stepsthat can be taken.

For a more immediate response, thefocus is to manage the challenges. Thisinvolves accepting the trade-offs as agiven and finding out what the optimalcompromise is. Fundamentally, it is anexercise in optimisation. What amount ofgrowth and the corresponding levels ofcarbon emissions, foreign labour, andwaste would maximise social welfare?Would an additional percentage increasein real GDP bring about greater socialutility? This requires greater and moreconsistent use of cost-benefit analysis.While the Ministry of Finance (MOF) hastaken steps in the right direction inadopting more consistent use of cost-benefit analyses, what Singapore stilllacks is a systematic gathering of dataregarding non-market goods such asgreen spaces and fresh air. Morevaluation studies need to be carried outto derive society’s preferences in orderto determine what the optimal trade-offsare. Economics provides many tools toplace monetary values on these non-material aspects of welfare. There is littleto prevent the application of these toolsto the Singapore context to aidenlightened policy-making. Additionally,the act of soliciting society’s preferences




has the benefit of more visibleinvolvement of stakeholders, moretransparency in decision choices, andbetter informed decision-making.

Conclusion

In summary, Singapore’s challengesprimarily stem from the trade-offbetween economic growth and otherobjectives. While globalisation andgreater competition have meant thateach unit of growth will require greatersacrifice, increased affluence have pulledin the opposite direction with greaterdemands for a higher quality of life. Toaddress these challenges, long runsolutions must involve reducing thetrade-offs. Concrete steps however,require short run management. Thisinvolves finding an optimal balance,which in turn requires a systematiccollection of new and relevant data.

A step that Singapore could take is to setup an agency to conduct and updatevaluation studies regarding non-marketgoods and accounting for non-materialaspects of growth. This agency wouldgreatly complement what is nowincreasingly demanded of cost-benefitstudies on project proposals and willserve Singapore well into the future bycontinually inferring and analysingsociety’s preferences.

This article was written from theconventional perspective of growth asthe main objective and the resultant

trade-offs as necessary evils. However, aparadigm shift might be in order. It mightbe preferable to redefine the objective ofpolicies to one that pursues higher qualityof life of which the focus is on the non-material aspects of life. Here, growth isbut a means to an end. Such thinking willneed a new mindset which re-estimatesthe optimal population, energy source,and waste management system — notfrom how they support growth, but fromhow they affect a defined quality of life.This may be the real challenge instead.



Singapore’s Interest in LNG andBecoming a Regional Gas Hub

Lee Tzu Yang

Mr Lee Tzu Yang is Chairman of Shell Companies in Singapore and hasworked with the energy and chemicals group since 1979 in a range ofdifferent markets. He is Singaporean and is active in a range of publicinterests.


Singapore’s Interest in LNG and Becoming a Regional Gas Hub


Asia has entered an historic phase ofdevelopment that will have an impact onthe way it uses energy. Citizens inemerging economies are buying their firstrefrigerators, cars, washing machines andall other consumer goods that are takenfor granted in developed economies.These same countries are undergoingrapid industrialisation and urbanisation.These trends suggest a lot more energywill be used, which means more supplywill have to be produced fairly quickly.

At Shell, teams of economists, engineersand scientists have been developing,over the last 40 years, a range ofplausible futures and their challengingimplications for our energy system,including for Asia. We share this thinkingwith governments, researchers, academeand the public. Our latest edition, calledNew Lens Scenarios, projects that energydemand could rise by as much as 80percent by 2050. The scenarios alsohighlight the shift in economic influencefrom the West to the East. China andIndia together will account for themajority of energy demand growth in thenext two decades.

Asia is increasingly dependent on energyimports at a time of high and volatile oilprices. According to the AsianDevelopment Bank (ADB), most Asiancountries will produce less than half theenergy they need by 2035, and many willproduce only a tiny fraction. The regionwill have to rely heavily on energyimports for decades to come.

This tremendous need for energy will putmore stress on our water and foodsystems, as well as on the climate andenvironment. All these resources aretightly woven — nearly all forms ofenergy production require water —energy is needed to move and treatwater; while producing food requiresboth energy and water.

Increased energy needs have also led torising concerns about greenhouse gasemissions. On existing emissions trends,the world will far exceed the averagetemperature rise of 2 degrees Celsiusregarded as the limit to avoid the worseeffects of climate change. Asia’sgovernments are also increasingly facingmounting public pressure to tacklechronic urban pollution and to clean upthe air.

Due to the sheer scale of our energyneeds, the scenarios project that fossilfuels are expected to continue to supplythe majority of energy for decades tocome. They expect fossil fuelconsumption to rise in energy terms byabout one-third over the next twodecades. By 2060, fossil fuels are stilllikely to meet around 60 percent of globalenergy demand, down from about 80percent today.

The team also estimates that by 2035 theworld’s renewable energy sources couldgrow by at least 60 percent or evendouble. By 2060, renewable energy couldsupply up to four times more energy than




today, which would be a staggering rateof expansion.

Significantly, natural gas will become themost important energy source globally bythe 2030s. The International EnergyAgency (IEA) estimates there is enoughtechnically available gas to last more than230 years at today’s consumption levels.Gas can be cooled to a liquid state, i.e.liquefied natural gas (LNG) and shippedacross oceans. LNG is increasingly beingused to help countries meet demandwhile increasing energy security, becauseits supply is becoming more abundantand diverse. In the first decade of thiscentury, LNG demand has doubled and itis expected to double again within thisdecade.

In Asia, gas demand has been risingdramatically, particularly as Asia’s urbanpopulations continue to expand. In 2012,Asia represented 46 percent of globalinter-regional gas trade, up from 40percent the year before, according tothe IEA. Asia overtook Organisationfor Economic Co-operation andDevelopment (OECD) Europe, the thenlargest importing region accounting for45 percent of global gas imports. Asianow imports almost four times more LNGthan Europe.

Most of the natural gas growth in AsiaPacific will be consumed in the power andindustrial sectors, according to the IEA,with the power sector set to be dominantfor the next four years. The two most

mature natural gas markets in Asia Pacificare Japan and Taiwan. Both markets arenearly exclusively supplied by LNG. In2011, they consumed 87 percent of theLNG delivered to Asia, though the IEAsays demand growth is likely to shift toChina and India.

The region’s LNG trade is set to grow asinfrastructure is built in more countries.Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka andVietnam have announced plans to buildregasification terminals for LNG imports.Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia andSingapore are already importing LNG.Given that there has been limitedprogress on intra-regional pipelineinfrastructure promoting pipeline-supplied natural gas trade, there is stillmore room for the LNG trade todevelop. Given the slow pace of theintra-regional effort, the region mightlook to more regional co-operationbetween governments to allowdomestic gas prices that reflectinternational price movements, and inthis way, encourage a free and liquidtraded-gas market.

Singapore’s role

Against this backdrop, Singapore ispositioning itself to benefit from thishistoric inflexion point in energy andAsian growth. It has calculated that theregion’s potential demand for cleanerenergy, gas in particular, will riseexponentially and has taken initial stepsto build its position.




Singapore first announced plans for aworld-scale LNG terminal in 2006, startedbuilding the facility in 2010 and took itsfirst commercial delivery in 2013. This willhelp enhance energy security bydiversifying energy supply from piped gasfrom Indonesia and Malaysia, whichcurrently provide the gas for generatingelectricity.

Singapore’s LNG import terminal hasinitial throughput capacity of 3.5 milliontonnes per year, which is expected toexpand to 9 million tonnes per year in thefuture. This is to ensure that supplies aresecured for the country and to trade inrapidly expanding gas use within Asia.Beyond its domestic remit, the terminalwill be used for storage and LNG re-exports, underscoring Singapore’sambition to become the regional energyhub as Asia’s gas demand and tradegrows.

Due to its strategic geographic location,Singapore has one of the best prospectsin Asia to become a gas hub. Singaporeis located between gas-exportingpowerhouses in the Middle East,Australasia and gas-hungry Asia,particularly China, Japan, South Koreaand Taiwan. With frequent calls onports in these countries, tankers canrefill in gas-producing areas such asAustralia, Brunei or Indonesia, enablingtrade with Singapore on their way tothe Middle East. This has the potentialto transform patterns for the Asian gastrade.

The historic free market approach to theenergy sector, combined with clearregulation and a solid legal framework inSingapore, is an important winningcondition for its gas hub ambitions. In2001, the government decoupledcommercial activities from transportationactivities in the gas sector, to enablebetter competition for gas prices as wellas to more accurately reflect marketforces. It also introduced wholesalepricing for natural gas so that re-exportsfrom Singapore may be competitivelypriced. Third-party access to gasinfrastructure in Singapore has beenguaranteed since 2008.

Singapore also has the financialinfrastructure to support gas trading.By 2012, at least 14 companies withLNG trading or marketing desks,including BP, Gazprom, Shell, V itolGroup and GDF Suez were presentin Singapore. Critical to shapingSingapore’s hub ambitions will becontinued support from thegovernment for the free marketapproach to ensure continued interestfrom major gas players.

Also key to these ambitions is thecontinued development of theSingapore gas terminal in both capacityand operational excellence, to ensureworld-class efficiency and competitivecosts. This will support not only tradingambitions but the reliability ofcompetitive gas supply to the marketin Singapore.




The region

The global trade of LNG is increasinglyconnecting markets, but there are stillsignificant regional aspects to the gas andLNG industry. Gas in the United States hasdeveloped trading around hubs tied intopiped gas infrastructure, and is wellknown for its ‘Henry Hub’ price point inLouisiana. Europe’s gas market is a hybridof oil-linked contracts and a number oflong-established as well as new gas hubs.Connecting these regions are dynamicallygrowing short-term and spot LNG sales,over-the-counter sales and smallervolumes of shorter durations, in additionto the typical long-term contracts.

LNG in Asia has historically been sold onthe basis of long-term oil-linkedcontracts. According to the IEA, 88percent of natural gas traded in Asia in2010 was priced by linkage to oil. Asiangrowth in LNG demand has coincidedwith a period of rising oil prices, resultingin LNG prices growing in tandem. This hascreated a debate on whether oil-linkedpricing is best for the future, andquestions whether Asia should alsodevelop hub prices for gas as in Europeand the United States.

A key point in this debate is the differencein current gas prices between the UnitedStates and Asia, which appearssignificant. At current oil prices, Japaneselong-term LNG price averages anestimated $16/MMBtu. The Japaneseearthquake of 11 March, 2011, which

eventually resulted in a shutdown ofnearly 50GW of nuclear power, hasfurther increased Japan’s reliance onimported oil and LNG. In parallel, theUnited States shale gas phenomenon hasdriven down ‘Henry Hub’ gas prices.While prices in these regions may seemto differ considerably, the differences arebetter understood after adjusting for thecost of liquefaction, transportation andregasification to trade from one region tothe other. The residual difference wouldwork out to be less dramatic.

Singapore is a highly viable location fora gas hub. While there are elements tohub pricing which are attractive to theregion, other contributing factors needto play roles — market liquidity andtransparency; depth and breadth oftrades; and a significant degree ofgovernment regulatory co-operationacross Asia on energy that so far, hasnot been present. While Singapore canplay a leading role in creating this, thereare many next steps which depend onothers.

Conclusion

In order to develop a competitive andsecure supply of energy, Singapore hasembarked on growing the LNG sector.The development of interest from adiverse range of world class LNG playerswill be important, as will thedemonstration of operational excellenceby the Singapore terminal to be best-in-class in flexibility and costs. The debate




on LNG pricing is unfolding and will playa part in how the gas trade develops inthe region.

For the development of Singapore as agas hub, in addition to the domesticfactors more within the control ofSingapore, the pace of progress is alsodependent on world and regionalchanges. Most critically these include theability and willingness of regional playersto co-operate and create the conditionsfor an effective integrated gas supplyinfrastructure with aligned regulatoryframeworks. Singapore can prepare to bein a pre-eminent position to play this rolewhen the time is right.

The extent to which Singapore developsits role as a gas hub will, in turn, supportits objective to have a secure andcompetitive energy sector.


Professor Kishore Mahbubani, the author of “The Great Convergence:Asia, the West and the Logic of One World”, has been listed as one of thetop 50 world thinkers this year by Prospect magazine.


The New Singapore DreamKishore Mahbubani


The New Singapore Dream


It is always best to begin an article with astrong statement to grab a reader’sattention. So here is my strongstatement: when Singapore celebrates its50th anniversary on 9 August 2015, it canconfidently claim that no other newlyindependent nation has developed asrapidly and as comprehensively asSingapore has in its first 50 years. Severalpeople have challenged this claim ofmine. However, when asked to name anyother newly independent nation that hasdone better than Singapore, they couldnot. In short, for the first 50 years of itsdevelopment, Singapore can lay claim tobe number one in the world.

Allow me to make my second strongstatement: if Singapore continues onautopilot and repeats the same goals andpolicies as it had in its first 50 years, it willbe heading towards disaster. Bluntly put,the goals and policies that have workedin the first 50 years will not work for thesubsequent 50 years. And why not? Thesimple answer is that the world haschanged. Singapore too, must change. Inthe first 50 years, Singapore had the first-mover advantage. We were ahead of therest of the world and our region inadopting policies which propelled usforward. Today, the rest of the world andour region have begun copying our bestpractices. If we play the same game, wewill be left behind. Therefore, we have tostart playing new games.

To begin playing new games, we mayneed to have a new set of aspirations.

Clearly, the first generations ofSingaporeans (including mine) wanted toget out of poverty and enjoy the fruits ofprosperity. This was the reason for goingfor the five Cs: cars, condominiums,cash, credit cards and country clubmemberships. However, if all 5 millionresidents of Singapore keep pushing forthe five Cs, we may well have an islandthat is uninhabitable.

Let me state at the outset that there isno restriction on the amount of cash orcredit cards which Singaporeans canacquire. Here, there are no finite limits.However, given the fact that we are oneof the smallest countries in the world, andis, after Monaco, the most denselypopulated UN member state, it isimpossible for Singapore to satisfy thedemands of each and every citizen andresident in the areas of cars,condominiums and country clubs.Singapore does not and cannot have thephysical space to provide these goods toeveryone.

To date, Singapore has designed verygood public policies which have raised theprices of these finite goods such as carsto ensure that they remain out of thereach of most Singaporeans. However,while demand has been squeezed byhigher prices, there has been nodiscernible effort to address theunderlying factors propelling demand.Even today, no middle-class Singaporeanbelieves that he has ‘arrived’ until heowns a car, even though a car in




Singapore is outrageously expensive byglobal standards. In short, a car remainsan essential part of the Singaporeandream. Yet, if every Singaporean achieveshis or her dream, we will have a nationalnightmare on-hand.

To prevent this national nightmare, wehave created harsher policies to reducethe demand for cars. Paradoxically, thehigher prices of cars have made themeven more desirable as status symbols.This is the reason for luxury brandstrumping cheap brands in Singapore. Ifthe desirability of cars continue to rise,our efforts to curtail car ownership willbe as successful as a dog chasing its tail.Moreover, if we keep alive theSingaporean dream of owning a car andrestrict access to that dream, we willinevitably create a disgruntled andfrustrated middle class. Indeed, this maybe one reason for the rising levels ofunhappiness in Singapore. ManySingaporeans feel that their incomes arerising, yet they feel that the Singaporeandream of cars, condominiums andcountry clubs is receding rather thangetting closer. The stark contrastbetween Singapore and the developedworld makes this clearer. In 2010, therewere 477 cars for every 1,000 individualsin the European Union (EU), the highestratio in the world. In contrast inSingapore, there are 117 cars for every1,000 individuals.

So what then is the solution? The solutionis obvious: change the Singaporean

dream! Yes, almost every Singaporeanreading this article will laugh at thissuggestion. How can well-offSingaporeans deprive themselves ofowning cars? It provides the most reliableform of transportation as well as apowerful status symbol. The minute oneowns a car, especially a Mercedes, BMWor Lexus, friends will know that you have‘arrived’.

I have lived 10 years of my life on another‘even more crowded’ tiny island where itis not rational to drive or own a car. Infact, it is considered downright foolish tobuy and own a car if one lives inManhattan. All this hit home one eveningin Manhattan when I saw the formerchairman of Citibank, Walter Wriston andhis wife, Kathryn, standing on FirstAvenue with their arms raised andattempting to hail a cab. Clearly, WalterWriston was a very wealthy man. Hecould have easily bought a car (cars arecheap in Manhattan) and parked itanywhere he liked (even though parkingcharges in Manhattan are among thehighest in the world). Yet, it just did notmake sense. The ecosystem of publictransport in Manhattan developed intoa combination of subway trains, publicbuses and readily-accessible taxis. Thismeant that, in a crunch, you could getanywhere within Manhattan easily bytaking public transport. Meanwhile, thehassle of driving and high costs of parkingin downtown Manhattan meant thatowning and using a car made even lesssense. Significantly, Mayor Michael




Bloomberg, one of the richest Americans,used to take a subway train to work inManhattan. Former Bogota MayorEnrique Peñalosa put it succinctly, “Adeveloped country is not a place wherethe poor have cars; it’s where the rich usepublic transportation.”

Therefore, the new Singaporean solutionis to dream a happier dream. We have togive up this ‘insane’ dream of wanting torely on a car and replace it with anecosystem of a public transport whichwould make it irrational to own a car.Such an ecosystem will include a reliableand resilient Mass Rapid Transit (MRT)system and a frequent bus service, taxisavailable especially when it thunders andshowers and pools of electric cars readyfor rental. This failure to provide such apublic transport ecosystem is probablyone of Singapore’s biggest failures in itsfirst 50 years. We have succeeded increating the world’s best port, the world’sbest airport and the world’s best airline,just to name a few. Hence, we understandthe game of logistics and transportationwell. Since Singapore is one of the world’smost densely-populated countries, weshould have been able to apply the samedegree of knowledge, skills and expertiseso that our public transport system wouldhave developed as Singapore developed.

We could have done it right and did comeclose to doing so. When I served asSingapore’s Ambassador to the UnitedNations (UN) from 1984 to 1989, myAmerican counterpart was the legendary

Ambassador Vernon A. Walters. Duringhis globe spanning travels, his hobby wasto investigate the MRT system of everycity he visited. He proudly told me thathe could confidently declare that theSingapore MRT system was the best inthe world. I asked him why and his replywas that it was the only MRT system inthe world that had been built ahead ofschedule, below cost and operatedsmoothly.

So the million-dollar question is: Whatwent wrong? Did we choose the wrongpeople or the wrong policies to build ourpublic transport system? There is nodoubt that we can have a vigorous debatein response to this question and we couldhave many different answers. However,there is no simple and correct answer.Each answer in turn reflects an opinionbased on a set of values. So, I would notbe surprised if my simple answer is takenas controversial as well.

I personally believe that the fundamentalmistake which Singapore made in thearea of public transport was to allowideological considerations to trumppragmatic considerations. We madethree critical ideological errors. Firstly, weassumed that companies motivated byprofits were more efficient at deliveringpublic goods than governmental bodies.Hence, we privatised the public transportsystem. We trusted the profit motivemore than government efficiency indelivering public goods such as publictransport. The second error was to




compound the first by insisting that eachlimb of the public transport system hadto be profitable. The MRT and buscompanies had to ultimately makemoney. Indeed, for a while, each newMRT line had to be viable, so too the taxicompanies. Yet, we also pay taxes to payfor good public transport and we collecta huge sum annually from vehicle-relatedcar taxes, fees and charges. Why not usesome of it to deliver better public servicesstarting with better public transport? Thethird ideological error was to assume thatSingaporeans would never give up theirtradition of ‘car worship’. As cars becamemore costly, we too, paradoxically turnedthe car into an even bigger status symbol.And in spending more money on roads,tunnels and flyovers to ensure freer flowof traffic, we actually created a transportecosystem which rewarded driving versususing public transport. Indeed, severalurban planners have made the case thattraffic will expand and fill any availableroad space. This is why way back in 1957,the respected American urbanist LewisMumford advocated construction on theInterstate Highway System be suspendedfor two years entirely.

The real solution to Singapore’s publictransport woes is to challenge some ofthese basic, underlying assumptions. Letus examine them in reverse order. Firstly,we can change the culture of ‘carworship’. Ironically, Singapore has beenvery good at various forms of socialengineering. At the point of Singapore’sindependence, there was a culture of

corruption. There was also a culture ofheavy smoking. It would be fair to saythat Singapore has reduced bothcorruption and heavy smoking. In the1970s, 26 percent of Singaporeans weresmokers. From then, it declined to 22percent in 1983, 18.3 percent in 1992 and14.3 percent in 2010. The point we havelearned from behavioural economics isthat it is possible to change humanbehaviour by shaping social norms indesired directions. Having succeeded inother areas, could we not make aconscious decision to change the cultureand cult of ‘car worship’ in Singapore?

However, to succeed in persuadingSingaporeans to reduce theirdependence on cars, we must in turndeliver a public transport system that isamong the best in the world. Today, withthe availability of big data, we can findout where people want to go at differentpoints in time. Instead of mechanicallycreating bus routes which only ply certainset routes at certain fixed times of theday, we can anticipate demand anddeliver public transport that respondsacutely to micro-level demand data. Ofcourse, this means that not every ‘limb’of the public transport system will beprofitable. Instead of looking at the‘profitability’ of each ‘limb’, we shouldconduct an overall examination of ourpublic transport system and ask ourselvesa simple question: Is the system as awhole delivering the public good it isdesigned to? And can we use acombination of fee collection and car




taxes to pay for the public transportsystem? If we are able to, then we willhave gotten rid of one of the main localsources of public dissatisfaction locally.

Finally, we have to get rid of a final set ofideological blinkers to solve our publictransport problem. This means that wehave to stop ‘worshipping’ the privatesector and to stop believing that theprivate sector can do a better job thanthe public sector in delivering publicgoods. In this area, we need to develop ahigher degree of intellectual honesty. Weshould be honest and admit that like therest of the world we were misled by theReagan-Thatcher ideological revolutionand we believed that the private sectoris inherently better than the public sectorin delivering all kinds of goods, includingpublic goods. One of the great strengthsof the ‘Singaporean approach’ toproblem-solving was that we claimed tobe rational and pragmatic. Yet, as a resultof becoming prisoners of the Reagan-Thatcher ideology, we made deeplyflawed decisions that inevitably damagedour delivery of public services.

Let me offer a striking example that hasbeen mentioned by several retiredpermanent secretaries. They have saidthat it was a mistake to privatise thePublic Works Department (PWD). ThisDepartment contained a lot of valuableknowledge, skills and experience whichcould have helped Singapore with a lotof its engineering and developmentchallenges. Sadly, when PWD was sold off

first to Temasek Holdings and then to anAustralian company Downer Edi, andsubsequently to China ArchitectureDesign and Research Group, Singaporelost all the skills and experience we hadbuilt up over the years.

To the best of my knowledge, we havenever publicly admitted that we made amistake in selling off the PWD. The timehas come to do so now. The goal of suchan admission is not to assign blame to anypublic officers: it would be pointless todo so. Instead, such an admission couldliberate our minds from the ideologicalassumptions of the Reagan-Thatcherrevolution and open our minds to thepossibility that sometimes the publicsector is best at providing public goods.

Once we accept that premise, we wouldhave laid the critical intellectualfoundation on which an excellentecosystem of public transport can bebuilt. We can begin to collect big data onthe potential demand for all the ‘limbs’and ‘arteries’ of such an ecosystem. Wecan then systematically build a totalsystem that at least tries to meet everyaspect of this demand. Clearly, some ofthe ‘limbs’ will be economicallyprofitable. Other ‘limbs’ will be lessprofitable or even unprofitable. It mayhowever still be necessary to have theseunprofitable ‘limbs’. And the reason?Because we are providing a publicservice, not a private good.

To understand this critical notion of a




public service, think of our postal service.We buy 26-cent stamps to post a letterto anywhere within Singapore. It isprofitable for the post office to delivermail to Housing Development Board(HDB) estates because the mailboxes aresituated close together making deliveryeasy. It is unprofitable or less profitableto deliver letters to Good Class Bungalow(GCB) areas because the mailboxes arefar apart. It costs the post office muchmore to deliver mail to private housingareas than to HDB estates. However, itdelivers equally everywhere. Why is thisso? Because mail service is a publicservice.

Similarly, like the postal service, publictransport should be perceived as a publicservice. We should endeavour to provideit to all the citizens and residents of theisland, even if some parts of the systemmay experience less cost recovery thanothers. Here, we should take fulladvantage of the fact that we are one ofthe smallest countries in the world withno vast distances to cover. Indeed, if anyleading experts on public transport in theworld were looking for an ideal publicpolicy laboratory to try out best practicesand new ideas with public transport, theycould find no better site than Singapore.Here all the critical factors are in place tobuild the world’s best ecosystem of publictransport.

Thus, when we do so, the rationaland pragmatic Singaporeans willprogressively give up their dreams of

owning cars. It was perfectly reasonablefor my generation of Singaporeans toaspire for the materialistic five Cs. Manyof us grew up in poverty and believed thathappiness only came with more andmore material acquisitions.

Now we know better. As mostSingaporeans have satisfied their basicmaterial needs, and more, there is lessand less of a need to accumulate materialgoods. Indeed, according to Maslow’shierarchy of needs, we will get moresatisfaction and happiness as we paymore attention to the higher order needsof love or belonging, esteem and self-actualisation.

We are truly blessed that, for the mostpart, the basic physical and intellectualinfrastructure is in place in Singapore toenable most Singaporeans to lead a goodlife. Indeed, we should all continueworking hard but what are we workingfor? We can work toward a future whenthe former five Cs become less and lessimportant. We can begin by dropping thedream of the idea that having cars willproduce happiness.


Dr Geh Min (MBBS, FRCS, FAMS) is currently a board member of BirdLifeInternational (Asia) and a council member of The Nature Conservancy’sAsia Pacific Council. She is also a board member of The Climate ChangeNetwork (CCN) and a board member of the M.Sc. (EnvironmentalManagement) (MEM) Program Advisory Committee, NUS. She wasPresident of the Nature Society (Singapore) from 2000 to August 2008and was sworn in as a Nominated Member of Parliament serving herterm from 2005 to 2006. She has also received the 2006 President’s Awardfor the Environment.

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500 Shades of GreenGeh Min


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Singapore’s Garden City, conceived by theisland-state’s first Prime Minister LeeKuan Yew, may not be original but wascertainly remarkable, and even unique,for its time and place. That a tiny nascentdeveloping island City-state, suddenlystripped of its hinterland and whosesurvival was questionable, could seecleaning and greening as complementaryto economic development wasvisionary. Equally remarkable was thethoroughness of its top-down planningand execution.

There was never any question that aclean and green Singapore was apragmatic investment strategy “good formorale, for tourists and for investors”(Lee Kuan Yew) and would be a dramatic,visible manifestation of Singapore’sinspiring rise from Third World to First.

The National Parks Board (NParks) is thegovernment body entrusted withtransforming this green vision into reality.Originally the Parks and RecreationDivision,1 it took on a new but importantconservation role with its change of nameand the introduction of the National ParksAct (1996). Since then the number ofgazetted nature reserves has grown fromone to four.2

Though its achievements areimpressive, NParks is hampered by

1 When its main role was providing parks and planting and maintaining roadside trees.2 Several reserves were degazetted between Independence and NParks inception.3 Twenty-three 18-hole and 15 nine-hole courses.

inadequate legislation, notably the lackof Environmental Impact Assessments(EIAs). Not only has this handicappedNParks in developing a morecomprehensive and robust protectionof our remaining natural heritage butit has pushed it into rearguard actionin defending existing nature areas fromincursions by other governmentagencies. Examples of unsustainable orparadoxical greening resulting from thelack of EIAs include the severing ofBukit T imah Nature Reserve, ourremnant of primary forest, from theCentral Catchment Area by anexpressway, thus, compromising itslong-term viability. Many also questionthe rationale for the disproportionatenumber of golf courses3 in land-scarceSingapore many abutting or evenwithin nature area and reserves

NParks’ restricted ambit in coastalconservation and the lack of any legalteeth in marine areas has resulted in noMarine Protected Areas (MPAs) despiteour rich marine biodiversity while landreclamation at the iconic Tanjong ChekJawa was reversed due to strong public,non-governmental organisation (NGO)and media action with NParks playinga back seat ‘advisory’ role.

Realising its limited ‘hard’ power andthe unsustainability of a top-down


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approach, NParks has since beenfarsighted and effective in cultivatingpublic support with a diverse array ofoutreach and education programmes.It also has strong working relationshipsof collaboration, complementarism andtrust with local environmental NGOssuch as the Nature Society (Singapore).

This enhancement of soft power has notonly resulted in the physical greening ofSingapore, but also a significant growthin the ‘green community’.

NParks’ sister organisation, PublicUtilities Board (PUB), has followed suitand successfully launched their ABCWaters programme to develop andpromote community ownership of ourinland waterways and water bodies,critical for the supply and quality of ourdrinking water.

Unfortunately, National EnvironmentAgency (NEA), responsible for urbancleaning has been less successful despitenumerous valiant efforts. It would appearthat nature areas inspire a greater senseof communal ownership than urbanones. Perhaps NEA could achieve moreby closing the gap between clean andgreen and promoting a deeperunderstanding of ecological principles.Their Singapore Green Plan, despite itsname, is noticeably focused on ‘brown’issues and narrow efficiency targetsrather than broader sustainability goals.

Future Green Challenges

Local

The greatest internal challenge toSingapore’s greening and nature isdemographic. The 2013 PopulationWhite Paper projected a population of6.8 to 7 million by 2030 — a 25 percentgrowth in 15 years for what is alreadyone of the densest cities in the world.A former chief planner had even statedpublicly that doubling our population to10 million is ‘doable’.

‘A Quality Living Environment’4 coversamenities such as transportation andincludes accessibility to parks but thereis no mention of nature areas. There isalso no evidence of analytical rigour inaccessing social or environmentalcarrying capacity in these ambitious,economically-driven urban planningprojections — hence, the demographicimpact on Singapore’s greenery is likelyto be a ‘3-P’ Assault.

Public Sector

Due to intense competition for landbetween different government agenciesthe degradation, erosion and destructionof nature areas will certainly intensifywith a growing population and agenciesunder pressure to acheive differing KeyPerformance Indicators who seem toregard nature areas and even nature

4 Chapter 5- Population White Paper: A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore.


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reserves as spare land ”to be kept aslong as is practical.” While there is agrowing awareness of our naturalheritage by younger policy makers, theimportance of ecosystem services willnot be fully appreciated withoutmandatory Environmental ImpactAssessments (EIAs).

People Sector

The growing popularity of parks andnature amongst Singaporeans is evidentand a recent survey actually showed thata majority (60 percent) wanted moregreenery and less development.

However, unless our penchant for naturecomes with a deeper understanding ofhuman effects on the health of fragileecosystems and a sense of responsibilityto protect our nature areas, they are likelyto be overwhelmed by a populaceaccustomed to a culture of consumptionrather than conservation.

NParks is faced with a dilemma as thenumber of visitors rather thanbiodiversity, was the yardstick by whichits performance is gauged by policymakers. Universal education on theimportant differences in value between‘man-made’ green and naturalecosystems is essential. However, heretoo, NParks is faced with a Hobson’schoice as the best education involvesmore exposure to nature areas andthese are already overrun by competingpublic sectors and threatened by

degradation from excessive humanimpact.

Private Sector

Not surprisingly, the scarcity of land, thepopularity of nature and the pragmaticapproach of policy makers have alreadyresulted in increasing ‘commodification’of nature.

Private condominiums hug theboundary of our only primary forest andmore are planned — built without EIAsor consultations with NParks. It appearsthat ‘nature at your doorstep’ for aprivileged few will result in less naturefor the public.

Sentosa Island, originally touted asSingapore’s playground, is now aplayground for the global rich and famouswith private condominiums and gatedcommunities, casinos, hotels, marinasand golf clubs.

Spatial injustice whether real orperceived, can ignite smoulderingresentments between the haves andhave-nots as many recent examplesglobally have shown.

Regional and Global EnvironmentalChallenges

But, daunting though our internalchallenges are, they pale in comparisonto external threats to our clean and greenenvironment and future sustainability.


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5 Tropical forests do not naturally combust and spread like bush fires in drier countries.6 Estimated loss in 1997 for Singapore with health, tourism & airlines industries alone was S$97.5 to 110.5million.

Haze Pollution

The ‘Haze’ is aptly named for an issueshrouded in smokescreens, layers ofobfuscation and general lack oftransparency. Initially blamed on‘natural’ forest fires5 the smokepollution from neighboring countriesactually coincided with the massiveland clearing and deforestation bymultinational corporations (MNCs)involved in logging, pulp and paperproduction, and palm oil planting. Globaloutput of crude palm oil has beengrowing rapidly and the two largestproducers, Indonesia and Malaysia,doubled the area for oil palm plantationsbetween 1995 to 2005 alone to 10 millionhectares. The forest and their biodiversitywere victims, not culprits.

When the link was finally made, roundsof bilateral and regional talks and taskforces were organised culminating in themilestone Transboundary Haze PollutionAgreement by ASEAN which Indonesia,the lynchpin has yet to sign after 10 years.Instead various Indonesian ministershave defended its ‘right to develop’ andeven suggested that Singapore should‘pay Indonesia for keeping her forests,’ ifshe wished to continue enjoying clean air.

The ‘Haze’ is a man-made problemdriven by the profit motive. It is a

classic illustration of how marketfundamentalism ignores social andenvironmental ‘externalities’ resulting inmassive costs and serious consequencesto the economy,6 society and theenvironment.

A recent, notable trend is the outburst ofcriticism and complaints in social mediaby a Singapore public accustomed toclean air directed at their government for‘not doing more.’ It should be evidentthat there is very little Singapore can doas a government or even as a nation(despite our being the highest per capitaconsumer of paper and oil palm productsin the region), unless the fundamentalcause - market failure - is addressed andsocial and environmental costs factoredinto the equation

Climate Change

A truly global problem in cause,distribution and effect and in requiringglobal solutions and cooperation on anunprecedented scale, climate change isthe ultimate complex environmentalchallenge that not only exacerbates allother environmental challenges butseriously impacts global health, trade,security and the economy and societyin ways we are sti l l grappling tocomprehend. Its complexity iscompounded by unpredictable timelines


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where the window of opportunity foreffective action is small but the time lagbetween action and result is long.

How will Singapore face this challenge?

Policy makers, while not unaware of theproblem, seemed to put it on the backburner, at least publicly, until it appearedon the world economic stage. After thatit was no longer credible for Singapore’sreputation to underplay the issue orsuppress our vulnerabilities as a smalldensely populated tropical island to thepotential effects of rising temperaturesand sea levels.

Our financial centre, petrochemicalhub and important key industries,international airport, and many of ourreservoirs and other essential amenitiesare set on coastal and/or on reclaimedland. The uncertain science of predictingrises in sea level may mean anything fromexpensive adaptation measures such asbuilding sea walls and dikes or acatastrophic environmental disaster.

Singapore as a global city is also highlyvulnerable to effects of climate changeglobally from resource scarcity orpandemics to the opening of arctic traderoutes.

Suggested Areas for Improvement

While prescriptive solutions for thesechallenges are beyond this article’s ambit,some suggestions for enhancing

Singapore’s resilience & sustainability areproposed.

1) Green Accounting

Singapore places considerable emphasison numerical assessments such asrankings, performance indicators, etcetera, not merely to indicate ourcompetitiveness but as a guide to trackprogress and indicate areas forimprovement.

However, while we have consistently‘punched above our weight’ on globaleconomic competitiveness ratings, ourperformance in environmental rankingshave been generally disappointingdespite our clean and green image. Ourresponse to these unfavourable rankingswas to dismiss them as ‘irrelevant’ or‘unrepresentative’ until the WorldEconomic Forum (WEF) published anEnvironmental Sustainability Index (ESI)in which we were near the bottom. Thisprompted our Minister for Environmentand Water Resources to register a formalobjection and detailed explanation.

It is perhaps no surprise that althoughour economic competitivenessperformance indicators compare us toother countries, our environmentalindices are increasingly being comparedwith other cities, tacitly acknowledgingour economic competitiveness but notour ecological sustainability.

While this may be a realistic


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representation of our strengths andweaknesses as a ‘City-state without ahinterland’, it is not an honest appraisalof the fact that other cities have ahinterland and that Singapore, despiteland constraints and the ingenious use ofregional and even global hinterlands,cannot ignore the necessity for planningand locating key amenities such as ourinternational airport and our watercatchment areas within our ownboundaries.

While environmental sustainabilityrankings may be ‘like comparing appleswith oranges’, their components providevaluable data and information whichwould be dangerous for us to marginalise,alter or ignore. We have already seenhow the lack of EIAs has compromisedour environmental planning in areas suchas flood control and climate changeadaptation.

Beyond depriving ourselves of criticalinformation, we are also failing to developthe capacity to collect, analyse andinterpret this information. Importing thisexpertise is not a viable alternative asmuch of it is highly location-specific. Forthe same reason, sending Singaporeansabroad to learn may only work in a limitedcontext and the real lessons have to belearnt at home instead.

More regional and international disputeswill also be about environmental issuesand it is important for us to have thewherewithal to represent ourselves and

defend our rights in these areas.

In an increasingly complex and chaoticworld filled with environmentalchallenges, all information is important,especially those that highlight ourweaknesses. We have achieved economicsuccess through objective appraisal,honest evaluation and analytical rigour inorder to formulate the correct policies.Our precarious dependency on water hasalso been met with the same approachand determination to overcome theodds. We need to extend, broaden andapply this approach to environmentalsustainability.

2) Learning from Mother Nature

Biodata may provide the essentialstepping-stones or alphabet to meetfuture environmental challenges but wealso need insight and expertise to ‘jointhe dots’ or read the text.

The extreme complexity of life sciencesand biodiversity has made deciphering,formulating, comprehending andquantifying them far more challengingthan the ‘hard’ or mathematical sciences;However, the inability to read thelanguage is not a reason to destroy theliterature. Innumerable scientists,polymaths and thought leaders from SirFrancis Bacon to Richard Feynman andfrom Leonardo to da Vinci to NassimTaleb, have emphasised the importanceof respecting and ‘learning from MotherNature, the oldest and wisest’.


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Despite or perhaps even because ofour Garden City, many Singaporeansincluding policy makers have an inverted,limited and overly utilitarian concept ofour natural environment.

“Nature in its original and authentic formand in its claim to space appears to havelittle place in the physical developmentof the City-state. Nature where it can bemanaged and located to fit into overallland use development schemes seemsmuch preferred…”(Oei). This excessivelynarrow anthropocentric perspective isalso mirrored in our promotion of ‘lifesciences’ till recently.

Understandably, Singapore size,constraints and limited resources requireus to carefully select and focus on areasin which to excel but this should not resultin a corresponding shrinkage of ourknowledge base. This tunnel vision hasalready restricted our ability to formulatesustainable environment policies and itwill be a serious handicap in an evenmore challenging future.

Many of the advantages of developing an‘Ecological Quotient’ such as intellectualcuriosity, innovative thinking andemotional resilience are difficult to proveand almost impossible to quantify. But“ecological” thinking translated tobiomimicry, green technology, nature-based solutions and the optimization ofecosystem services are rapidly growingfields of endeavor and while putting amonetary figure to them is often easier

after the damage is done (e.g. the haze,floods, oils spills and other man-madeenvironmental disasters), there areinspiring examples of the ecosystemapproach to sustainability incorporatingthe preventive principle. Two iconic ideasthat involve water management are: 1)New York City’s investment of $1 billionin purchasing and improving watershedforests and soil around its reservoirs. Byreducing pollution and conserving water,these forests enhanced both the quantityand quality of New York’s water and alsoavoided a $60 billion purchase of a state-of-the-art filtration plant (excludingrunning costs). 2) Dutch engineersemploying not just expensive pumps butalso planting trees (whose roots can takein 80 gallons a day each) to maintaindrainage and reduce flooding inreclaimed land in Holland.

Singapore should not neglect the forest-water nexus when trying to solve ourflooding issues rather than focusing onmassive and expensive engineeringworks involving a high undergroundwater-holding area that will “take at least10 years to show results” (NEA).

Green Global Positioning

Singapore’s performance abroad hasbeen as stellar as that at home and ‘a newstate without a hinterland has succeededin making a hinterland of the globaleconomy with conspicuous success’(Leifer). Notwithstanding this,Singapore’s leaders are constantly


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mindful of the City-state’s vulnerabilitiesand vigilant in identifying potentialthreats to its survival.

They have assiduously constructed astrong web of multilateral diplomatic,economic, trade, security andinstitutional relationships both as anetwork for advancement and as asafety net.

Singapore upholds the rule of law andsupports good global governance as acredible, responsible and proactive globalcitizen (while maintaining its sovereignrights). Above all, the nation strives toremain connected, useful and relevant tothe global community.

However, in the face of looming globalenvironmental challenges, weak areasand gaps have appeared and whilecreating a global hinterland for economicgrowth has paid rich dividends, they nowexpose the City-state to greaterenvironmental vulnerabilities which mayundermine its economic success.

Singapore’s green global presence hasnot been negligible though lessspectacular than her economic success.The City-state has actively participatedin international environmentalconferences such as the Earth Summitwhere it played a prominent role. It hasalso donated generously to disasterrelief in both funds and manpower. Ithas also not been slow in in exportingits clean and green image, urban

‘Garden City ’ planning and morerecently, its successful water technology.

However, critics of Singapore’s greenmodel point to the unsustainability of itsconsumption patterns, the size of its percapita ecological footprint (5.3 earths)and its carbon-intensive growth. Itspredilection for expensive technologicalsolutions rather than conservation and astronger 3R culture, its preference for‘weak’ rather than ‘deep’ green solutions,its lack of mandatory EIAs despitebeing a signatory of Convention onInternational Trade in EndangeredSpecies (CITES) and, perhaps mostdisturbingly, a growing tendency todefend promote and market theSingapore model rather than learn fromothers’ best practices.

The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-Cityproject, promoted as ‘China’s nationalgreen development zone’ and modelledon Singapore’s policies and expertise, hasreportedly found the Chinese settingmore stringent standards and broadertargets than Singapore had to offer.

Singapore needs to develop greaterecological rigour and a more sustainableenvironmental perspective to its greeningboth at home and abroad in order toremain relevant and credible. Otherwise,in today’s world of flux, the kaleidoscopemay suddenly shift and our internationalstanding may change from one ofeconomic high-flyer to environmentalfreeloaders.


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Conclusion

Singapore’s policy makers have alwaysprided themselves on seeing the bigpicture and taking a long term view butthe lens they have used is primarilyeconomic and even our greening hasbeen narrowly utilitarian & equally short-sighted in focus.

In a future of complex environmentalchallenges, many of them global, it iscritical that we do not view the economyand the environment as a balancing actor even a triple bottomline.

The Big Picture is the naturalenvironment which encompasses andprovides the life-support system forpeople and the economy. Failure to seethis was possible in the past when thepressure was smaller but the exponentialgrowth of both is increasingly pushing ourenvironmental envelope.

It is essential we see the world throughan ecological lens and make policiesaccordingly if we wish to ensure ourfuture sustainability.


Mr Bernard Harrison is the Principal Partner of Creativity & Designfirm, Bernard Harrison and Friends, and former CEO of WildlifeReserves Singapore.

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Singapore: The New Serengeti?Bernard Harrison


Singapore: The New Serengeti

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We have a dearth of nature-basedattractions in Singapore and many ofthem are gated.

We are one of the smallest countries inthe world (even though there are actually42 countries smaller than Singapore); wehave no unique indigenous species offauna or flora nor do we have a minusculehinterland of national parks — yet wetout nature-based attractions as one ofour tourist attraction fortes.

Why so brash? And is it sustainable?

What we have in Singapore

We do a fairly good job of covering thefauna and flora of tropical rainforest,rivers, wetlands, mangrove forest,shorelines, seagrass beds and coral reefsin our attractions.

On the fauna side, our jewel in the crownis surely Wildlife Reserves Singapore(WRS) which operates the four greatnature parks: Singapore Zoo, Night Safari,Jurong Bird Park and the recently-openedRiver Safari (developed at a stiff price tagof S$160 million). WRS offers the locals(for a pretty steep admission fee now) afairly broad cross-section of the AnimalKingdom — at least on land and infreshwater.

The newly-opened Marine Life Park atResorts World, Sentosa offers us across-section of the ocean. (The capitalcost of the aquarium has not been

revealed publically, but it is speculatedthat it cost the Genting Group aboutS$250 million to develop). It is currentlythe world’s largest aquarium (we lovehaving the ‘world’s largest’ prefix inSingapore) containing 45 million litresof water, well ahead of the next largest,Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, USA,which displays aquatic life in 24 millionlitres of water. However, Marine LifePark has now been surpassed by OceanK ingdom, next to Macau whichcontains 48.75 million litres.

Sentosa also has the still operating butnow struggling, Underwater World(owned by Haw Par Corporation), andthe privately owned Butterfly Park andInsect K ingdom, a fairly small andunexciting attraction.

The National Parks Board (NParks)manages the flora and indigenouswildlife in Singapore. On the plant sidethe newly-opened Gardens by the Bay,has a hefty admission price comparedto its sister attraction, the SingaporeBotanic Gardens which is free of charge(save the entry fee into The NationalOrchid Garden). The officialdevelopment cost of Gardens by theBay is S$1.1 billion, but rumour withinthe industry has it that the morerealistic figure is S$1.6 billion if not S$2billion — we may never know! The HortPark, also run by NParks is free ofcharge for entry, offering a butterflygarden and a really interestingsuspension bridge.



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There are four gazetted national parks inSingapore. The Central Catchment NatureReserve is the largest occupying 2,880hectares and offers trails and boardwalksin Lower Peirce and at MacRitchie’ssecondary forest water catchment. It alsocontains Treetops Walks on a greatsuspension bridge. The oldest and mostestablished national park is the 164-hectare Bukit Timah Nature Reserve withtrails weaving through the primaryrainforest. The two other parks are the130-hectare Sungei Buloh WetlandReserve which offers trails andboardwalks in wetlands and mangrovesfor a small entry fee and the 10-hectareshoreline Labrador Nature Reserve. Thereare also boardwalks in the mangroveforests at Pasir Ris and along the coastalshore at Changi.

In addition, we have the islands, the mostaccessible being Sentosa which has someareas of coral reefs, the rural Pulau Ubinwith its marine park, Chek Jawa, with nocharge other than getting there, offeringan area for mangrove, sandy and rockyshore and seagrass. There are also theSouthern Islands with their coral reefs.

So for a small country, we offer a realcross-section of nature through our well-managed attractions and parks. Althoughwe have only 31.84 square kilometres(3,184 hectares) of national parks inSingapore, compared to the 14,763square kilometres Serengeti NationalPark in Tanzania or the 19,485 squarekilometres Kruger National Park in South

Africa, in relationship to our land area of710 square kilometres, we have 4.48percent under National Parks comparedto Tanzania’s 4.4 percent and SouthAfrica’s 3 percent.

History of our Nature Based Attractions

We have had a long and colourful historyof nature-based attractions in Singapore.

The first Botanic Garden, initiated by SirStamford Raffles, was 26 hectares of landand located on the slopes of theGovernment Hill (Fort Canning Hill). Itspurpose then was the experimentalcultivation of plants, such as nutmeg andclove, to evaluate their economic valueand suitability as cash crops. However, itproved to be too expensive to upkeepand was abandoned in 1829.

The present Botanic Gardens, located inTanglin, was setup by the Agri-Horticultural Society in 1859 on 23hectares of land acquired from Hoo AhKay (Whampoa), an influentialbusinessman. The Gardens expandedwith the acquisition of the additionalsurrounding land.

The role of the Gardens then was mostlyrecreational. Growing financial difficultiesfinally forced the management of theBotanic Gardens to be handed over to theColonial Government In 1874.

Menageries were being establishedthrough the influence of Europe on its



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colonies in Jakarta (1864), Bombay (1866)and subsequently, in the SingaporeBotanic Gardens (1876). However, due toincreasing maintenance costs themenagerie (which actually displayed aSumatran rhinoceros for a while)eventually closed in the early 1900s.

There were some small animal collectionsopened to the public by privateindividuals and animals dealers inSingapore in the early and mid-twentiethcentury, the most well-known being thePunggol Zoo owned by a wealthy Indiantrader, William Lawrence Soma Basapa,between the 1920s and 1940s. Therehave also been several crocodile farmsopen to the public since.

The establishment of the Van KleefAquarium is historically interesting. In1928, Karl Willem Benjamin Van Kleef, arich Dutch trader based in Singapore, inhis will appointed the Municipality ofSingapore (Straits Settlements) “to use itsnet proceedings for the embellishment ofthe town and other ends whatsoever, buton no account on behalf of churches andother institutions connected with worshipin general!”*

It took the Municipality until 1935 toagree on using the funds to develop anaquarium, which was eventually openedin 1955. Talk about a long incubation

period! It was eventually demolished in1998 due to structural issues.

The 20-hectare Jurong Bird Park, openedin 1971 at a cost of S$3.5 million, wasconceived by the late Dr Goh Keng Swee,the then Minister for Finance. In 1968,during a World Bank meeting in Rio deJaneiro, Dr Goh visited its zoologicalgarden and was impressed with its free-flight aviary and decided to establish abird park in the industrial estate of Jurongin Singapore, to give some biophilia reliefto the dwellers there. The Bird Park wasdesigned on paper by London Zoo’s thenarchitect, John Toovey, with littlereference to the site itself and sufferedthe consequences for many decades, dueto the uniform and boring jelly-mouldaviaries that were developed. Throughthe efforts of the second Chairman, DrKwa Soon Bee, the Jurong Bird Park wasrevitalised and upgraded into what it istoday – the best bird park in the world.

The 28 hectare Singapore ZoologicalGardens was conceived by the Chairmanof Public Utilities Board (PUB), Dr OngSwee Law in 1969, who after visitingmany zoos around the world with aparticular Boy Scout Jamboree in Sydneywhere he visited the Taronga Zoo leftlasting impressions), set aside 100hectares of land around the Upper SeletarReservoir for the development of the zoo.

*Source: Van Kleef’s Will, cited by Prof Tommy Koh in his article The Man Who Loved Singapore: Singapore-More Than Meets the Eye, SIF Publication, January, 2014, http://singaporemagazine.sif.org.sg/the-man-who-loved-singapore/



Green Conversations

Dr Ong felt that more of our beautiful andtranquil catchment area should beopened for the recreation of the public.In 1970, consultants and staff were hired,and in 1971, the construction of the basic50 enclosures started at a cost of S$9million, of which S$5 million wasequity and the balance, a repayableGovernment loan. The Zoo started off lifein debt much to Dr Ong’s great concernand subsequent worry.

The Director of the Colombo Zoo in SriLanka, Lyn de Alwis, was hired as a specialconsultant, because of his experience inthe development of tropical zoos. Lyn dida far better job than Toovey’s effort atdesign and the Singapore ZoologicalGardens opened in 1973. Together withlocal architect Edwin Chan (whosedaughter May Chan worked on the designof the Night Safari), they laid thegroundwork for what is acclaimed todayas one of the most beautiful zoos inthe world.

Dr Goh and Dr Ong were visionaries,setting up these nature-based attractionsfor the recreation of the Singapore public,giving some relief to the heavy concreteliving of the City- state that was beingcreated around us.

The Night Safari was conceived in 1988by Lyn de Alwis, after an exhaustivereview of possible ways to utilise thebalance of about 40 hectares of land thatwe had at the Upper Seletar site. Thereview was triggered by a phone call I

received as the Executive Director of theSingapore Zoological Gardens, from ourlandlords, the Public Utilities Board (PUB),who wanted to know what we were goingto do with this unutilised land. Dr Ong andI were concerned that the PUB wantedto take back the land. Hence, we metvarious Captains of Industry for a seriesof lunches and generated an array ofpotential ideas. However, it was Lyn, whosuggested a large wildlife attraction,based on an experience he had previouslywith the Tiger Tops in Chitwan NationalPark, Nepal. Seeing tropical mammals(especially a tiger on a kill) at night whenthey are active is something worthreplicating, he put forth.

‘Had it been done before?’ was Dr Ong’sfirst retort?

‘No’, said Lyn.

‘Then lets do it!’ said Dr Ong.

One may not realise it but Dr Ong’sspontaneous reaction goes totally againstthe grain of a Singaporean public servant.It was instead the reaction of a trueentrepreneur.

So from that moment, my life (and thelives of many wonderful staff that I havehad the great fortune to work with)commenced to revolve around theconceptualisation, master planning,development and funding of the NightSafari. Nothing like it had ever been donebefore in the world. It was totally unique



Green Conversations

and that too was the challenge. I was alsoto learn through bitter experience overthe next few years that ‘unique and neverbeen done before’ are not terms in thevocabulary of Singaporean bureaucratsand concepts which they are certainly notcomfortable with.

In the USA, if you go to a venture capitalistand tell him that you have a uniqueproject which has never been donebefore, he will prick up his ears. RichardBranson certainly would! However, inSingapore, if it is not tried and tested likeChangi Airport which is based onAmsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and theMass Rapid Transit (MRT) is based onHong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway (MTR),then it is too risky. Where is thebenchmarking and where are the bestpractices? We are not a nation of risktakers and that is obvious.

It took the Cabinet three years to makea decision to fund the $56 million forthe development of the Night Safariand when they finally approved theproject, the capital cost had escalatedthrough inflation to S$72 million.Ministry of Finance eventually gave usS$65 million through a variety of equitygrants from quasi Government bodies.However, all said and done, we got themoney and went ahead with theproject. It was opened to the public bythe then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tongin 1994. It has proven its worth and isstill one of Singapore’s premier touristattractions.

Is it all financially sustainable?

When I looked at the official price tag ofS$1.1 billion for Gardens by the Bay, Istarted to wonder. I am no botanist nordesigner of botanical gardens but theinternational competition that thedesigners won for the design falls farshort of what may be considered aserious botanical gardens. Yes, it’s aniconic architectural piece, which is mostprobably what Grant Associates andGustafson Porter, the designers, won thecompetition for and probably was exactlywhat the Singapore planners had wanted.Super trees — are they serious? Reallyexpensively-designed conservatories (orbiodomes) can be designed for muchlower cost. However, they are iconic forSingapore and the Marina Bay skyline —no doubt, the Cabinet bought it hook, lineand sinker!

The inspiration for Gardens by the Baycame from the Eden Project, developedas a private millennium project in theUnited Kingdom (UK) by Sir Tim Smit, anarchaeologist cum anthropologist turnedmusician. Eden cost £132 million (S$265million). Yet, the Eden Project had a depthand breath of design and content whichGardens by the Bay can only begin tomimic, both as a botanical gardens andas an exposition of a sustainable lifestyle.Although the Eden Project is located inthe middle of nowhere, in Cornwallaccessible only by car, it receives 1.6million visitors annually. That’s prettygood going for a botanical gardens.



Green Conversations

I say this not so much because I amparticularly sore that it took Cabinetthree years to ruminate on the NightSafari project’s paltry (in comparison toGardens by the Bay) S$56 million pricetag; Apparently they debated intentlywhether Singaporeans would leave thecomfort of their homes and televisionsets to visit a zoo in the night in the farreaches of Mandai. Rather, I say itbecause I wonder if we have lost oursense of proportion of capital investmentand subsequent operational cost ofGardens by the Bay.

Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) is afinancially self-sustaining institution withan annual net profit (after tax) ofbetween S$15 million to S$20 million. TheRiver Safari is the pet project of formerChairman Robert Kwan who left WRS in2007. Coming from the commercialsector as former Chairman ofMacDonald’s Singapore, he had no qualmabout borrowing a fair chunk of money.(I heard that an estimated S$50 millionwas actually a bank loan while thebalance of S$110 million was in theform of grants and soft loans). I ampretty sure the previous Chairmen,both Dr Ong Swee Law and Dr Kwa SoonBee, would have been scared stiff toplaced WRS in such a debt-servicingsituation. Time will tell whether thenewly-added River Safari will increasethe profitabi lity of the Group orwhether it will actually cannibalise onsome of the present 3.8 million visitorsto the three older parks — certainly a

challenge inherited by the currentchairperson, Miss Claire Chiang.

Like Universal Studios, Marine Life Parkis a supporting attraction for the Casinoat Resorts World Sentosa and obviouslycross-subsidised, when or if necessary.

However aquariums do go intoreceivership which was precisely whathappened recently with the US$93million Colorado’s Ocean Journey inDenver, USA which opened in 1999 andfiled for bankruptcy in 2002 with aUS$62.5 million debt. It was eventuallypurchased by Landry’s Restaurants forUS$13.6 million and was renamedDowntown Aquarium, refitted withrestaurants and other food and beverage(F&B) outlets. It was re-opened in 2005.

It will thus be interesting to see howGardens by the Bay manages financially.It is operated by NParks, hardly abusiness-savvy organization, even withbusinesswoman Mrs Christina Ong as thechairperson. Even though I am sure thatthe initial capital investment is in the formof a grant, the depreciation costs on theS$1.1 billion structures will be a sizablesum for them to generate each and everyyear. The published anticipated, annualoperating cost is $58 million, of which $28million is for the operation of theconservatory buildings.

Will Gardens by the Bay be totallysupported by the Government or willmarket forces be allowed to take effect?



Green Conversations

One cannot help but think of thepredicament of the privately owned andoperated Singapore Flyer, the largestsingle investment within the Singaporeentertainment industry, which cost S$240million to develop, opened in 2008 andwent into receivership in May 2013.

Of course, many attractions are targetedprimarily at the 16 million strong touristpopulation, of which probably 50 percentdo not see the light of day, going straightfrom the airport to the casino, a quicksleep in the hotel room, and returning tothe airport.

Out of the financial reach ofSingaporeans

Can the average Singaporean enjoy andgain from all these attractions, whetherrecreationally, educationally orenvironmentally?

Is it not time that we consider makingsome of these gated nature-basedattractions more financially accessibleto the average Singaporean? Manydeveloping countries have a duel pricingsystem for locals and tourists. WRS offersa 20 percent discounts for visitors(targeted at Singaporeans and PRs) to theZoo and Bird Park who pay with DBS/POSB, UOB or OCBC credit cards. NightSafari has a 10 percent discount and RiverSafari a 5 percent discount.

The entry fee to the Singapore ZoologicalGardens is S$28 for an adult, S$18 for a

child and S$11 for a senior citizen. Entryto the Night Safari is S$39 for an adult,S$25 for a child. A Friend of the Zoo passfor a family of four is S$199.50.

Gardens by the Bay has cheaper pricingfor locals at S$20 for adults, S$15 forchildren and $12 for senior citizens(tourists charges are a staggering S$28,S$15 and S$28 respectively) to visitboth conservatories. The OCBC Skywaywithin Gardens by the Bay is anadditional S$5 for adults and S$3 forchildren.

It is all still very expensive.

I am thus heartened to know that theSingapore Botanic Gardens is still freeentry as with many other national parksand wild places. However, realistically-speaking, how many middle-incomeSingaporean families can afford theadmission charges to most of thesegated attractions on a regular basis? Atrip to the Singapore Zoo for a familyof two adults and two chi ldren,including the 20 percent discount,amounts to S$73.60 before you have adrink or something to eat, which is alsoexpensive. One has the option of afamily pass to the Zoo at $199.50,which is value for money for regularmiddle-class visitors, but people fromthe lower income group will not wantto put out that kind of money onvisiting an attraction.

The environmental conservation



Green Conversations

education that Singaporeans should bereceiving through many of ourattractions is lost because they arefinancially out of their reach. I sincerelybelieve that it is time we ensure thatour local families have the realisticpossibility of spending quality time tobenefit socially, educationally andenvironmentally, from our gatednature-based attractions. This meanssimply making them more affordablefor the lower income groups throughvarious dual pricing schemes andspecially discounts targeted at specificsegments of the market.


Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the Deputy Director of Singapore’s Institute ofSoutheast Asian Studies. He has written numerous books on Malaysiaand Singapore. His shorter pieces are available at wikibeng.com.

Foreign Relations

Unwise for Singaporeand Malaysia to have Bad Ties

in the FutureOoi Kee Beng


Unwise for Singapore and Malaysia to have Bad Ties in the Future

Foreign Relations

If one does not go back too far, one coulddivide relations between Singapore andMalaysia into the Mahathir period andthe Post-Mahathir period. Malaysia’slong-term Prime Minister Tun DrMahathir Mohamed retired on 30October 2003, after 22 years at the helm.Those years did witness quite a bit oftension between the two countries.

To be fair, bad bilateral relations werealready there before him. Even before TunDr Mahathir took over the country’s toppost, things had been troublesomebetween the two countries. EvenSingapore’s founding father, Mr LeeKuan Yew mentioned in his book FromThird World to First: The SingaporeStory (p.289) that more was achievedin bi lateral relations during theMahathir era than under the threeprime ministers before that. That saysa lot about how difficult ties betweenthe two have been.

Be that as it may, in the decadefollowing Tun Dr Mahathir’s retirement,Malaysia has had two new primeministers — Tun Abdullah Badawi (2003to 2009) and Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak(2009 to present)—during whosetenures bi lateral ties have beenencouragingly warm. This apparentshift in foreign relations is all the moreinteresting as compared to how Tun DrMahathir had resolutely managed afterhis retirement to exert exceedinglystrong influence over domestic politicsin Malaysia.

However, it would be too much to hopethat the bad times between Malaysia andSingapore are over for good or to imaginethat the material, notional and culturalreasons souring relations for 40 yearsprior to 2003 are no longer relevant. Infact, just recently in November 2013,news that Singapore had been part of theconglomerate of nations spying oncountries in the region reignitedinternational tensions — calls werequickly made for Singapore to apologiseto Malaysia. Such incidents can beexpected to arise even in the future tosour relations temporarily. The fact thatmemories tend to be long on both sidesin relation to troubles with each other hasnot helped matters.

To be sure, many concrete issues havebeen solved over the years. These includethe Malayan Railway land cutting throughSingapore (solved recently under DatukSeri Najib Abdul Razak’s tenure);disagreements over water supply toSingapore (unravelled by technologicaladvancements in Singapore); conflictingclaims over the small island of PedraBranca (resolved by the InternationalCourt of Justice); and CPF payments toMalaysians who had been working inSingapore (dissolved through agreementand by the ageing of claimants).Although tension continues over issuessuch as the use of airspace by theSingapore Air Force and so on, thestronger signal being heard, if onemanages to ignore the ubiquitouspolitical din, is an encouraging one.



Foreign Relations

Collaboration between the two countrieson matters of security has practicallyalways shown impressive results. This hasincluded cases such as piracy control; thecapture of Mas Selamat; and the arrestof the Singapore “Messiah” hacker inNovember 2013.

Where economics is concerned, ties havealways been stronger than politicianshave been publicly willing to admit aswell. Labour flows from Malaysia toSingapore have always been heavy andcontinue to grow daily. We also saw how,immediately after Tun Dr MahathirMohamed’s retirement in late 2003,Malaysia initiated the Iskandar project inJohor. Taking advantage of an effluentneighbour’s overflow of capital, anoverflow of consumer demand and theoverflowing need for land simply makesgood economic sense. The question thatbegs to be asked instead is: why did it takeso long for the Iskandar project to beconceived and implemented?

What is it that makes bilateral relationsso inherently difficult between Singaporeand Malaysia? Certainly, there is acomplex culture of political snipingbetween the two developed over timeperhaps with a conscious intention tokeep them apart for the purpose ofbuilding national identity. Or is theresomething more inherently problematicin the two countries’ relationship to eachother which is based on somethingfundamental such as competition overresources and trade?

As with all relationships, ties betweenSingapore and Malaysia also go throughdifferent periods. Singapore in 1832, wasused as an administrative centre forBritish influence in the region afterinheriting the role from Penang. Duringthe Japanese occupation of the region,the little island at the southern tip ofthe Malay peninsula continued to bethe administrative centre. With thereturn of the British in 1945 and theimplementation of the Malayan Unionthe following year, we saw how theBritish sought to retain Singapore evenas they prepared to withdraw from theregion. It was a jewel they preferred tokeep.

However, to locals, be they Malayans orSingaporeans, that division wasunnatural. The political—and cultural—imperative to unite the two, wastherefore felt to be very strong. Althoughfinally accomplished in 1963 to suit all thepowers that be, the going proved to betough from the very beginning. Theimportance of Singapore as the regionalcentre for commerce, politics andeducation, as well as the metropolitancentre for Chinese immigrants inSoutheast Asia, did not allow it to fitcomfortably into the federation. In fact,it fitted so badly that a separation withintwo years seemed the only way to avoidserious inter-ethnic clashes from breakingout.

Looking back, it would seem that theparts were brought together into a whole



Foreign Relations

too tightly and quickly for the project tobe viable. How optimistic the merger nowseems, or was there not also a large doseof desperation involved with the Britishrushing to leave and the leftist threat stillstrong in the region? The years followingSingapore’s separation from theFederation have therefore to be seen inthat light.

On the one hand, Malaysia’s connectionto the global economy and to importantmodernising dynamics was downsized.Singapore on the other hand, wasdetached from its natural hinterland andhad to construct an independent politythat could not only grow fast but alsodefend itself with sufficient credibility.Making use of every advantage it had,without letting nationalistic or anti-colonial sentiments dictate economicpolicy over time, became Singapore’sgreatest challenge.

Against the nature of its own people, thenew country had to create an identity anda pattern of behaviour that differentiatedit from its neighbours, in fact, from itsown history. Through its foreign policy,export-orientation economic strategyand its strong links to external players, itsought global connections in order toremedy its abruptly shrunken regionalcontext.

Malaysia’s issue with Singapore, on theother hand, stemmed more from beinghistorically and ethnically offended by theseparation than from any desperate need

to manage on its own. Malaysia was bigenough and rich enough to grow by itself.While more pragmatic Malaysian leaderssuch as then Deputy Prime Minister TunDr Ismail Abdul Rahman (in office from1970 to 1973) realised the advantage oflearning from the hyperactive Singapore’sfervent search for solutions, otherspreferred to distance themselves from allthings Singaporean, at least polemically.Tun Dr Ismail visited Singapore to studyinstitutions such as the HousingDevelopment Board and the EconomicDevelopment Board, something that hiscolleagues avoided doing for decades tocome.

In fact, under Tun Dr Mahathir, the basicstance was one of competition instead ofcomplementarity. This was certainlyworsened—and prolonged—by themutual dislike that he and Mr Lee KuanYew had for each other. However, thosedays are now over, for all practicalpurposes. As can be seen in howimportant the success of the Iskandarproject is to both the Johor governmentand the Federal leadership, the twocountries have realised the gains that cancome from two of the most developedcountries in Southeast Asia workingtogether and from both of them buildingon the complementary aspects of eachtheir economies. Spiteful competitionbetween the two only advantaged thirdparties, both near and far.

From now on, ASEAN Regionalism is animportant context within which the



Foreign Relations

future of bilateral relations betweenSingapore and Malaysia should beanalysed. There is no doubt that thechanging political, strategic and economicstructure in the East and South Asiaregion will introduce considerations thatwe are only just beginning to becomeconscious of. Regional integration at adeeper level may not be possible for along time yet, but the development ofcontacts and connections at the people-to-people level, not to mention betweenbusinesses, is bound to alter profoundlythe national discourses within the region.For one thing, ethnocentric agendas willlose traction once the benefits of intra-regional trade, travel and cultural tieshave become obvious to governmentsand peoples. National ethnic minorities,placed in a regional context, are not easilydefined and manipulated. Dealing withthem will require more diplomacy andtolerance than has been the case whendone within national frameworks.

The uncomfortable nation-state structurethat the various ethnic groups inSoutheast Asia has had to live with sinceindependence, once broadened byregional realities may help improverelations between them. In the case ofMalaysia and Singapore, the inter-ethnicdimension has always loomed large.Tensions had been convoluted by inter-state relations which after all, follow alogic quite different from how groupsrelate to each other. The regional contextholds great promise for dissolvingmistrust and misunderstandings, not only

where ties between Malaysia andSingapore are concerned, but inSoutheast Asia as a whole as well.

Infrastructural connectivity is bound toenhance a culture of political, economicand cultural openness towards regionalneighbours. These neighbours are indeedquite different from each other in manycases. Some are only discovering eachother for the first time. Policies such asthe Open Skies for commercial flightshave allowed Southeast Asians to visiteach other’s cities and eat each other’sfoods. Continued tension betweenMalaysia and Singapore would not onlybe unwise, it would also nullify theadvantages that the two can have at atime when balances of power are shiftingin the region.

In conclusion, it should be said that fromthe very start, the assumption ofSingapore and Malaysia being twins, orat least cousins, raised expectations ofgood relations to an unrealistic level.Complementarity requires more a focuson differences between the participantsthan on similarities. As states, the two arebound to disagree with each other onspecific issues. That has to be accepted.However, beyond that, muchimprovement is possible, especially if wekeep an optimistic eye on economicintegration in the region.

Documents

Volume 23, 2014 - NUSS · 2016. 12. 27. · Viswa Sadasivan 21 - 29 Singapore’s Education and Its Multicultural Heritage: Forging a New Dialogue Arun Bala 30 - 42 It’s Not Just