Singapore's Sterile Charms

Pondi Road


I'd never fully appreciated Singapore's sterile charms until this - my third - trip to the Asian Tiger. I'd spent two days there in the summer of 1992, as part of a two-month tour of South-east Asia. After the sensational smells of Bangkok and the muggy sensuality of Bali, however, Singapore's overdeveloped Western society was a letdown.

When travelling through Asia, you expect bizarre sights and surprises around each corner. There is none of that in Singapore. The place is thoroughly modern, immaculately clean, shiny and new. Acres of high-tech malls filled with the latest consumer goods have overrun all sense of national history or a unique culture. It was boring. I vowed never to go back.

Then a few years later an Indian school chum, Vidula Verma, was getting married to a devout Catholic. They were planning an elaborate multi-day extravaganza which would combine the marriage traditions of Hinduism and Catholicism. How could I possibly miss that? I returned to Singapore a second time.

The wedding was all it was built up to be. I witnessed the groom washing the feet of his in-laws, women gathered to paint elaborate henna designs on each other's hands, large envelops of cash placed at the feet of the bride and groom to jump-start their life together and, of course, the double blessings of holy men from the two great religions. I loved the pomp and circumstance. It was a remarkable affair. Singapore, on the other hand, not so much. It still felt dull.

Fast forward to fall 2009, and I am en route to India. It's been too long since I've seen Vidula and Chris. In the interim, she's progressed into an important legal mind in Singapore, Chris has become a leading neurosurgeon and they've had three precocious kids whom I hadn't met. It wouldn't cost me any more to do a stopover, so I decide to detour to Singapore. Perhaps the third time will be the proverbial charm.

Singapore is the largest of the world's three city-states, the other two being Monaco and the Vatican. Since their independence in 1965, their standard of living has risen at a dramatic rate through a combination of heavy foreign investment and a state-led drive to industrialisation. They have no natural resources; everything has to be imported. Yet they've built a global economic powerhouse: per capita they are fifth wealthiest country in the world. Imagine if they'd been blessed with sandy beaches, rum, reggae, fertile soil, geographic proximity to the world's largest economy, etc, etc, what they might have done?

What they did have, which seemed to have escaped us, is extraordinary leadership in the person of multi-term Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew. He had a focused strategy to move from Third World to First World in his lifetime, built on principles of zero corruption, cleanliness and order. The strategy has paid off.

From the moment you land at Changi Airport, which consistently gets awards for being the best airport in the world, you sense that you are in a well-oiled machine. The speed with which you and your bags are processed is unparalleled. The abundance of easy and cheap ways to get from the airport into the city is remarkable.

The city centre itself is nothing short of a modern miracle. The roads are well-maintained and litter-free. Street laws are obeyed. There is no graffiti. No second-hand smoke. Cars are pollution-free. There is no horn honking. The public transportation system of buses, trains and taxis are easy to decipher, clean, fast and cheap. The people are educated, civil and friendly. Crime rates are low. The holy grail of complete civilised living, which every other country struggles with, is somehow manifest here. How did they do it?

For starters, they are first and foremost masters of social engineering. They've managed to blend the rabid consumerism of the West with the family traditions of the East. Where it frays at the edge, they forcibly rectify through various legal and social programmes. For example, there is a law on the books which allows ageing parents to sue their children for maintenance. The children's only defence is if he/she can prove that the parent had been a bad one. None of this abandoned and neglected ageing population which is a common side effect of the modern fast-paced life.

Concerned about the development and maintenance of strong families, (single people, after all, are a disruptive influence) the government has an active matchmaking service as part of the Social Development Network. To participate you declare your job, employer and annual income in order to assure an appropriate match. They want you happily married and having well-behaved, hard-working children.

They think long and hard about which nationalities get which types of working visas. The Chinese, for example, are not given visas to be maids or nannies as they are viewed as predatory and tend to steal Singaporean husbands, creating social disorder. Only the more passive Malaysians get visas as maids and nannies since they are not disruptive to the social order in the home.

There is also a high degree of control over the media which allows only minimal criticism of the government. Critical media, after all, creates social discontent.

There is zero tolerance for all things pornographic. Even harmless programmes, like Sex and the City, are not shown in their debaucherous entirety but modified for "family viewing". Pornographic images create wandering eyes.

These media controls have evidently become more difficult with the advent of the Internet, which allows access to so much of what was previously hidden. Will their social order survive the more exposed and entitled next generation? Jury is still out.

Their draconian policy on illegal drugs is legendary. There is the death penalty for smugglers and exceptionally long jail sentences for possession of even a very small amount of narcotics. Last year a German couple, merely transiting through Singapore, was jailed because they "looked high" to the immigration officer. When tested they had indeed used controlled substances in Australia before they had gotten on the plane. No matter - they had landed on Singapore's shores with drugs in their system.

Their economy is built largely on "entrepot" trade where imported commodities are processed, graded, repackaged and exported at a markup. Without natural resources, they had to build up a highly skilled labour force.

They have an impressive tourism industry built largely on shopping. Ten million visitors a year (twice the native population) come to the island. Nowhere else in the world (except perhaps Hong Kong), is there such a wide selection of European, American, Asian and Australian brands. Moreover, they appear to always have every size, colour and variation. I needed to replace the charger for my four-year-old Olympus digital camera. I found it in Singapore. I wanted a companion piece to an obscure French suitcase brand that I had bought in Paris. I looked for it all over the USA and Canada, including online. No luck. I found it in Singapore. This is an unmatched shopper's paradise.

Although Singapore is a democracy the same political party, the People's Action Party, has won every single election since independence. But for what they have delivered to the populace, this probably should come as no surprise.

All this is not to say that there are no criticisms to be levelled. The price Singaporeans pay for all this order is that the place lacks soul. It has no edge (they do not want edge) and no personality. Imagine a house where the kids are well-behaved and all the linen and cutlery are in their proper place. Everything seems right but feels wrong. There is an overwhelming sense of fabricated living.

Yet, as a Jamaican, I must admit that I envy what they have done since independence. They have built a society that works in exactly the ways that ours does not. They live in our parallel "bizarro" universe where there are immaculately clean, crime-free streets, a model public transportation system, a corruption-free police force and political class, and a vibrant, growing economy. And they did it all with nothing but strong leadership. I think my increased appreciation for Singapore now is partly because of how lousy things have become back home in Jamaica. The contrast in the development of both countries is an indictment of what we are willing to accept as a society. The silver lining is that the Singaporean experience demonstrates that it is possible to fix it all in one great visionary's lifetime. Is he out there? Papa, can you hear me?

(Pondi digression: in discussing some of my amazement with what I saw in Singapore with a fellow Jamaican, the response I got was that "they are Asians, we are black people, we different!" I hung up the damn phone muttering to myself that "the wretched will always be wretched". Are corruption, crime, grime and poverty really our natural destiny?)

Singapore is the temple to civilised living. They pay heavily for all that social order with their civil liberties. But given how much disorder is breaking out around the world, I suspect there are increasing numbers of people who would be willing to do the same. Singapore's sterile charms make it one of the best places in the world to live. For that reason alone it is a very worthwhile place to visit.

Source