thin king

ATTENTION: KISHORE MAHBUBANI Dear Sir I am very pleased to see that you’ve started this regular much-needed column. It should  provide a valuable sounding board for opinions on what may be the biggest challenge yet  faced by the state of Singapore.  I feel qualified to make some comments, albeit subjective,  being a sixty four year old English-born permanent resident, who has enjoyed spending  half his life, living and working in Singapore.  I have a strong interest in Southeast Asia  and after retiring from the oil industry I returned to university and graduated with two  master’s degrees from the NUS Department of Southeast Asian Studies. Looking back over my time in Singapore I feel that the quality of life improved up until  about the early 1990s, but since then has gradually declined.  It is now clear to me that the  main causes of this are the stress and unhappiness resulting from too-rapid change, together  with the inexorable reduction of physical living space.  Specifically, the main issues are:  cultural change brought by hurried large-scale immigration; a noticeable rise in inequality;  and overcrowding reaching a psychological tipping point.  I would also like to emphasize  that for twenty four years I was married into a well-established Hokkien Chinese family,  and as such did not live most of my life in an ‘ex-pat cocoon’. Instead I would like to think  that I became reasonably well versed in the culture and thinking of the majority of Chinese  Singaporeans. Any reasonable person who reads the recent White Paper would have to agree that in pure  economic terms, it makes perfect sense.  In the long run Singapore’s negative demographics  will in one way or another cause the eventual collapse of the state as we know it today. The problem is that most Singaporeans have existential day-to-day needs that do not resonate  with such a long time frame.  They and their families have to live their lives now, today,  at the present moment. When I came to Singapore in 1981 it had a strong Southeast Asian culture, where most people  could speak basic Malay along with their mother tongue, and there was a sense of the region’s  history and its inter-connectedness.  Now the culture has changed to one that seems much more  mainland Chinese oriented, where you need to speak mandarin to communicate with most  service industry people.   The resentment of Singapore citizens to such a rapid influx of  culturally different people  is entirely understandable.  It is no wonder that so many now feel alienated in their own  country.  However, one can also appreciate the government’s dilemma, when realising  that they urgently needed immigrants, as well as maintain a Chinese majority, they were  forced to turn to mainland China.  While Overseas Chinese, particularly from Malaysia  or Indonesia, would have been much more suitable, there were obviously insufficient of  them willing to settle in Singapore and make up the shortfall.  Caucasians could have also  been enticed to come in sufficient numbers, but once they had built up a critical mass, would have become problematic politically, and begun agitating for greater freedoms.   Similarly if Indians or Malays had been brought in large numbers, they would have  begun to lobby hard for their own communities and challenged the present Chinese ruling  establishment.  In this respect one could also point to Singapore’s limited political space  in causing resentment, but providing its economy continues to grow steadily and the rewards  are better spread around, this should not become a critical issue for years to come.  A severe  economic downturn would of course test the present structure of government to the limits. The problem of rising inequality is something the government has recognised and rightly  decided to prioritise before the mood in the heartlands gets really ugly.  Judging by the  present number of expensive shops and restaurants, Singapore would seem to have an  abundance of rich people.  This creates much peer pressure and envy. With its mega-casinos  and F1 motor racing, Singapore is now a ‘ World City ’, and the startling rise in conspicuous  consumption by the wealthy flies very much in the faces of ordinary citizens.  And while  most people are now resigned to never owning a car in Singapore, for them to never own  their own homes would be too much to take.   It is well within the government’s capability to redress the problem of inequality and make  everyone feel they will share in Singapore’s prosperity.  A much more intractable problem  is the psychological effect of overcrowding, which has resulted in a feeling of living in a  concrete  jungle, despite the government’s valiant attempts at greening wherever it can.   We now have MRT trains arriving every few minutes, packed to the gills with people,  even in the middle of the day.  Singapore now feels like there are simply far too many  people living here.  There seems to be nowhere to get away from them all, even for just  a few hours.  And yes, one could tackle the causeway traffic or take a flight or ferry to a  nearby country, but not on a regular enough basis to make a lasting day-to-day difference.   There is now the feeling of being trapped in an urban nightmare and the knowledge that  the population is set to rise even further is obviously going to trigger more anxiety. I freely admit to being nostalgic for the lifestyle of the 1980s, before so much of Singapore  changed and when the population was half of what it is today.  In those days you could easily  drive around the island and visit many different and distinct neighbourhoods.   It was still  possible to roam through large areas of jungle and coastline to find traditional kampongs,  and visit inhabited offshore islands such as Pulau Seking. One could even sail into Malaysian  waters without having to check in and out of immigration.  I was reminded of this during a  recent visit to the village of Kong Kong in Johor, where we used to boat to regularly.  There  was water skiing at Pulau Ubin, and afterwards delicious seafood to be enjoyed at the Punggol  waterside restaurants.  It was nice to feel contented eating good Asian food in local eating  places  and not be pressured into spending a fortune in the hundreds of international high-end  bars and restaurants one finds nowadays.   There is obviously no going back to those days, but it is sad that most Singaporeans will never  get to do any of these things in their new ultra-modern country. So much of the former sense  of space and unique character has been lost.  Now everything feels too controlled and that vital  psychological perception of at least having a little autonomy has gone.  Cultivated parklands  are fine but do not satisfy a deeper longing for freedom.  The fact that there is almost nowhere  on the island that you don’t have to pay for parking is just one aspect of this sense of constraint.   It is now clear that the majority of Singaporeans have satisfied most of their basic material  needs, and have now moved on to seeking fulfilment and self-actualisation, as was predicted  by Maslow’s well known model of human aspiration.  But unfortunately for the government,  this poses a problem that has no quick and ready solutions.  These higher human needs require  space and freedom, both physical and mental.  And this is very difficult to satisfy in the pressure  cooker, hot-house that Singapore has become, where the treadmill feels as if it is turning ever  faster. Unable to satisfy these emerging desires, citizens are going to continue to feel unhappier  as the years go by, even though they live in the safest, best organised and most efficient city in  Southeast Asia. It is going to be very difficult, but the government must find a way of improving the  quality of life with acceptable population densities, in the way countries like Switzerland  and Scandinavia  have successfully done.  This, as the government has recognised, will  require massive improvements in levels of education and productivity for virtually the  entire working population, and needs tackling on an unprecedented scale.  Because they  must now realise that bringing in more and more immigrants is creating very serious  problems.  Anyway, I am greatly looking forward to your future articles and the feedback  they will surely generate. Best wishes Derek John Potter (S2617998Z)

# posted by chunmu @ 6:19 PM