India urged to emulate Singapore
Thu, October 16 2008
In an extensive hour-long interaction with participants at the mini Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Singapore, Minister Mentor Lee called for a dramatic shift of Indian multitudes living in villages to cities and towns.
This was the formula that Singapore used to transform this city state from a mosquito-infested swamp to the shining financial metropolis it has become, he said. And this was the route that countries across the globe, whether in Europe or America, South Korea, Japan or Taiwan, took in their struggle to become developed nations.
He held up the example of China, where every year more than 10 million people are moved from the countryside to the cities, enabling the country to provide them with education, health care and quality housing.
“In 1978, nearly 80 per cent of China’s population was rural and a mere 20 per cent was urban. Today, this proportion had changed to 60 per cent of the Chinese people living in rural areas, while 40 per cent of the people now live in cities and towns,” he said.
Lee, who ruled Singapore for 30 years after the country became an independent republic in 1965, said he employed the same formula when he converted Singapore into the financial powerhouse it is today. He described how residents of remote islands were settled in Singapore’s main island and given access to education and housing.
Lee also referred to the problems faced by the Nano project in West Bengal, where residents are staging a sit-in at an abandoned auto plant in protest of car giant Tata’s decision to pull out of the deal with West Bengal due to political infighting. He said it epitomizes India’s problems of not being able to come to grips with the task of meeting the aspirations of the people in rural areas.
“I am speaking as a friend of India,” he said, adding it has the potential but is not using it.
Many members of the audience felt Lee’s prescription was too drastic and would be impractical, considering India’s vast size and its more than 1.2 billion population.
Lee said he had succeeded in transforming Singapore due to three key factors. The first of these, he said, was “a good team of able ministers whose ability and integrity was beyond doubt and who formed a completely incorruptible government.”
The newly formed Singapore government created a level playing field for every citizen and provided equal opportunities for schooling, health care, and housing regardless of race or religion.
Lee urged Indian leaders and policy makers to shed the path of gradualism they have been following since 1991 in opening up the market, and urged them to throw wide open the doors to investment and trade. He repeatedly cited the recent Field Marshal Cariappa memorial lecture delivered by India’s Finance Minister P. Chidambaram during which he criticized the gradualism that has beset India’s economic policies.
“If you close up the economy, you are going to be losers,” Lee said, lamenting the “gradualist approach” that Indian governments has adopted for nearly two decades.
He brushed aside critics who have decried the authoritarian nature of the Singaporean government.
-IANS
By Nirmala George
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