New Delhi: In his recent visit to Singapore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi proclaimed in front of an official delegation that India hoped to create “several Singapores” in India and that a number of developing economies look up to the south-east Asian nation as an “inspiration”.
This is not the first such grand remark that the Indian prime minister has made over the last decade. He has constantly stoked the emotions of India’s aspirational classes by making such statements that reinforce his perception as a bold and ambitious leader. A few years ago he touted his dream smart city project in Gujarat’s Dholera as India’s “Shanghai”.
Simply put, his statement to build “many Singapores” is targeted at a section of Indians who consider better business infrastructure in India as the only marker of development. Singapore, with one of the best public infrastructures in the world, could surely be an inspiration in this respect.
In 2013-14, when Modi elevated himself from a regional leader to Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) prime ministerial face, several commentators who knew Modi referred to his great liking for Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew – the founder of modern Singaporean state, known for his iron-hand governance model. Lee was known as an autocrat in liberal democracies but was also praised for his effective planning and corruption-free governance. In Modi’s scheme of things, Lee was believed to be a perfect fit for the dream he was trying to sell to Indians.
However, for Modi to build several Singapores in India, he would need to pursue one of Lee’s key doctrines: that communal harmony and a cohesive society are essential for material prosperity. Modi’s political philosophy and his ambitions to make India a developed nation appear to contradict each other.
Ever since he shot to limelight, Modi has cultivated himself as a Hindutva hardliner, a euphemism for his anti-Muslim politics. He has used communal polarisation as his most effective political and electoral tool to get a shot at power. Given the fact that Hindus form a practically irreversible majority in India, Modi and the BJP, which is backed by its ideological fountainhead the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), have tried to stoke fears about Muslims gaining a disproportionate share of resources and power in India – all through carefully chalked out misplaced, and even fake, political narratives.
Modi has not only led such campaigns directly but has taken upon himself the managerial task of creating a mammoth electoral machinery to advance and sustain his strategy of political polarisation. His cynical approach towards politics has pushed India into its most-divisive order in the last decade. His ideological stubbornness has often come in the way of his progressive promises.
In contrast, Lee firmly believed that if Singapore, often dismissed as the “Little Red Dot” by bigger countries, had to gain any prosperity and influence in the global order, it needed a harmonious society more than any other state. Lee ensured with an iron hand that any influences that he considered as divisive were culled from Singapore, often controversially, after he came to power.
Lee’s entire tenure that lasted over 30 years prioritised social cohesiveness. He framed detailed policies to offset Chinese privilege in Singapore with a judicious distribution of resources for Malays and Indians, the two biggest minority groups. From government offices to public housing and jobs to school enrolments, Lee invested in keeping the demographic diversity of Singapore intact.
Let alone communal clashes, his government did not spare even a minor sectarian remark, something which his successors have adopted in their policies as a matter of principle. This is not to say that there are no inequities in Singapore’s society; there have been multiple instances where any criticism of the government is similarly crushed but Lee’s political philosophy has largely been successful in sustaining sectarian and racial harmony.
Despite multi-layered inequities, Singapore has emerged as one of the most harmonious societies in the world, especially when compared to South Asian countries. The focus on building political and social narratives for citizens that emphasise on the significance of communal harmony now characterises Singapore. Newly-appointed Prime Minister Lawrence Wong spent a large part of his National Day Rally speech on the close linkages between economic prosperity and social cohesion. In fact, every state and non-state institution of Singapore has almost made it a habit to propagate racial harmony in the city-state.
Much of the credit could go to the Singapore government’s willingness to learn from history. Its emphasis on racial harmony began to take shape soon after Singapore witnessed its worst-ever racial riots between the Chinese and Malay communities, first in 1964 and then in 1969. It took a long time for Lee to bring peace to the country, and he soon realised that all his ambitions to make Singapore a global economic power were untenable without espousing multiculturalism as his political philosophy. For him, the two were not contradictory which had to be put together with force, but could become naturally complementary with state’s advocacy. The two key principles – economic progression and racial harmony – became integral to his dreams. His tenure was marked by efforts to create a Singapore where both went hand-in-hand.
His successors have come to realise Singapore’s twin traits more than ever. In 2013, the second-biggest riots that Singapore has seen took place in its Little India locality, when angry Indian workers attacked government vehicles and markets after an Indian construction worker was killed in an accident. Although not racial in nature, the Singapore government, then under Lee’s son Lee Hsien Loong, took immediate measures to avoid any such clash in the future.
It restricted liquor sale, took concrete steps to install street lights across the city’s bylanes, firmed up security measures in vulnerable areas and increased penalties and punishments for any action that could be deemed racist or communal. At the same time, the Singapore government mobilised civil society groups to form peace and goodwill committees and engage all communities in a positive way.
Under Wong, the government has gone a step further by beginning to address the elephant in the room. It has come to realise that strict government measures may have prevented riots and clashes, but it is now all the more important that the Chinese, Malays and the Indians interact with each other spontaneously to form genuine bonds between each other. “It is important to find a place in each other’s hearts,” a senior policy maker, who was formerly in the government’s communications department in Singapore, recently told me. “If Singapore has to take a bigger leap from here, we need to understand each other. There is no other way,” he said.
It isn’t surprising that multinational companies and big investors prefer a peaceful and orderly Singapore more than the volatile India to set up their Asia offices.
The BJP under Modi, after falling short of a majority in 2024 Lok Sabha elections, appears to have fallen back on its only tried-and-tested electoral strategy of heightened political polarisation. Lynchings, communal remarks against Muslims, far-right trolling of critics and other such polarising mechanisms have come back with a vengeance in India’s public sphere.
The Indian prime minister is once again conspicuously silent as more hate is sought to be perpetuated by his own party workers and supporters. Modi’s intentions to create “several Singapores” in such a state of affairs sounds more like a vacuous gimmick than any real effort.
