9 - ‘Scent of the S'pore Dollar’

Summary

False signals, both optimistic and pessimistic, continued to bedevil the relationship. Rajiv Gandhi's accession prompted Singaporean hopes of a new era of liberal economics. Goh Chok Tong's succession encouraged Indian fears of a touchy and suspicious Singapore. In the event, neither hopes nor fears were realized, and business continued much the same though race attitudes threatened for a time to complicate the controversy over illegal immigration.

If foreign workers had been provided with comfortable quarters and a congenial clubhouse, Mandarin-speaking PAP backbencher Choo Wee Khiang would not have had occasion to grumble that Little India—where Indian and Bangladeshi labourers congregate massively on Sunday afternoons—is in ‘complete darkness (hei qi qi) not because there is no light but because there are too many Indians around.’ The warning some years later by another ruling party politician, Tan Cheng Bock, that Singaporeans felt ‘threatened’ by Lee's proposal to relax immigration rules to attract more foreigners touched a raw nerve amidst unemployment fears in the wake of the 1997 economic crisis. That the Chinese MP had his finger on the public pulse was proved two years later when he won by the largest margin in the 2001 elections. At another level, there was a furore over the ‘racially insensitive’ podcast of two Chinese customers asking for pork in an Indian-Muslim restaurant.

These undercurrents of race tension did not explode only because of Lee's iron discipline. But they should have enabled Harry Chan, the MFA's permanent secretary and thus the seniormost career diplomat to be sent as high commissioner, to appreciate India's ethnic nuances. He had been a civil servant in British Singapore when there were no computers or air conditioning, when fans had to be switched off to conserve energy, envelopes and carbon paper were re-used and—most significant—there was no socializing with British colleagues outside the office. Asians were not allowed into sanctuaries like the Tanglin Club. ‘It was a different world.’