PM Modi's visit to Singapore: Ties born of mutual respect

Lee Kuan Yew, often referred to by his initials LKY, was a Singaporean statesman and lawyer who served as the first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. His stewardship of the nation was gushingly admired as a benign dictatorship by various people including by our own legal luminary Nani Palkhivala in his post-Budget speeches. Palkhivala was an ardent fan of the Singapore model of disciplined democracy. He minced no words while saying too much of democracy had spoiled India. Many Indians shared his worldview albeit grudgingly — we Indians who spit blithely in public places, don’t do so while visiting Singapore was their refrain.

But there were many who demurred saying it was a city state with a population of just half crore vis-à-vis India’s 145 crore. To put things in perspective, one has to juxtapose India’s per capita income of roughly S$3,000 with Singapore’s S$113,779. That Singapore has fared far better than India is also apparent from the exchange rate its dollar commands vis-à-vis the greenback or the US dollar. Singaporeans have to pay S$1.32 for getting one US dollar whereas we Indians have to shell out Rs 82 or so. The weak INR is rationalised on the ground that it is necessary to boost exports. But that discussion is for another time and occasion.

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Comparisons, it is said, are odious. But the shared history of India and Singapore has invariably stoked the comparison. Ethnic Indians constitute about 10 per cent of the resident population of 5.9 million in Singapore. In addition, among the 1.6 million foreigners residing in Singapore, about 21 per cent or around 3.5 lakhs are Indian citizens, mostly serving in financial services, IT, construction and marine sectors or are students.

Singapore has the highest concentration of IIT and IIM alumni in any one city outside India. There are about 1 lakh Indian migrant workers in Singapore. Tamil is one of the four official languages of Singapore. The above demographic statistics explains why Singapore figures on the top of India’s look east policy.  India was among the first to recognise Singapore way back in 1965 when it won independence. India-Singapore relations were elevated to Strategic Partnership during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Singapore in 2015.

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Singapore is India’s largest trade partner in ASEAN. It has also been a leading source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the last financial year with an investment of $11.77 billion in 2023 alone with the cumulative figure since 2000 being $160 billion. Singapore is a high-income economy built on a business-friendly regulatory environment and strong investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare, and public services. The city-state is among the world’s most competitive economies and ranks highest in the 2020 World Bank Human Capital Index. In the most recent World Bank Human Capital Index, Singapore ranks as the best in the world in human capital development. Together with strong financial support from the government, the city-state continues to strengthen the nimbleness and flexibility of its workforce by providing continuing education such as the Skillsfuture.

Apart from the demographic connect that brings the two nations closer, the other gravitas is friendliness and bonhomie that has characterised the relationship between the two nations. Singapore and India do not share borders whereas China and India do. Frostiness invariably creeps into the relationship with border nations. On the other hand, distance lends enchantment.  One may say lack of borders and the presence of sizeable Indian diaspora has made Singapore a unique nation to befriend.

It is against this backdrop Prime Minister Modi will be meeting the new Singapore Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, during his two-day visit to the city state on September 4-5. While PM Modi can be counted upon to make a pitch to the Singapore government for greater FDI from Singapore as well as trade with India, he would be making a direct connect with its CEOs and business leaders including Indians who can do a lot for their motherland. Among the country’s leading industries are electronics, petrochemicals, biomedical sciences, logistics, and transport engineering.

While NRI remittances have been the mainstay of India’s foreign exchange earnings, sometimes surpassing FDI, the Indian government cannot take smug satisfaction from this alone. The Chinese diaspora played a significant role in bringing FDI into China that morphed it into an industrial powerhouse. Sadly, the same cannot be said of the Indian diaspora which is said to shine abroad while squirming and underperforming in India due to a variety of reasons. They have to do more than remitting money to their parents. There may be quite a few Sundar Pichais and Satya Nadellas lurking in Singapore who must be persistently wooed to give it back to India with greater verve in the form of FDI either themselves or by influencing their employers as Pichai and Nadella have been doing.

That the semiconductor sector is going to be a key area of discussion is both heartening and appropriate with the Indian government realising the importance of this sector for growth. ‘Computer chips, not potato chips’ — the war cry given by BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi almost three decades ago — finds greater resonance today with the government keen on stopping the forex outgo on this score and becoming self-dependent in this key area of digital activity.

During the recently concluded India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable, which is a unique forum between ministers on both sides on diverse areas, a number of forward-looking, futuristic areas were identified in digitisation, skill, sustainability, health, advanced manufacturing and connectivity. We are likely to exchange a number of MoUs in these areas in the forthcoming visit of the PM.

Singapore is an important international arbitration centre trusted by many foreign investors in India. Its stock exchange beckons Indians. The two nations can work together with the Indian diaspora acting as the bridge.

The writer is a senior columnist. He tweets @smurlidharan. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.