Excuse me, are you Singaporean?

Mar 31, 2013

Mixed marriages have become more common in Singapore. In 2011, one in five marriages (19.8 per cent) was an inter-ethnic union, up from one in eight (12.6 per cent) in 2001. But the offspring of these couples still get asked awkward questions about their identity. Five Singaporeans with mixed heritage tell what it is like to grow up and fit in here

By Melissa Sim


‘ANG MO’ IN THE ARMY

When Robert William Straughan turns 21 this May, he will have to choose between his Singapore and American citizenship - a choice he dreads making.

"Everyone says it's a bonus to have two passports. But it's not a bonus, it's just who I am," says Mr Straughan, the elder son of two academics.

His mother, Associate Professor Paulin Straughan, 49, is deputy head of sociology at the National University of Singapore. His father, Dr Robert Straughan, 54, is a senior mathematics lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic.

"People perceive that I can just make a choice, but it's not like that. Being American and Singaporean is a single identity," adds the young man.

Born here, Mr Straughan attended local schools and went through national service. He attended Fairfield Methodist primary and secondary schools, and then Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC) and intends to study at the National University of Singapore.

Assoc Prof Straughan says she and her husband made a conscious choice to send their two sons - her younger child Timothy Ashby is 17 and a student at ACJC - to local schools because the "expat culture is foreign to both of us".

"We wanted them to be raised the Singapore way," she adds.

In school, her first-born also took Higher Chinese which, he says "added to my Singaporeaness". He scored B3 for the subject in his O levels.

"I'm enthusiastic about speaking Chinese, but people make fun of me because of my accent," he adds. To demonstrate, he orders a makebelieve bowl of fish ball noodles, with chilli, in his slightly American-accented Mandarin.

And when he speaks English, people ask if he has lived overseas, even though he has only a hint of an American accent when he says the word "can't".

While the questions about his parents and identity do get repetitive, MrStraughan says it is not frustrating.

"I think it's important to explain my parents' heritage and not use a blanket term to label it," he says, launching into the story of how his father and mother met in the United States in the 1980s, while both were pursuing their doctoral degrees at the University of Virginia, and how his father left his family and moved to Singapore for his mother. They were married in Singapore in 1990.

"He gave up a lot... I think he's a bit disappointed that he couldn't teach me and Tim baseball," says the school debater, who was head councillor in his secondary school in 2008 and an active member of his junior college's student council.

During his army days, Mr Straughan was a signal instructor. And although some of his friends in the army affectionately referred to him as "ang mo", they never viewed him as foreign or different, he says.

He would also consult his section mates on Hokkien phrases he did not understand, but says Mandarin was more prevalent, so he spoke that quite often.

As for the American side of him, he says it comes very much from the stories his father tells him about how he would take road trips across America, or about his grandfather being a Vietnam and Korean war veteran.

"When I was much younger and American warships would dock in Singapore, I remember clearly that my father would take me to see the ships so that I could be 'proud of my country', in his words," says the bachelor, who goes to the US about once a year to visit his grandmother in Georgia.

So what happens when he turns 21?

"I can't really come to a decision. There is really no methodology I can use to choose," he says.

Even if he has to give up one citizenship, he adds: "I will still consider myself of both (nationalities). I will continue to sing the national anthem of either country vehemently."

HALF-GHANAIAN SPEAKS GOOD MANDARIN

When Olive Yuen, 13, goes to the hair salon, the stylists sometimes comment on her thick, curly hair in Mandarin.

Little do they know that Olive, whose parents are Ghanaian and Singaporean Chinese, can understand what they are saying.

"I'll whisper and tell my mum what they said," says the Singaporean teen, who scored an A for Chinese Language in the Primary School Leaving Examination.

She says the comments do not affect her and she has never felt out of place in Singapore, either in school or elsewhere.

The Deyi Secondary School student says she has been in situations where peers her age do a double take when she speaks Mandarin. Their reaction? "Wah, you so pro!"

And when she tells them that she is half-African, half-Singaporean Chinese, they go, "Wah, so cool!"

Although she was born in Ghana, she moved to Singapore in 2006, when she was seven and has not been back since.

Her father, Mr Paulson Yuen, 56, met her mother, Ms Sabina Donkor, 36, in Ghana in 1998. They were married according to Ghanaian customary rites by the end of the year. They registered their marriage in Ghana in 2005 and in Singapore in 2007.

When they met, Ms Donkor, who holds a master's degree in hotel and tourism management, was working as the food and beverage and banquet manager in a leading resort chain.

Mr Yuen, who worked in Ghana for 19 years, was then the project director in charge of overseas operations of a construction company.

He worked on a highway from Ms Donkor's town to the city and her home was just by the roadside, so the two would bump into each other regularly.

They moved to Singapore in 2006 so that Olive could start her primary school education here.

In primary school, the girl took part in a variety of co-curricular activities (CCA), including guzheng, harmonica, badminton, basketball and Chinese dance.

She chose Chinese dance because some of her friends were also joining the CCA.

"It looked quite interesting, so I just wanted to try," she says.

Now, she is part of the school's track and field team and her best event is the 100m sprint.

Her parents proudly point to a number of her trophies on top of a shelf in their three-room HDB flat in Toa Payoh.

Like many of her classmates, Olive hangs out at Ang Mo Kio Hub after school and does her homework with friends at a fast food restaurant in Ang Mo Kio Central.

Her friends, she says, are mainly Chinese, but there are other races too; all are Singaporean.

Says Olive in a completely Singaporean accent: "I feel more Singaporean than African because I have been here a longer time than I've been in Africa."

In fact, she has lost touch with the Ghanaian language, Twi, which she could speak when she was younger.

But she likes having a mixed heritage.

"It's more exotic," she says. "It's more fun and people are more interested."

Indeed, strangers are very curious when they see her with her parents.

"People try to figure out if we're a family or not. They turn back and look again... if people don't stare at us, I think we'll feel funny," says MrYuen good-naturedly.

Ms Donkor was a guest service officer at Far East Organization for a few years, but quit to help Olive with her PSLE and has not been able to find another job since because she is not a permanent resident.

While Ms Donkor sometimes feels she is "not accepted here because they keep rejecting my PR", she is glad her daughter has fully integrated.

Mr Yuen agrees: "She came when she was young, so she does not know what she misses there."

Ask Olive where she would choose to live and she says: "I don't know why, I just prefer it here somehow."

FIVE-YEAR-OLD PICKS UP SINGLISH

She understands and speaks three languages. But ask five-year-old Isabel Gonzales which she likes most - Chinese, English or Spanish - and she replies confidently: "Chinese."

Her mother, Ms Ong Meow Cheng, 42, who is self-employed distributing health and beauty products, is not surprised.

"She will take a Chinese story book from the shelf and ask me to read it," says Ms Ong, who is Singaporean.

Ms Ong and her husband, MrManuel Gonzales, 48, deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Peru in Singapore, met in 1996 while they were both working in Canberra, Australia. She was then a stenographer at the Singapore High Commission in the city.

They got married in 2007, had both their children in Peru and moved to Singapore in 2011.

The couple say their children, Isabel and Alfonso, three, had no problems fitting in from the get-go.

In Singapore, because everyone spoke English, Isabel did not have a problem communicating with her school mates. Even Chinese has not been an issue. Her mother made it a point to read Chinese books to her when they lived in Peru and would look for Chinese programmes on cable television for her to watch.

When Isabel came to Singapore, her Chinese language teacher said she was at first shy and looked away when questions were asked.

But now, she raises her hand and speaks in Mandarin like the other children.

Ms Ong says she is relieved: "I was scared she would come back and say she didn't like Chinese."

Language is an important way for Ms Ong and Mr Gonzales to share their culture with their children.

Says Mr Gonzales: "We want them to have good exposure to Singapore culture. But we also want them to know that part of their identity is Peruvian. One way of doing that is teaching the language."

The diligent father reads Spanish story books to his children twice a week and teaches them Spanish words using flash cards.

But Isabel, who has not been back to Peru since 2011, has also picked up a fourth language - Singlish - from her friends.

"We tried to teach her proper English, but what was taught was undone in school," says Ms Ong, shaking her head.

But the parents do not seem to mind too much that their daughter's English has taken a local turn.

"I'm fine with it as long as she is able to switch to speaking proper English when the situation arises," adds Ms Ong.

When asked what her favourite food is, Isabel answers in her Singaporean accent: "Spaghetti with tomato sauce, croissant, noodles."

Then, with a smile, she adds: "Roti prata."

LEFT OUT OF SCHOOL DISCUSSIONS

Ms Nuraidah Mariko Pathorr Rahman remembers attending a Malay language class at four years old, where food was shared, but she did not get any. When the Singaporean, whose father is Malay and mother is Japanese, asked why she did not get any food, the other children told her: "You're not Malay".

It was then that she began to understand how others viewed her.

In Evergreen Primary School, she says, pupils with physical similarities, such as the same skin tone, would group together for activities or group discussions.

She would be left out, but that never got her down.

"I was quite outspoken so I would just take the initiative to ask to join a group and it would be fine," says the National University of Singapore student, 20, who has yet to declare her major at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Her parents, in their 50s, met in Singapore when her mother, Ms Chiseko Hayashi, came here to work in the 1980s.

Her father Pathorr Rahman Saini is a tennis coach.

Ms Nuraidah, who has lived in Singapore all her life and attended local schools such as Tanjong Katong Girls' School and Anglo-Chinese Junior College, says she goes back to Japan to visit her mother's family at least once every year. As she speaks fluent Japanese, she feels comfortable there, but says it is not her home.

"To call a place home, it's more than just the blood in us," she says. Home, she adds, is Singapore, where she "knows the story of the country, the goals of the people and their concerns".

She has helped to organise youth camps and was part of the ChildAid concert in 2010 which raises money for The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund and The Business Times Budding Artists Fund.

Mr Pathorr says the only time he was worried about her fitting in was when she was in primary school. The family, who is Muslim, usually eats Japanese food at home and he was worried his daughter could not get used to the food in the school canteen.

"But she came back very happy and told us she ate nasi lemak, or mee siam, so we stopped worrying," he says of his only child.

The only thing that used to frustrate her about being of mixed-parentage was being called Chinese, says MsNuraidah. "I was frustrated that people couldn't tell the difference between Japanese, Korean and Chinese."

But with time, she has made her peace with that. "If your attributes don't match Malay or Japanese, they will try and categorise you as something else."

But what makes her Singaporean is not her physical appearance, says Ms Nuraidah.

"I spent 20 years of my life here. I care about what happens here."

NETBALLER PROUD TO REPRESENT SINGAPORE

Singapore won the gold medal at the Asian Netball Championship in Sri Lanka last year and, as the national anthem played, Shelby Koh, who plays wing attack, says she was hit with a deep sense of pride.

"I think being in the national team is a huge part of what made me realise how much I love it here," says the 18-year-old Singaporean, whose father is Singaporean and mother, Australian.

"There is a sense of pride that you can't really explain when you are standing with your team singing the national anthem right before an international tournament, let alone when you win it."

Her family lived in Singapore for a year when she was a baby, before moving to Perth, where she grew up.

When she was about 14 years old, her mother was offered a job in Singapore and moved here with Shelby and her youngest sister Kaitlin, 16. Mum Andrea, 52, is a teacher at an international school.

Her three older sisters and her businessman father, Mr Jerry Koh, 59, remained in Perth.

In 2010, she enrolled in the Singapore Sports School. In 2011, she transferred to St Joseph's Institution International because she did not like the boarding school aspect of the sports school and was a grade below what she should have been.

She also did not enjoy the two hours of supervised study every night.

"That is not me at all," says the 175cm-tall netballer.

Shelby says she was upset about coming to Singapore at first because it meant being away from her Australian friends, but she has grown to love it here. Her father and sisters are still based in Perth and she visits them at least once a year.

She also noticed many differences between teens in Australia and Singapore when she first came.

"Everyone gets tutored here. In Australia, nobody gets tutored," says Shelby, who speaks with an Australian accent.

She also noted that it was the norm for students to get part-time jobs in Australia, but not so the students in Singapore.

Despite the cultural differences, she was able to fit in quite well, particularly because of netball.

"They definitely formed another group of Singaporean friends," says Shelby of her teammates.

After training, she often hangs out with them at hawker centres. In particular, she will look for Indian food. Very often, because of her pan-Asian looks, stall holders will politely warn her that the food is spicy.

But she says: "I love Indian food, even if it's spicy."

While she is often asked where she is from, she becomes irritated only when she is dealing with government agencies such as the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority.

"The officers ask me if I'm Singaporean, after they have seen my pink identity card.

"To confirm, they also ask if I have a red passport," she says incredulously.

While loving Indian food and bubble tea, which she drinks once every few weeks, are part of her Singaporean identity, she says there is more to being a Singaporean than food.

"To me, being a Singaporean means immersing myself in different cultures, learning about different parts of the world and, at the same time, exposing others to customs that I have experienced overseas," says Shelby, who is dating a Singaporean Indian. "Being open to the world," she adds.

"It means having a sense of pride in and loyalty to this island and appreciating all of the opportunities it offers. And just being grateful that I have another beautiful place I can call home."

Opening eyes to good governance

Apr 06, 2013

What is high-quality government? Research on the delivery of good governance tends to assume uncritically that it goes hand in hand with democracy. That is not a fact, says American academic Francis Fukuyama who, in a recent essay, says two factors - state capacity and bureaucratic autonomy - are critical regardless of the political system. More work is needed to measure governance, which Professor Fukuyama defines as "a government's ability to make and enforce rules, and to deliver services". Hence, an authoritarian regime can be well governed just as a democracy can be badly run. In his response below, Professor Kishore Mahbubani agrees that democracy is a desirable goal but it should not be confused with good governance. Measuring processes is vital but the ultimate gauge is a basic question: Are people better off?

By Kishore Mahbubani


FRANCIS Fukuyama has done the West an enormous favour with his essay titled What Is Governance? He is subtly introducing a distinction between democracy and good governance, a distinction which is almost inconceivable in Western minds.

To put it bluntly, democracy is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for good governance. And yes, it is possible to have good governance without democracy.

Anyone who doubts this should look at the record of China's government over the past 30 years. It is not perfect but it has lifted more people out of poverty, educated more people, increased their lifespans and generated the world's largest middle class. No other society in human history has improved human welfare as much as the Chinese government. It would be insane to deny that China has enjoyed "good governance".

The reason why Western minds cannot state this obvious fact is that they believe that good governance without democracy is as inconceivable as a semi-pregnant woman. Yet, as Professor Fukuyama delicately argues in his essay, it is "more of a theory than an empirically demonstrated fact" that "the current orthodoxy in the development community" is right in believing that "democracy and good governance are mutually supportive".

For the record, to avoid misunderstanding, let me emphasise that democracy is a desirable goal.

I do not want to live in a non-democracy. This is why China too will eventually become a democracy, especially after it has developed the world's largest middle class. The destination is not in doubt but the route and timing are.

This is why it is essential to draw a clear distinction between democracy and good governance and try to understand what good governance is. Prof Fukuyama's essay introduces many key elements we have to pay attention to. These include procedural measures, input measures, output measures and measures of bureaucratic autonomy.

But these measures are not enough. They focus more on the methods of good governance than the results. To state the obvious, there is no point having the best processes in place if the results are bad. At the end of the day, the people want to know if they are better off.

Prof Fukuyama asserts that "the quality of government is the result of an interaction between capacity and autonomy". And on the next page, he shows that Singapore stands highest on the axes of capacity and autonomy.

Curiously, he does this without any explanation or reference to Singapore in his article. Having worked in the Singapore civil service for 33 years, I believe that Singapore has done well because it scores high on capacity and on the culture of service.

The Singapore civil service has performed brilliantly but it has not done so because it is the most autonomous. It has done so because it has imbibed a culture which focuses the minds of civil servants on improving the livelihood of Singaporeans.

Sadly, the Singapore success story has never been properly studied because most Western minds - with their usual black-and-white mindset - cannot conceive of "good governance" as an independent and desirable good.

The greatest contribution that Prof Fukuyama's essay can make is to open the Western mind to new possibilities. And when the Western mind opens up, it will discover a treasure trove of examples of good governance, a treasure trove which has become even more relevant to the West given the travails that both the American and European governments are having in delivering even basic levels of good governance to their populations.

The writer is the dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

His piece and the original commentary by Professor Francis Fukuyama can be found on The Governance journal blog http://www.governancejournal.net

[A response]

Is Mahbubani too optimistic about Asia’s rise?

Last month, Governance published  Francis Fukuyama’s commentary “What is governance?”  On March 26 we posted a response from Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kwan Yew School at the National University of Singapore.  Dean Mahbubani’s response was also published in the Singapore Straits Times.  In this column, reprinted from the April 8 Straits Times, Sun Xi replies to Dean Mahbubani:

PROFESSOR Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, has been described as “the muse of the Asian century”. He is widely known for his famous idea, “the rise of Asia and the decline of the West”.

His full perspectives on the idea can be intensively explored in his books – The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift Of Global Power To The East, and The Great Convergence: Asia, The West And The Logic Of One World.

As an Asian youth, I am actually very receptive to his idea of the rise of Asia, since it gives us an unprecedented dose of confidence in our future.  However, Prof Mahbubani’s idea also casts a doubt in my mind: Is he too optimistic about Asia’s rise? 

As a matter of fact, his argument is mainly based on the evidence that some of the major Asian emerging countries (China, India and Indonesia) have been enjoying rapid economic growth and relative success in recent decades. However, I question if Asia as a whole is also rising comprehensively and sustainably in terms of political, social and cultural power.

On March 26, The Governance journal blog published an article by Prof Mahbubani in response to American academic Francis Fukuyama’s essay, What Is Governance’.  Prof Mahbubani welcomed Professor Fukuyama’s distinction between democracy and good governance, particularly in the Asian context. As I scrutinised Prof Mahbubani’s article, I started to wonder if he was too optimistic again.

Although Prof Mahbubani mentioned in his article that “democracy is a desirable goal”, his key arguments over-emphasised democracy as just a means of governance.

This is evident from his claim: “To put it bluntly, democracy is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for good governance. And, yes, it is possible to have good governance without democracy.”

Unfortunately, this point may be easily misunderstood by the public as: democracy is regarded as dispensable or optional, so long as there is good governance.

On the contrary, I want to re-emphasise that democracy is not only a means to governance, but also an extremely critical social development goal.

In its proclamation of Independence in 1965, Singapore proposed the blueprint of constructing a nation with democracy, independence, freedom, justice, fairness, equality, welfare and well-being.

Even the People’s Republic of China, which always firmly declares “building socialism with Chinese characteristics”, clearly states its national goal of “building a prosperous, democratic and civilised socialist country” in its Constitution. Therefore, it is very obvious that even if there is good governance, democracy is still an inevitable objective to pursue.

China was cited by Prof Mahbubani to support his idea. He commented in his article that “anyone who doubts this (it is possible to have good governance without democracy) should look at the record of China’s government over the past 30 years”.

As a mainland-born Chinese, I should be very proud if China’s so-called unique development model can be considered as a sustainable paradigm of good governance.

However, Prof Mahbubani’s statement raises a pertinent question: Why should we look only at the past 30 years of China’s governance but not the past 40 or even 50 years’

Obviously, China has been enjoying fast economic growth over the past 30 years since the opening up of its economy in the late 1970s. Nonetheless, China and its people suffered greatly during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and the earlier Great Leap Forward years (1958-1960).

What type of governance had existed in China during the 30 years between the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the opening up of the economy in 1978′

Yes, democracy may not necessarily ensure good governance, but in my view, it should at its minimum prevent the rise of “evil governance”.

In addition, Prof Mahbubani wrote that “no other society in human history has improved human welfare as much as the Chinese government”.

I personally agree but this judgment comes a bit too early.

It may not be reasonable to compare economic performance between developed countries and emerging countries simply in terms of the speed of growth as it is similar to comparing the growth rate between the elderly and the young.

Although the West is currently experiencing certain crises, isn’t it unfair to blame the Western model of democracy as a scapegoat? The United States has been prosperous for hundreds of years, with its democratic system as one element underpinning its success.

Perhaps China did not need democracy for the past 30 years during its initial phase of wealth creation. Nevertheless, without a functional democratic system in place in the near future to ensure equal participation from the public in the wealth allocation, China will not be able to build an inclusive society based on fairness, justice and less corruption.

Singapore is another example which Prof Mahbubani favours. His article stated: “The Singapore civil service has performed brilliantly but it has not done so because it is the most autonomous. It has done so because it has imbibed a culture which focuses the minds of civil servants on improving the livelihood of Singaporeans.”

In fact, the professor has listed the key factors of Singapore’s success as MPH, namely Meritocracy, Pragmatism and Honesty. I would never deny the importance of MPH, but it should not be taken to mean that Singapore does not require democracy.

If MPH is really sufficient for Singapore, then the public support for the ruling party in the recent elections and by-elections would have not declined continuously and significantly.

Although it is unclear what kind of democracy is best for Singapore, electorates have repeatedly used their ballots to indicate a preference for more political competition as well as greater checks and balances on the ruling government.

Asians should respect universal values such as democracy and human rights. It would not be beneficial to overly emphasise Asia’s uniqueness which may only lead to selective interpretation or even misinterpretation of democracy.

North Korea may call itself the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” but the rest of the world is left in no doubt that it is a totalitarian and Stalinist dictatorship.

Furthermore, Asia itself is facing crises. Dozens of Asian countries are still struggling with poverty; while the nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran are seeking wars.

Moreover, the simmering territorial disputes in the East China Sea and South China Sea can potentially trigger unrest in the region and impact global security.

Hopefully, most of such crises in Asia are just the exception and Prof Mahbubani’s great “Asian Dream” will not turn out to be just a beautiful mirage.

The writer, a graduate of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, is an investment analyst based in Singapore. He was born in China and became a Singapore permanent resident in 2011.

[Is democracy is necessary for good governance? How does democracy lead to good governance? ]

An atheist 'sent by God'

Mar 31, 2013

By Lee Wei Ling


I have a patient, R, who has been under my care since 2006. In 2008, she ran into a serious non-medical problem.

She worked for someone who ran tuition centres, and her duties included taking children from one tuition centre to another and calling the pupils' parents.

She was paid only $750 a month, but had to spend her own money to ferry the children by taxi, and she was not reimbursed for the telephone calls made on her own cellphone. She was naive, and her boss exploited her.

Strapped for cash, she took money from the fees paid by the parents to pay off loan sharks. She had intended to repay the tuition centre from her future earnings, but before she could do so, her boss found out.

He threatened to report her to the police if she did not reimburse him immediately. Although her parents repaid the money on her behalf, the boss lodged a police report anyway and she was charged.

I asked a senior psychiatrist to see her. After examining her, he agreed that she was in no medical condition to serve out a prison term.

The law firm I approached agreed to help her pro bono. Their representation and the medical reports helped reduce her sentence from a jail term to a fine.

A few days after she was fined, on Maundy Thursday in 2008, I received a tiny parcel from R. I opened it only on Good Friday after being prompted to do so by an e-mail from R.

The e-mail read in part: "I just want to say a big thank you for going that extra mile for me... My parents are very grateful for your continuous help and support all this while... You are really what the phrase says, 'A person sent by God'."

Then I unwrapped the gift she had sent. I found a clay tablet inscribed with the words: "It doesn't matter WHERE you go in life... WHAT you do... Or how much you have... It's WHO you have beside you."

I thought it ironic that she had described me, an atheist, as "a person sent by God". So I forwarded her e-mail to a friend, the managing partner of the law firm whose lawyers had helped her. "God sends an atheist!" I remarked to my friend.

He replied: "God does have a hand in everything, He works in wondrous ways and His unseen hand is everywhere."

Fearing I had offended a believer, I replied: "You are not an atheist? I guess I must be more careful to whom I make my cynical remarks."

"Don't need to be," my friend replied. "You are among friends here. Went to ACS (Anglo-Chinese School) for so many years, hard to be an atheist after that."

On May 12 that year, soon after R had given me the clay tablet, the deadly Sichuan earthquake occurred and my mother suffered a major stroke.

After she spent several weeks in the hospital with no sign of improvement, we brought her home and nursed her in her own bedroom. My father moved his bed to the connecting room, which was his study.

One day, I found the clay tablet that R had given me stuck on the door of my mother's bedroom. The Muslim Indonesian maid must have put it there, thinking it might bring us comfort.

My mother passed away in October 2010. My father moved his bed back to their room. The clay tablet is still on the door. R's epilepsy is under control and she has a job she is happy with. And I remain an atheist.

But I continue to take solace in this story, most especially at Easter. In this cynical world, there are still people who want to do what is right, even if doing so will not profit them personally, as my psychiatrist friend and the lawyers who defended R pro bono show. This gives me hope that we can develop into a compassionate society no matter what our religion, or whether or not we believe in God.

The writer is director of the National Neuroscience Institute.

[I find it surprising that she doubts that altruism exists separate from and independent of faith. :-)]

Coming home to a 'messier' Singapore

Mar 31, 2013

Returning at this stage of nation's evolution means discoveries and, maybe, stronger roots

By Tracy Quek


After almost a decade abroad as foreign correspondents for this paper, my husband and I returned home earlier this month.

In our first weeks back, we wandered around the neighbourhoods we had grown up in, revisited our old hangouts and ventured into less familiar localities.

On the whole, we found the general lay of the land not too different from our memories of it.

There were changes, of course. New developments had sprung up where vacant lots once were. Food prices had shot up. Malls and trains were certainly more crowded than we remembered.

The number of foreigners working and living in the heartland had also grown. I was amused to find young Western expatriates shopping at NTUC FairPrice, getting a trim at one of those express haircut salons, and dining at kopitiams in suburban malls among ordinary Singaporeans. I recalled seeing fewer of them in the heartland in the past.

Over many welcome home meals with friends, some asked partly in jest but also seriously, if we were already regretting coming back.

They did not have to spell it out for us. We had kept up with happenings back in Singapore while in China and later the United States even as we worked to understand and analyse the broad political, societal and economic changes unfolding in the two world powers.

On the job, we covered natural disasters and protests, witnessed abject poverty as well as environmental degradation, wrote about the social impact of near economic meltdowns, and mused about the limits of democratic as well as authoritarian political systems.

Compared with the newspaper headlines out of China and the US over the past decade, the ones out of Singapore were tamer. I, for one, was glad for it; it meant stability at home and that our families and friends were safe and secure.

But over the past two or three years, in particular, things started to change.

From transport to housing policies, we read about how things were not running as smoothly as before.

Online, people were unrestrained in expressing anger and dissatisfaction, especially with how government officials had handled problems.

Some of the vitriol stunned me. I was used to reading all sorts of extreme anti-establishment online commentary in the US, but I was taken aback by the intensity of bitterness and resentment among some Singaporeans towards the ruling party, individual office holders and the mainstream press.

Over a farewell lunch with some Washington, DC-based Asia analysts, we wondered aloud about the increasing political and social messiness we were observing at home.

One of them chuckled and said: "This is what countries go through all the time, you guys are finally normal!"

We had a good laugh but it set me thinking.

The US is a vast country with more than 200 years of history and evolution. It has been through and is still going through war and political upheaval the likes of which a less resilient nation might not have survived.

Americans are used to the messiness of democracy and a democratic political system. They value the cacophony of views for they believe that is what makes American society so vibrant, innovative and unique.

But what is normal for the US and other mature democracies is relatively new for Singapore. The question is whether this new normal will work out in Singapore's favour, and if all segments of society will be able to come together to harness this messiness in a productive way.

A more personal question is how I, as a recent returnee to Singapore and as someone who has seen up close the merits and demerits of "messiness" elsewhere, can be sensitive to the new realities.

I have no answers at the moment. It would not be fair to venture any before we properly reconnect with home after such a long time away.

But one observation I can make now is that having the opportunity to live in two countries with very different political and economic systems has irrevocably changed how I view Singapore.

I guess you could call it perspective.

Our problems may have become more complex and, certainly, various missteps and blunders have been made, resulting in an erosion of trust and confidence among Singaporeans.

But it also strikes me that we are still in a far better and stronger position than many other countries to fix problems and find a new equilibrium for the times.

For one thing, Singapore is not as financially hamstrung as the US government and is able to tackle infrastructure problems quickly. In Washington, DC, ageing roads are filled with potholes and broken escalators take 10 months to fix because of budget and other constraints.

Coming home at this stage of Singapore's evolution, there will be many emotions to sort out and new discoveries to be made.

I stand at the beginning of my own homecoming cautiously optimistic that the journey will be enlightening and meaningful, and that it will lead to a deeper sense of rootedness.

At this time, I find these words of the late US senator Robert F. Kennedy especially apt.

"Like it or not we live in interesting times," he said in 1966, during a trip to South Africa when he spoke out against apartheid.

"They are times of danger and uncertainty but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. And everyone here will ultimately be judged - will ultimately judge himself - on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."

The context may be different but the spirit of his exhortation rings true for me.

Chinese raise a stink over commuters' foul behaviour

Mar 31, 2013

LETTER FROM BEIJING

By Kor Kian Beng China Bureau Chief In Beijing


Two incidents made Chinese commuters cry foul recently - foul- smelling, that is.

People who boarded a Beijing subway train on March 17 were hit by the stink of excrement. Spotting the obnoxious pile on the floor of the train carriage, they pinched their noses and scrambled for seats as far away as possible. Photos swiftly made their way online.

One of those who posted photos was a commuter known only as Mr Dan, who got on the train at the Wangjing West station on the Line 13 route heading to the Dongzhimen interchange.

"The terrible smell hit me the moment I boarded the train. I thought it was odd that the seats were empty and there was a pile of poop on the floor," he recounted on his Sina Weibo microblog.

The commuters had to put up with the stink for another four stops until the train reached Dongzhimen.

A subway station employee told Beijing News daily: "As the trains stop for only a short while at each station, there is not enough time for our staff to clean up until the train reaches the interchange."

He added that there had been such incidents before and that children who could not control the call of nature were responsible.

In the other incident last month, a rubbish bin became an instant toilet for a teenage schoolboy in southern Guangzhou city.

Incredulous commuters took photos of the boy in school uniform relieving himself atop the bin as a train station worker tried to stop them.

[Note: The train station worker "tried to stop them", as in tried to stop the (incredulous) commuters from taking photos of the boy relieving himself. NOT tried to stop the schoolboy from relieving himself.]

Netizens were generally sympathetic. The boy was just doing what came naturally in an "urgent" situation, they said, blaming the train operator for not providing enough toilets. Some had some mock praise for train station staff.

"It means the rubbish bins are clean enough for the boy to want to sit on them," said one netizen.

[And that explains it. Even the train station staff was sympathetic.]

Many did not find the incidents amusing. They said they showed a lack of social etiquette despite decades of modernisation and growth that have turned China into the world's second-largest economy.

Complaints about poor social behaviour have been on the rise, in part because of rural migrants flocking to the cities, which in turn leads to crowded trains and raised tension.

In a poll by a Beijing subway operator last December, netizens listed their pet peeves in this order: fighting over seats, talking loudly, littering and eating on trains.

Accountant Li Bin, 39, recently witnessed a fight between two women who had knocked into each other. "I saw one grabbing the other's head and knocking it onto her kneecap," she said.

Technician Tang Qingning, 39, found himself seated next to a man who feasted on a bucket of fried chicken throughout their hour- long train journey last month. "To make it worse, another passenger was eating buns non-stop. Luckily they didn't litter," he said.

[Baby steps.]

Commuters say one reason for bad or inconsiderate behaviour is the lack of enforcement. Beijing train stations put up a list of don'ts for commuters but there are no penalties for those who ignore them.

The notice only says that "those flouting the rules will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and may be referred to the policy and relevant departments".

Beijing hotel employee Chen Xiyang, 21, who commutes to work by train, believes the authorities should impose heavy fines to stop bad behaviour.

Others like Ms Li think good behaviour starts with education. "Schools should play a more pro-active role. We should scrap Math

Olympiad classes and hold more civic morality lessons instead," she suggested. "There is hope only if our young learn how not to be a nuisance to others."

Like learning when to hold it in, for a start.

Integrating foreigners isn’t a lost cause

Integrating foreigners isn’t a lost cause

TODAYonline

On a recent trip to present a research paper in Tokyo, I was surprised to not hear a single mobile phone ringing or a commuter talking loudly on the subway. Despite the train coach being notoriously crowded, the quiet was deafening.

27 March

On a recent trip to present a research paper in Tokyo, I was surprised to not hear a single mobile phone ringing or a commuter talking loudly on the subway. Despite the train coach being notoriously crowded, the quiet was deafening.

Just as I was starting to wonder why the Japanese were behaving so considerately towards others, I heard announcements, first in Japanese then in English, over the sound system that all mobile phones must be switched to silent mode inside the coach.

What can we learn from the Japanese subway management to help our foreign friends better integrate in Singapore? Our Government has in recent times been sounding the refrain that foreigners whom Singapore welcomes to its shores must do their part in learning and adapting to our culture. Will this be a call in vain?

From a behavioural economist’s view, I believe not. It is in one’s self-interest not to deviate from the social norms of the society we live in.

The assumption that man is rational and self-interested is Economics 101. Indeed, it is what distinguishes economics from other social sciences such as sociology. While social scientists have long frowned upon such a simplistic view, it is only recently that behavioural economists have also challenged the validity of this assumption.

THE GENEROUS DICTATOR?

A simple way to test this assumption is by running a dictator game experiment. In this game, one player, known as the dictator, is asked to allocate any amount of his money to an anonymous recipient. According to the common assumption, standard economic theory predicts that the dictator would give nothing to the recipient.

Over the past 30 years, researchers across the globe have conducted countless dictator game experiments. The outcome, as summarised by Professor Colin Camerer of the California Institute of Technology, showed that, contrary to expectations, the majority of dictators gave away between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of their money.

The finding puzzled many economists. Borrowing ideas from neighbouring sciences in particular psychology, behavioural economists like Professor James Andreoni of the University of California San Diego sought to offer the explanation that people gain a “warm glow” when they sacrificed their own material benefit for the benefit of others.

According to Professors Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher of the University of Zurich, we feel compassionate towards those who are worse off and giving to them helps to manage this feeling and improve our own happiness. Fundamentally, therefore, even giving is still a selfish act.

Recently, competing explanations have also been proposed. One school of thought argues that giving meets people’s innate desire to avoid appearing selfish.

We conducted an experiment at SIM Global Education to prove or debunk the existence of this ‘negative image avoidance’. We asked recipients to write a message to dictators after having received a token sum of money from them.

By default, the message would be given to the dictators for free. However, the dictators could pay the experimenter to stop the message from being passed back to them.

One might argue that the recipients’ negative impressions probably did not matter much to those dictators who chose to give little in the first place. But this was not the case.

THE DISAPPROVAL OF OTHERS

The dictators spent about 43 per cent of their own money that could have been earned from participating in the experiment to prevent the expected negative messages from reaching them.

Even though they could simply get the messages for free and refrain from reading them, the mere thought of receiving something negative propelled them to give up about half of their money to ensure the messages did not get to them at all. In other words, the self-interested incentive to avoid knowing the disapproval of others was strong.

The recent unabated debate about “locals vs foreigners” hinges on the assumption that there exists a common set of social norms and culture unique to Singapore.

If to avoid being perceived negatively — or at least avoid knowing that one is being viewed negatively — is innate to human nature, then spelling out consistently and constantly what the expected and desired behaviours are could well help foreigners adjust and integrate in this country.

Even in a mature and homogenous society such as Japan, reminders of clearly defined expectations of behaviour are repeatedly given to people so as to induce the desired manners.

The Government and Singaporeans alike can do their part in defining what is considered “Singaporean”, and what is not, and roll out programmes to systematically communicate this message.

While this may not be an exact science, going by behavioural economics, there is a chance that Singapore might just be successful in its integration efforts.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Zhang Jianlin is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at SIM Global Education.

The growth of a quality society

The growth of a quality society

TODAYonline

28 Mar 2013

Devadas Krishnadas

Firms which emphasise profits or market share are the most likely to perform poorly and suffer from short-term thinking, so British economist John Kay argues in his book, Obliquity.

As The Financial Times commented in its review: “Strange as it may seem, overcoming geographic obstacles, winning decisive battles or meeting global business targets are the type of goals often best achieved when pursued indirectly.

“This is the idea of Obliquity. Oblique approaches are most effective in difficult terrain, or where outcomes depend on interactions with other people.”

Kay argues that when it comes to complex problems, we often do not know about the nature of our problems to introduce effective direct action solutions. Indeed, we often misdiagnose causation, and this is not made better by simplification of reality in the developing of models or viewing problems through cultural frameworks.

I earlier made the case for an IES sector — Ideas, Entrepreneurs and Start-Ups. The challenge is that we cannot simply expect a random unit of labour to become an active IES participant. That process is a generational one — and is wrapped up within a spectrum of dimensions which have no easy answers, such as how to boost the total fertility rate to maximise each generation’s creative potentia.

In this final part of the series, I argue that to sustain quality growth over time, we must find ways to grow the quality of our society.

We should supplement short-term direct attacks to achieving economic success, with longer term indirect strategies to populate the IES sector with creative minds bursting with innovation, and enlightened risk takers to start future global brands here.

SOCIAL INVESTMENTS, NOT COSTS

Until fairly recently, the Government has seen social policies, other than education, as a cost and not an investment. This was probably for four reasons.

First has been a rigid adherence to the principles of self-reliance and the family as the first line of support. This meant that the individual and his or her family should bear the greater share of the burden to meet their social needs. The State did its best to be the source of last resort for assistance.

Second, the principle of meritocracy fed into a larger framework of belief that it was fair that the best accrued the most gains, and it was not fair to unduly socialise collective costs for the rest at the former’s expense. Over the past two decades, the top income tax rate has fallen almost by half, while regressive taxation such as the Goods and Services Tax has been introduced and increased over the same period.

Third has been the difficulty in showing a positive cause-and-effect correlation in social support systems. In other words, it was difficult to demonstrate that boosting social safety nets lead to positive results that out-sized dollar expenditure. This was very much due to a mindset that perceived social safety nets as welfare, rather than as a means to generate human capital.

Fourth, there was an over-dependency in the use of the price mechanism to achieve policy aims.

An example would be financial incentive-driven marriage and procreation packages, where the underlying assumption is that at some point, a clearing price would be reached where individuals would decide to get married and have babies. The evidence of unrelenting decline in TFR failed to deter this mode of thinking.

BUILD SOCIAL CAPITAL

However, if we were to switch mindsets to view the public finance of social policies and social safety nets as investments rather than costs, we could end up with different outcomes.

We have the examples of Finland and its neighbouring Scandinavian countries as examples. These have been exhaustively studied and discussed by our policy-makers so the lessons of investing in social capital are not unknown to us, nor are the dangers of fiscal irresponsibility of many Western European countries with welfare systems.

The mistake to make is that the one implies the other.

We must overcome the four impediments to switching mindsets and take the risk that achieving social outcomes, such as boosting marriage and fertility rates and generating innovation and creativity, are predicated first on putting in place conditions conducive for socialising and learning.

The process of doing so is neither direct nor simple.

Our labour force works some of the longest hours among developed countries. Our education system is one of the world’s most competitive. Our costs of housing are high and rising. The wages of the workforce, for most income deciles, have been growing slowly when at all. Inflation has been elevated and persistently so.

Competition makes the climb up the career ladder difficult and stressful. All of these characteristics work against conditions for socialising, which is the premise for the higher-order actions of marriage and fertility.

We cannot do something about everything — but there are several things we can do.

WORK TO LIVE, NOT LIVE TO WORK

First, regulation should be introduced to limit the hours worked by all occupations, including PMETS and non-union labour. Protect the private lives of workers so that they have time to live their lives. We must create a culture where workers work to live, and not live to work.

As was noted in Part 1 of this series, the poor wage share to gross domestic product (GDP) shows that firms already retain the lion’s share of GDP as profits. Firms are not therefore in a strong position to make the case that they would suffer competitively if workers worked to a limit of eight hours per day.

It is important to make it mandatory to compensate workers for overtime. This is to discourage the situation where employers, facing tightening labour conditions, pressure their workers to work longer rather than invest or reinvent to make their firms more productive.

‘US’ PLUS ‘I’

Second, we need to move from a mental model that individual gains are derived mostly from individual responsibility, to one where individual gains are best arrived at through collective responsibility supplementing individual effort.

We have shown that we are not averse to spending large sums on physical infrastructure for education at the State level, and large sums on tuition and enrichment at the household level. We must ask if our excessive emphasis on individual merit through hyper-competition is creating more harm than good.

Finland has a high rate of entrepreneurship and a strong knowledge industry base. It is arguable that this was made possible because people are more willing to take risks, knowing that failing need not imply financial ruin for themselves or their families. This is because of strong and comprehensive social safety nets and State-supported social support systems such as education.

We have to use legislation to restrain our impulse to indulge in “arms races” in education. In Finland there are no arms races in education not only because the standard of public education is so high, but also because State support for parents of either gender to take care of the family over a multi-year period helps create a balanced view of life.

Third, we should consider the benefits of national level risk pooling for healthcare. Our costs of healthcare, particularly for catastrophic health crisis, are high and rising. By risk pooling, we can lower the insurance premiums for every Singaporean and absorb the costs of covering those with pre-existing conditions.

As a First World country, we can provide peace of mind for all, especially for those considering having children, that they need not fear the unexpected onset of a catastrophic illness in their family or unforeseen condition in a newborn.

Together, through risk pooling, we are better off than insisting on the individual to assume the costs of his or her personalised risk.

FOR SUCCESS, CELEBRATE FAILURE

Fourth, we have to change our thinking about success and failure. We are addicted to the idea of success where success means not failing. This is a false and dangerous idea. Success is usually a function of iterated failure.

Our misguided notion of success gets in the way of learning, distorts life choices and induces risk aversion. It gets in the way of learning because it encourages students to study to score instead of studying to learn. The recent discussion on the decline in the study of literature in schools is instructive.

It distorts aggregate social outcomes as it affects how we individually prioritise choices in life. Work and career building are seen as nearly mutually exclusive and, in some cases, perhaps even substitutable for relationships and family.

It induces risk aversion because we do not want to fail. But to build the IES, we need to be comfortable with “failure” and even celebrate it.

As much as policy and legislation can accomplish, it will never be enough. The greater share of effort in growing in quality as a society must be made by ourselves, not the Government. Public policy merely reflects the priorities, values and aspirations of the society.

The future is malleable. If we decide to be a quality society, we can do it. The decision to do so must first be made within ourselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Devadas Krishnadas, a social and political commentator, is the director of a foresight consultancy. This is the last of a three-part series.