Singapore is the only city state in the world; we are unique in almost every sense of the word and our politics reflect that.
One of the aspects of our great country which has won international acclaim is our housing and urban planning. Within 30 years, the percentage of the population living in government flats soared from 30% - 80%. Every household given electricity, clean running water and of course frequent waste disposal. Even the composition of ethnic groups in each block where engineered to reflect the national proportion.
This is a stark contrast from the 1950s where under almost non existent colonial rule; crime was rampant together with gang fights, tuberculoses and unemployment.
The motivation to mount a national public housing program was largely deteriorating physical living conditions, with their attendant social, psychological and health problems.
I believe that the Housing Development Board flats and various schemes also helped or forced many people to go out and get jobs in the then booming light industries. By instilling a monthly paying system, people are forced to go out and get regularly paying jobs, and by displacing the people from their land and splitting the then normal three tiered families, removed the tendency for the people to fall back or rely on their families. These factors together with others provided the drive for people to go out and work, the government though various polices, made the county inviting to MNCs and factories to come and set up shop here.
Modern facilities, electricity, clean running water, dropping crime rates and employment benefited everyone right?
One of aims of this urban project was not doubt to boost or kick start the economy, the targeted groups were the young, mobile and what has come to be know as nucleus families.
When the first few blocks of flats were built, they were two room flats, big enough for a ‘family’. What happened to the elderly, the handicapped dependents, and children of large families? Intergeneration or intra family relations could have stepped in to lend a hand, but the balloting/arbitrary and first come first serve system to allocating flats effectively killed this possibility by scattering every nucleus. During the first few years of HDB, a few elderly committed suicide because they couldn’t adept to high rise life.
What about the minorities, the now ‘broken up’ Malay families? Now located relatively further away from each other added burdens like difficulties in finding childcare due to their strict religious practices.
The Indian family, with the retrenched sole breadwinner having to under cut the selling price of his flat when he was downgrading because he could only sell his flat to another Indian family due to the Racial Integration Act?
These are a few examples of those who suffered and sacrificed for the greater progress of the rest of the nation. The narrowly defined formal rationality of economic advancement of the nation set forth by our leaders considered them collateral damage.
Let us hope, dream and believe that one day, we can see a Singapore where one man’s dream doesn’t have to come at other man’s loss.
Vernon
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