The Indians have it

India was and is never a great financial centre. When one talks about financial centres, it is often about New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong and even Singapore. It is never about Mumbai or some other Indian cities. Singapore is a financial centre in SE Asia and with great ambition to be a world financial centre to overtake Hong Kong or constantly in competition with Hong Kong for the prestigious position. This did not happen yesterday but for several decades even before 1965.
 
What has happened today is that there is a dearth of Singaporeans in top banking and finance positions. The handful that are still hanging around would soon be passé and with no worthy successors. Very likely some foreigners would replace them in UOB or OCBC. And very likely the foreigners replacing them would be foreign Indian talents.
 
Never without fail, daily, the media would have the faces of top Indian bankers in the news employed by banks in Singapore, both local and foreign banks. This is solid proof that the Indians are great bankers and prized catch for the banking industry. They must be very good. Long gone were the days when Singaporeans were in top positions in local and foreign banks in Singapore. Somehow, somewhere, sometime, there was an eclipse, and all the Singaporean brains were eclipsed and no longer good enough to be top bankers. At the way things are moving, in another decade at most there would be no Singaporeans helming banks in Singapore, not even local banks. This is if the daft continues with their foolish and blind meritocracy regardless of nationalities. Pure unabridged meritocracy will ruin Singapore in this case. The best from the world would simply be too good for Singaporeans. And the Indian best are already well too good to outshine every Singaporeans not only in banking and finance, but in IT, in law, in medicine and in the academia and many other industries.
 
During the time of Goh Keng Swee, there was a deliberate and conscious effort to put Singaporeans in top positions in banks operating here. Unless such an affirmative policy is implemented again, Singapore as a top financial centre will be a financial centre without Singaporeans except newly printed Singaporeans.
 
Would the govt think there is a need to act on this trend? Would the govt think it is a strategic interest to want to have Singaporeans to helm local banks and even foreign banks setting up business here? If this is important, strategic, then the govt must act now and quickly. Oops, I remember someone in govt once said, the process has been set in place and in 50 years time we would have our top bankers, top Singaporean bankers in charge. In 50 years time you know what would happen to the banking and finance industry?
 
Let’s not con ourselves. If the govt is serious, it must go back to the policies of Goh Keng Swee and do something positive. For a start, Singaporeans must be assigned to be trained under the Indians running the banks in Singapore and with an open and declared official policy to have Singaporeans as top bankers and running banks operating here. If not, more and more top foreign Indian bankers would find themselves taking over the top positions of banks here simply because they are the best banking talents. Daft Singaporeans have no answer to this and Singapore will bankrupt its pool of Singaporean talent in the banking and finance industry just like in the IT industry and soon the academia. Then it will be a case of by default all top banking positions would be filled by foreigners as there are no Singaporeans with the talent and experience to fill them.
 
Is this a serious problem? It depends on who you are and what you think is important and not important. If the top are only thinking about water taxes and sugar taxes and who is a Malay, you can bet this is not a strategic problem to be worth spending time on.