The rise of the Indian elite class in Singapore

The Indian community used to be one of the most powerful elite class in Singapore during the colonial days. They are second only to the Seranis or Eurasians in power and influence. They were initially transferred from the East India Companies, the unofficial trading arms of the British Empire. And they spoke and wrote English which gave them that special advantage over the non English speaking locals. They were like the extended arm of the British colonial masters.

After the British departed, the Indian elite continued to dominate the civil service and occupied most of the senior positions, in politics, in the judiciary, in the uniform services and in many of the ministries and stats boards.

The dominance of the Indian elite was challenged when the other races took up English education and started to use English as the medium for communication. The public service employment pie was subsequently shared more evenly relative to the racial composition of the population. Even then, the Indian elite still enjoyed a much bigger share of the pie relative to the size of their population.

Today, the Indian elite is entering its golden years in this city. They are everywhere in the top echelon of management, from politics, the govt ministries and to the industries. The Mediacorp has just appointed Walter Fernandez as the Group Editor In Chief. And there is Warren Fernandez, the Editor of the Straits Times and Patrick Daniel as Editor in Chief of the Straits Times. The three of them would have a big say the in content of the Media and wield great influence on what the readers shall read.

In the Cabinet there is the Dep PM and Fin Minister in Tharman, Law and Foreign Affairs Minister in Shanmugam, MEWR in Vivian, and another minister Iswaran in the PM’s office, also Second Minister in Home Affairs and Trade and Industry.

In the judiciary the Chief Justice is Sundaresh Menon and Indian high court judges have always been a part of the bench. Then there are many prominent senior counsels in practice.

The Chief of Army is MG Ravinder Singh.

Most notable is that the Indian elite distinguished themselves in finance. Other than Tharman as Finance Minister, there is Ravi Menon as MD of MAS. And the CEO of DBS, the national bank, is Piyush Gupta. There are many top Indians in the foreign banks as CEOs or in top management, and also in GIC and Temasek, including Dhanabalan as the latter’s Chairman. Their dominance in finance is unchallenged and this will grow bigger over time.

In the academia there are many prominent professors heading many departments. So is the field of medicine. The Indian elites are everywhere stamping their influence and authority in their respective fields.

The field of IT is more or less dominated by Indian professionals mainly from India. There is however a strange phenomenon, that the local Indians are somehow not very good in IT. And there is an increasing community of very rich Indian PRs and new citizens finding residence in the City. And they brought along their businesses, now the biggest group among the foreign investors here.

The Indian community is now a very formidable force to reckon with in all fields of enterprise in the island and will play an increasing role in the growth and development of the country. Not forgetting we had two past presidents in Nair and Nathan, not counting the numerous very rich individuals among them. Singaporeans will have to be better acquainted with this development and acknowledge the bigger role played by the numerically small Indian community. But this is set to change with CECA and the India Indians finding this island a very conducive and good place to do business and bringing up children.

My First Skool child abuse…No, I am innocent

After viewing the video clips on the child abuse at My First Skool Toa payoh, one cannot but feel the pain of the poor child and the parents. Shit, how could such wickedness still happened in this first world city? How could it happen in broad daylight in front of so many adults and none of them feel any sense of responsibility and guilt to care and protect a helpless child? How could a child be left in the hands of a cruel adult while the rest turned to look the other way?

This incident is the same as the intern that was slapped in front of so many colleagues for so long. And the child abuse will continue if the parents did not have the presence of mind to check on the CCTV, or for some reasons the CCTV tape was not shown to them.

There is no point talking about this any more. The sickness of this society must be put right immediately. Every adult in the school must be sacked right away to put a message across that they cannot turn a blind eye to cruelty against children, helpless and vulnerable children. Not only parents must be made to feel safe when they left their children in schools or childcare centres, the children must be protected from being bullied and tortured behind the backs of their parents. How can parents be at ease to put their children in the care of others, supposedly trained and professionals?

The message that everyone in the school must be responsible for the well being of little children must get across. Not reporting abuses is as good as being accomplice to the vicious attack and guilty of the act.

And the torturers of children must be put behind bars, just like employers beating and torturing maids and foreign workers. This City is sick to the core if such cruelties are not nip in the bud and allowed to continue in childcare centres or schools, or in workplace again and again. Even one more case is one more case too much.

Why is it that no Sinkies will ever stand up to right a wrong, to defend the weak or a wicked act? After so many decades of being conditioned, better not to speak up, just obey, just do as being told, do not defy and oppose authority, this is what Sinkies have become. Not my business, and I did not do it, so I am innocent.

The people, a first world and well educated people, must be empowered to look after themselves, their environment and their neighbours and fellow citizens, especially the weak and helpless. But no, they are all kiasi, kiasu and kia tai chee. Don’t get yourself into trouble, into other people’s trouble. In this child abuse case, it is the wrongdoing of the offending teacher, so not their business.

There is a need to empower the people, educate the people to stand up for their rights and to stand up for what is right and against what is wrong. We are turning a nation of people into unthinking and unfeeling robots that only care about themselves and nothing else.

WP bashing – a smear campaign

Some of you may be aware by now of the consistent and daily bashing of the WP by anonymous bloggers in their comments here and in other blogs. I want to declare that I am not a supporter of any political party. The tactic used is the same as that of the Americans attacking their chosen enemies, schemed by the mind benders, to subtly plant negative thoughts into the heads of the innocent readers. No, the readers do not believe or agree with the bashings, but the idea is planted in their subconscious and will eventually influence their thoughts in the most unexpected moment.

These are the works of highly trained professionals and executed by the runners. Everyday without fail, they will post things like WP is sleeping, WP is not doing anything, WP has few good people, WP is incapable of forming the next govt etc etc.

The work is not done by one individual but by a brigade. The line of thought is similar in nature. Just read through the blogs and take notice of such vibes and vitriols. Be aware and conscious about them and build yourself a defence mechanism to ignore and reject such negative ideas consciously. This requires effort to do so. Not doing anything will open one to a long period of idea planting and mind bending and before one knows anything, the idea is imbedded in the some corners of the mind and will affect one’s decision at those critical moments.

Be aware of what you read. Be protected like being protected against the virus. Be vaccinated. The mind game is ongoing all the time.

Another thing that the brigade is doing is character assassination. They would not discuss or engage an issue but just go straight to attack the blogger. Such slimey people are simply shameless things that walked on two legs and calling themselves human beans. There are plenty of them out there, here and in other blogs. And the people who sanctioned their acts, paid for their acts are the bigger devils themselves, though many would put on a pretense that they did not know and are not involved.

Bloggers Contest – World’s apart

The winner of the most popular blog contest organised by the citizens of the city state is none other than TREmeritus with millions of hits daily. Coming closely as first runner up is The Real Singapore. Second runner up goes to LittleSpeck. Actually these are just figments of my imagination.

The real winner of the Spore Blog Award went to Ivan Kwan whose blog, The Lazy Lizard’s Tales, whose article on the Pulau Ubin conservation went viral. Altogether 19 bloggers were honoured in the contest organised by the Singapore Press Holdings. Among the winners were bloggers on travel, lifestyle, parenthood, makan stalls and poetry.

Some of the winners would be blogging on finance and health matters soon. And one blogger commented, ‘It is also fantastic to see older bloggers – it shows that the trend is quite mainstream, no longer confined to the younger generation.’

Sorry uncles Seah Chiang Nee and Leong Sze Hian, not old enough, and not mainstream. And sorry, to be winners of the contest, you cannot blog about social political stuff. Mainstream bloggers don’t blog on such sticky stuff. I am going to set up a few new blogs on kite flying and fighting spiders. Maybe I will get a mention next year.

On the other hand it would be nice if TRE or some other lunatic blogging sites could organised a contest for the best blog or best bloggers on the lunatic fringe and we can reveal the fearful and frightening faces of these weird beings that exist in cyberspace. Otherwise no one will know of their existence or their blogs and the hot stuff they wrote. For sure they would not be writing about poetry and the beautiful garden city.

Ravi and Vellama shine through the constitutional haze

Last August a high court judge, Pillai ruled that the PM has all the discretion to call or not to call a by election when a single constituency seat is vacant. It more or less cast a big dark cloud over the constitutional rights of the citizens to be represented by an elected representative. Yesterday, light shone through the dark cloud to clear up this hazy matter. Three Appeal Court Judges, Chao Hick Tin, Andrew Phang and V Rajah, over ruled Judge Pillai’s judgement and re read what the Constitution really meant in a clear and logical way.

The Prime Minister may have certain leeway to decide when a by election is to be held but he must call a by election within reasonable time. A by election must be called to protect the rights of the people to be represented by an elected MP. Otherwise it would lead to the disenfranchisement of the people, an act contrary to the provision of the Constitution. Is not this logical from the very start? Well, judges are human beans too and their interpretations of the law sometimes left much to be desired.

The findings of the Appeal Court Judges in a way vindicated the smear poured over Ravi as an erratic person flawed by a bi polar sickness, meaning he is unreliable and may not even be fit to be a lawyer. This case proved beyond any doubt that for all the harsh accusations of a decent man in Ravi, his cranial faculty is still as sound as anyone learned man, if not better. Ravi pushed a case that was sound from the beginning and almost became unsound, which would also implicate him as being unsound. Now it is very clear that Ravi and his case are both as sound as they could be.

This judgement is a victory of the people, a victory of our judicial system, of sound interpretation of the law, a victory for Ravi and Vellama, two most unexpected individuals that took on the system to demand an explanation and interpretation of the law. And the Courts of Law delivered. And it also tells a story that judges do erred, particularly in the way laws are written and the way words are used.