O f late, the twitter accounts are buzzing with objections and counter-objections regarding a certain Tam’ movie named “Mersal” which seems to have stirred latent passions among the people. The core issue being a seemingly innocuous comparison made in the movie about life in the host country, vis a vis India and Singapore. The wisdom of comparing a small city state with a extra-large nation is questionable , though for argument sake, if we did keep aside the wisdom and do indeed, compare them , the findings can be illuminating. The actual comparison that should be done is not how Singapore is doing better than India even while taxing its citizens lesser, but rather, how Singapore became what it is today and how can India ever do a Singapore. For, Singapore was, is and forever will be, a port city state that depends on trade completely. Due to this all pervasiveness of the trade, its citizens are groomed and trained in trade both by formal and informal means from the day they are born. Stringent laws and their uniform application means that the rule of law is well established and corruption is kept to a minimum. This ensures that businesses thrive in the environment provided by Singapore which ensures that the companies and the employees earn typically more than their counterparts in East Asia. This increase in earnings per company and per employee in turn , ensure that the government coffers are filled even when the tax rates are quite low.
Now, to the question of can India become a Singapore. Do we have a rule of law? Obviously we do. Does the rule apply uniformly to every one, irrespective of position, caste, creed and religion? To this question, even the most optimistic among us will not reply in the affirmative. For, in our greatest freedom experiment, we have managed to produce a quagmire of contradictory laws , built to suit every purpose but serving only the mighty. It was possible in Singapore because of its constrained area and the fact that its citizens, diverse they were, were united in character. This is arguably a long and arduous path to go for in India, with our multitudes of cultures, languages, religions and everything. Will we go there or will we still be arguing about how it was possible in Singapore , ten years from now , is the million dollar question.
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