In the final decades of the twentieth century, Singapore has faired extremely well. It grew from an entrepot centre to an industrialized state and global city (Amaldas 985). It tackled most matters related to underdevelopment and had constructed the required institutions to organize its continued existence in the twenty-first century. This paper discusses the main challenges, the solutions and the future prospects for this small nation.
Challenges Facing Singapore
The regular oscillation amid being locally specific and globally open has resulted to the Singapore absurdity (Hirst and Thompson 37). The protectorate enjoys its rank as a globalized nation, yet it frequently acquires disapproval from global human rights organizations for its persistence on practicing its personal politics, whereby infringement of some civil freedoms in sight of local multi-religious and multiethnic authenticities takes place.
The application of discriminatory globalization articulates the need to stay globally linked for the benefit of state survival, and the need to preserve certain concepts of conservatism and convention, which defend definite overriding interests.
The PAP administration carries out discriminatory globalization. It is too open to fiscal globalization, thus closing its doors to open-minded democratic procedures and institutions. The administration has thrived in settling global forces and has arbitrated the exterior pressures and demands on the local. A number of actions in 2005 put forward that this conciliation and arbitration may have implications for its global city aspirations.
In 2005, the administration of Singapore denied ‘Fridae. Com’ a gay entrance, the entertainment authorization to hold its yearly Nation Party (Amaldas 986). The group reacted by transferring its yearly party to Phuket. For a regime that admits that there exist homosexuals in the government, the warrant removal seemed like stride backwards. The pull-out by this group might have pacified the mainstream of conformist Singaporeans, although it does small to explain to the global society that the city-state is culturally thrilling.
Another incidence was Warwick University’s resolution not to establish a university in Singapore (Amaldas 986). Following months of reflection and viability studies, the campus rejected the offer, citing its apprehension over both fiscal costs and the deficiency of academic liberty on the island.
As usual, it was the second concern that persisted in the captions. Whether exaggerated or not, the professed short of academic liberty has had fiscal costs for Singapore. This is the first incidence whereby a prospective investor has openly quoted Singapore’s popular outer OB-markers, its stress on non stimulating academic analysis, and the regime’s bigotry for opposition, as rationales for rejecting the offer. The effects of this on the city-state’s learning hub aspirations will only unfurl later.
The verity that Singapore’s continued existence as a nation-state relies on its position as a global city implies that the regime has few options but to change gears amid the global and the national, during policy formulation, thus forcing it to convey mixed gestures to the global society.
While Singapore vigorously attempts to arbitrate globalization’s consequence s, for instance, terrorism and unemployment, the PAP regime has as well made brave strides towards inaugurating the city-state. PM Lee’s 18 April declaration that two casinos, both integrated in the vast “Integrated Resorts” (IRs), were to be constructed by 2009 was a key discussion point of 2005 (Amaldas 989).
Other areas of social pressure in Singapore concern a broadening income gap and structural unemployment in the globalized market. These consequences of globalization are regular in most industrialized nations. It is commonly acknowledged that globalization is advantageous for the elite, whereas forming income gaps among them, the lowest paid and the middle class in the public.
In the past, development and globalization elevated the standards of living for most Singaporeans and offered packed employments. If additional globalization speeds up unemployment and income discrepancies for several people, such tendencies will necessitate political concentration and the construction of suitable policy reactions.
Solutions and Future Prospects for Singapore
Being a state that carries out regular elections after every five years, Singapore has a body of voters that require answers from the government.
So as, to act in response to the voting public, Singapore government assumed two actions to counter the undesirable consequences of globalization. These incorporated the restructuring of education and measures to lessen the consequences of declining incomes and joblessness.
Singapore’s education has shifted in the precedent few years from the traditional curriculum, to new basics (Velayutham 15). Possibly, the most prominent of these basics is critical and creative thinking. The regime budgets of the catastrophe years and later have acknowledged the new significance of education with amplified financial support.
As several adult education program goes round attempting to introduce the old cohorts into the globe of Internet and computers, the government directs a prime and much productive endeavor into the education structure. A slogan was invented, by the regime, to mirror this hub; “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (Amaldas 987).
While some may question if it ought not to be the opposite, the administration is eager to build learning schools, which is possibly a customary way of view of schools, into thinking schools, which is what various people have condemned Singapore schools of lacking. Singapore has assumed sustainable and precise measures to support the education structure, in order to counter the problems of the novel century. The Ministry of Education (MOE) drew a master plan for IT in Education, in 1997 (Mahizhnan 98).
This plan establishes the aims and targets for schools. The aims encompass lifetime learning, promoting creative thinking and public accountability. The targets comprise finishing basic computer instruction for teachers in all learning institutions by 2000 and attaining a 1:2 ratio between computers in institutions of learning and learners with a third of curriculum time dedicated to IT-related education by 2002 (Amaldas 987). Information technology acts as a channel, to enlarge and improve the learning course.
At present, school children are regularly taking projects that require browsing the internet and searching for content that is not obtainable in Singapore. The learners are as well exposed to diverse, technological potentials in collecting and presenting this content in unique ways.
In the course, they are not merely learning diverse things, but as well learning things in a different way. Virtual classrooms have as well been set up, whereby learners can stay at home, but the link with their colleagues in cyberspace with the instructor teaching lessons via the computer, or an ingenious tool known as Edupad.
A number of libraries are digitizing their anthologies in order to produce virtual books that can be obtained at any time and from anyplace. All these appear to add to the children’s capacity to learn autonomously, to think productively, and even to collaborate fruitfully. These are features that any smart Island would deem fundamentals.
Outside the formal education schools and segments, employee promotion and the education of new techniques, together with the small and medium-sized ventures, have obtained much weight. Systems to assist achieve this consist of Lifelong Learning Endowment Fund and Manpower Development Assistance Schemes.
Administration may assume a range of forms including public deliberations, guaranteeing parity in education and other openings and utilization of subsidies, the degree of relocation being a gathering of economic essentials, political force and phase of growth. However, for the outcomes of economic development to be international, there should be systems for conveying gains all over the economy and particularly to the underprivileged.
While the deprived have their labor to trade, economic development can simply reach them if it augments the order for their labor or offer matching participation that makes their efforts industrious. The government of Singapore pursued the twin resolution of upholding a sustainable economic enlargement while balancing it with a sound strategy to deal with disparity.
The public housing improvement plan and Education policy are employed to get the earning power of the people and improve their wealth property in the shape of material goods (Velayutham 15). These aim at the low and middle income sets of the residents living in civic housing since the higher income faction living in confidential bungalows and apartments are professed as having succeeded on their own aptitude.
The upgrading programs for houses aim at the aged HDB flats that symbolize the greater percentage of the minor income people. In 2001, Singapore residents were given the initial disbursement of the CPF Top-up (Amaldas 988). This was a concrete way of distributing the state’s success with the residents, and was planned to provide to those in the minor income clusters. Endeavors to assist pensioners, to some extent, and for the health care of the aged and deprived were also reinforced.
In Singapore, There has been an increasing consciousness that the imperative of attempting to enter the novel economy and change Singapore — with inventive and critically conscious workers and population, substantial socioeconomic modification and alteration, and a broadening revenue gap – have political and communal connotations (Amaldas 1001). Education, immigration, and public aid policies have hence become extremely prominent, setting novel guidelines, and getting more financial support.
The regime also established the Work Force Development Agency (WDA), to boost and aid the employability of susceptible people in the nation.
The purpose of WDA is to support the employability and boost the significance of local personnel through training and re-tooling (Amaldas 989). In January 2006, a Ministerial Committee on small wage personnel declared the Workfare Approach to back the small wage personnel in the market, in order to deal with the broadening gap amid trained and untrained personnel.
To realize these objectives, a $1 billion Workfare parcel was endorsed by the administration (Amaldas 988). The main element of the Workfare additional benefit is for the self-employed or employed local employee to have, as a minimum, six months of constant service and receive average monthly earnings of $1,500.
While the Singapore financial system shifts into higher value added products, attributable to globalization, the broadening income gap amid its residents becomes a chief political concern (Terence 13). The speed of buildup of human capital via training and education requires keeping pace with the increasing order for skilled personnel as the nation rises to a high value-added production makeup.
This will augment the income of skilled personnel in proportion to low skilled employees and amplify the earnings disparity and susceptibility of local employees to the global tendencies. This implies that education only would be insufficient to control income disparity in prospect. Singapore might as well require added social welfare plans to balance the broadening economic gap and economic development.
In conclusion, Singapore global/nation city is a superb material and symbolic power. It presents the communal hope of identity, belonging, affluence, openings and enthusiasm for its nation. The nurturing of hope is essential in the situation of Singapore where reservations triumph.
The protectorate enjoys its rank as a globalized nation, yet it frequently acquires disapproval from global human rights organizations for its persistence on practicing its personal politics, whereby infringement of civil freedoms occurs in sight of local multi-religious and multiethnic authenticities.
The verity that Singapore’s continued existence as a nation-state relies on its position as a global city implies that the regime has few options but to change gears amid the global and the national, during policy formulation, thus forcing it to convey mixed gestures to the global society.
Other areas of social pressure in Singapore concern a broadening income gap and structural unemployment in the globalized market. So as, to address these issues, education in Singapore has shifted in the precedent few years from the traditional curriculum, to new basics.
Possibly, the most prominent of these basics is critical and creative thinking. The regime also established the Work Force Development Agency (WDA), to boost and aid the employability of susceptible people in the nation. The purpose of WDA is to support the employability and boost the significance of local personnel through training and re-tooling.
Works Cited
Amaldas, Marystella. The Management of Globalization in Singapore: Twentieth Century Lessons for the Early Decades of the New Century. Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 3 (2009): 982-1002
Hirst, Paul and Thompson, Grahame. Globalization in question. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995
Mahizhnan, Arun. Singapore: Information Technology for an Intelligent Island, Southeast Asian Affairs. Singapore: Institute of Southeast, 2000 Asian Studies.
Terence, Chong. Singapore: Globalizing on Its Own Terms. Southeast Asian Affairs. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2006
Velayutham, Selvaraj. Responding to Globalization: Nation, Culture and Identity in Singapore. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007