I was always fascinated by Lee Kuan Yew. A major part of what he has done strikes me with awe and some part with despair. However Asia must be proud of him in creating and maintaining an English speaking city-state in the neighborhood of India that matches major cities of the world and that too very quickly over a period of may be less than three decades.
I happened to listen first hand to a live telecast of an interview of his at my hotel room in Singapore in 2006 March where representatives of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce ..all young boys and girls in their early twenties..asking questions of various kinds and even having the audacity to counter sometimes what the elderly Lee was saying. But Lee Kuan Yew deserves credit for what he has done to Singapore in particular and Asia in general. According to me somewhere he is an ultimate consultant on Governance and affairs of countries and states. Sometimes in some interviews I hear even American journalists asking Lee what America should be doing as a country in the present circumstances of the World.
What is the legacy of Lee ? A combination of situation , circumstances and opportunities diagnosed with accuracy and the optimism to chalk out a clear cut plan and implementing them without deviation and with force with constancy of purpose and thereby orienting a fishing village of Singapore into a city of international proportions. Singapore as a society had a distinct advantage in my view point ..being a colony of the English had English speaking people and they had as a society something to offer to the rest of the world as a whole.Lee saw this and did so enjoining his fellow citizens in the process to a stable and prosperous Singapore we see today. Lee always worked with something..Facts of the situation and this is a differentiator from many other leaders of the world..a candid obsession with facts and what to do about them..there was nothing chimerical about his approach and the way he went about things.
There is something strikingly different between What India did in 1947 and may be what Singapore did in 1965. Singapore is only the size of Bangalore and the realities are quite different but the moot question is Could India have followed the strategy of Singapore? May be it could have but the leaders of this country tread a different path and to my view an apt and great path of establishing various public sector units. India in what ever growth path it exists today was built over a Vision of few people and in the case of Singapore it was more of a mission not of a group of people but that of Lee Kuan Yew alone. There were many takers for what he said in Singapore of his times and he delivered what was promised a city-state built on the lines of business as against anything else. There is something common between India and Singapore ...its British roots but harnessed in different ways by both these societies.V K Krishna Menon and Lee Kuan Yew have one thing in common..they had association with the London School of Economics.
We have something to learn from the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore of today might have some lessons to learn from India as a country and in the future the need to learn from each other would not only increase but would also be easier with the kind of technology growth we experience today and communities of the world would be more closely knit than ever before. Now I read that Lee Kuan Yew has retired from most commitments and I wish him good health and it is the right time to be nostalgic about the vast stretch of events spanning through many decades from which he thrived and emerged..and as they are viewed through the scanners of his present state of wisdom and perspective and feels that some one was wronged willingly or inadvertently in his quests and aspirations it would be more than appropriate to meet with them over a cup of tea as a gesture of good will that posterity would know Lee Kuan Yew not just as a leader who made a difference to the economy and created pecuniary growth but also a true statesman in the league of Lincoln and many others that being humane also was somewhere a part of his overall agenda.
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