At the beginning of September, during a meeting with Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India wanted to create “‘several Singapores” of its own. What did Modi mean by that, and is it possible for there to be several Singapores in India?
The idea of Singapore has been an aspiration for leaders worldwide for decades because it is an ultra high-tech, safe, prosperous city with high human capital and no obvious political instability. It somehow manages to make multiculturalism work in a world of ethnic strife. When it became independent in 1965, its GDP per capita was $500, but now it is around $85,000. In other words, it is a model of what a city of the future ought to be like.
Nonetheless, Singapore also has several factors unique to it. Unlike any city in India, it is an independent city-state, free to pursue its own policies as needed. These include meritocratic and free market policies that would be hard to sell in India with its complex electorate, quotas, subsidy policies, and caste-based electoral equations. Moreover, Singapore is unique in that it sits astride the busy Strait of Malacca, through which much world trade passes.
Indian cities, on the other hand, have very little autonomy to make their own decisions, and there is no guarantee that India’s state and union governments would be able to manage important urban decisions efficiently. The mayors of Indian cities tend to be ceremonial heads with little power, while executive power is held by an unelected bureaucrat, the municipal commissioner. Public services in Indian cities are often abysmal, and Indian cities have to resort to public-private partnerships to provide services. Many Indian cities lack proper sewage, garbage collection, and other basic services that are necessary to make a city livable, let alone transform the city into a “Singapore,” a country that fines and even canes people for littering.
Directly elected and accountable urban executives could do much to improve the nature of Indian cities, particularly if the executive feels accountable to the population. Development initiatives have gained pace at the state level in India because the various parties — regardless of affiliation — knew they would be thrown out if they failed to bring in roads, electricity, and schools.
While the idea of a Singapore in India is great, building one from scratch seems like a tall order. Might it not be better to improve the existing infrastructure of Indian cities rather than building new ones, something that Prime Minister Modi’s Smart Cities Mission, a project dating back to 2015, seeks to achieve?
It is instructive to note that the major Indian cities of Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai all originated in a similar manner to Singapore and Hong Kong — two cities known for their high Human Development Indexes (HDIs), financial industries, and technological prowess. All five aforementioned cities grew up as British administrative and trading posts. Mumbai still shares some characteristics with Hong Kong and Singapore, being the premiere financial and cultural center of India and exerting influence throughout the world.
Comparing the derelict state of say, Kolkata, once the capital of British India, to Singapore, demonstrates that creation of a “Singapore” is more a matter of political will, proper urban planning, and the right financial incentives, more than the ability of a government to just hire the right contractors and build futuristic looking buildings. India could go a long way toward creating its own Singapore by improving infrastructure in some of its major technology and financial hubs, particularly Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. Moreover, the solution of creating new cities instead of improving existing ones is a bit of an escapist solution that seeks to sidestep the responsibility of the government to maintain decent infrastructure and provide services in urban spaces.
Modern India, of course, has tried its hand at planned cities — many of which serve as capitals of states — such as Chandigarh, Gandhinagar, and now, Amravati in Andhra Pradesh. Some of these, particularly Chandigarh, which was designed by the famous architect Le Corbusier have succeeded in becoming major cities. Many other cities have either not taken off, or have succeeded without necessarily developing into “another Singapore” either because of their location, such as Gujarat’s GIFT City, or purpose, such as Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, which developed as a mining town.
The creation of successful planned cities is a gamble that sometimes works and sometimes does not: Washington, D.C. and Brasilia continue to serve as the capitals of their respective nations; on the other hand, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s urban project The Line, which was supposed to be a 170-kilometer line of urban development across the desert, has been downscaled to just 2.4 kilometers. It turns out that it is quite hard to move people and resources and redirect trade routes.
Many a proposed planned city lies abandoned due to lack of resources or economic opportunity, such as the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s erstwhile capital Fatehpur Sikri, abandoned because of a lack of water. If a big city continues to thrive in a certain spot for decades or centuries, then there is usually a reason for that.
Ultimately, the question that should be asked is if a “Singapore” is really what a country should aim toward, rather than, say, a bustling but well-maintained city that contributes to a country’s economy and culture across many sectors. In other words, it is not necessary to create a “Singapore” to become a prosperous urban center such as Frankfurt, Antwerp, or Milan in Europe, or Bangkok or Tokyo in Asia. These are some of the most prosperous cities in the world, and have been able to become so through good policies and a certain level of organic development, rather than through Singapore’s planning and hypermodernism.
It is not a bad thing to aim toward creating a “Singapore” in India. But a country as vast as India already has hundreds of cities, some located in strategic locations, others of which are already major cultural hubs and economic centers. India should focus on improving those cities and making them more livable and attractive as centers of finance and technology rather than embark on creating several new cities, especially where none are needed, and where there is no guarantee of a successful return on such an investment.