Thursday, July 24, 2014

Venice on the Equator



Do Some Good Today
Small Deeds

Big Differences

A do-good initiative by Fair Price Foundation
Large delivery truck stuck in the Changi Road traffic outside Har Yas in the rundown to Hari Raya Monday. Fair Price is a supermarket chain. The large steel banner seems to flutter in the breeze: white background, soft primary colours & the contemporary version of the pictogram in the universal language of children's books. Fair Price is one of the largest local chains; NTUC is anotherNational Trade Union Congress. Both crusading to keep prices rock-bottom for the lower-end wage earners. (At time of writing, 15 - 20% it might be from memory survive here on SG$600 monthly.) Given single political party domination these fifty years since independence, government owned and controlled media in its entirety, religious bodies and trade unions strictly controlled, if not in fact co-opted by government, the position of the supermarkets does not need to be enquired too closely. This is the fascinating nub in Singapore, a shining example to many in the region and well beyond: a demented breakneck leap to modernity, foisted upon it by the forces of globalisation and Western corporate interests; whilst at the same time, the last flickering remnants of communal and co-operative living, Confucian/Buddhist values (Muslim and Hindu in the minority) and a moral code from long ages past. It has after all only been a famously thirty year leap from Third World to First. The pluto-technocrats know only one waywreckage tidied up later: can-do, straight-ahead, chop-chop, brook no challenge. A little democratic opinion beginning to flare in recent time; some minor defiance and challenge. Opposition members of parliament finally—the days of Cold Storage, another supermarket too incidentally, of dissident voices (extrajudicial confinement), no longer sustainable. The earnest rousing and rallying of the populace meanwhile; an unending cycle of colourful community events & festivities. Sport and arts the newest initiative of social pacification, with a good deal of money channelled in the direction. Meanwhile, onward with growth, shopping malls & housing towers, tourism, logistics, pharmaceutical & military production, extended SEZs within the neighbourhood in order to take advantage of the huge, cheap labour pool. “Venice on the equator”, some of the commentariat with big bellies stroke themselves beneath their desks.

 




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