The PM’s visit has been preceded by the second meeting of the India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable in which four senior Indian ministers travelled to Singapore to meet their counterparts.
The Prime Minister’s forthcoming visit to Singapore provides an opportunity to take a snapshot of the relationship today. It is evident that India-Singapore relations are vibrant and constantly opening up new possibilities. One indication of this is the frequency and high level of inter-governmental contacts. The PM’s visit has been preceded by the second meeting of the India-Singapore Ministerial Roundtable in which four senior Indian ministers travelled to Singapore to meet their counterparts. These are indicative of the new frontiers which are being opened up and consolidated in bilateral relations: Digitalisation, skills development, sustainability, healthcare, advanced manufacturing and connectivity. These high-level exchanges are supplemented by others — parliamentary contacts, contacts between higher judiciary, etc.
This broad spectrum of interstate contacts highlights the spread and depth of the India-Singapore interface. Singapore is India’s largest trading partner amongst the ASEAN countries and ranks as the sixth largest trading partner in global terms. Incredible as it may sound, tiny Singapore is also India’s largest source of foreign direct investment.
There are other striking dimensions to the relationship. Singapore has the largest concentration of IIT and IIM alumni in any non-Indian city — which is saying a lot given recent trends of an exponential increase in Indian diasporic presence in North America and Europe. The two countries also share a long and distinguished history of people-to-people exchanges. Singapore was the home of the Indian National Army. The success of the current generation of IIM and IIT alumni who have made Singapore their home is based almost entirely on the foundation laid by an older generation of diasporic Indians from the late 19th century who played a pivotal role in transforming Singapore into a high-achievement hub. Their contribution in making Singapore a secular and multicultural society is immense. The country also acts as a magnet for Indian tourists.
Since the 1990s, Singapore has been a critical factor as India framed a regional policy — “Look East” — and then “Act East”. On its part, Singapore facilitated India becoming a sectoral dialogue partner and then a full dialogue partner of ASEAN. The India-ASEAN relationship plays an unexpected role in South Asia on account of Myanmar — in effect, a bridge between South and Southeast Asia. The erosion of central authority in that country amidst a civil war has obvious and major implications for the entire region. India’s proximity to Myanmar and Singapore’s association with it through ASEAN means that this will also be part of the India-Singapore agenda.
Yet, all this does not fully capture the broad spectrum of the relationship. Over the years, it has acquired an important defence component and, in particular, a valuable maritime dimension. India’s regional narrative has now widened to the Indo-Pacific. Chinese political and military assertion has meant that existing approaches such as ASEAN centrality now increasingly jostle with new architectures such as QUAD, posing new opportunities and challenges for the India-ASEAN and India-Singapore relationships.
A prime ministerial visit is an important occasion to review bilateral, regional and global issues. If trade and economic partnership is at the heart of the relation, new vistas are also opening up. The latest Economic Survey had mentioned the possibility of what has been unmentionable for the past three-four years — Chinese FDI into India. In the event of such a policy shift, it is almost axiomatic that Singapore entities and companies will also play a major role.
It is also necessary to be realistic about the nature of India-Singapore complementarities. This intertwining acquired a new intensity from the early 1990s. To many, it seemed — with some merit — that Singapore provided just that global window that India’s older entrepreneur and financial capitals of Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai could no longer be, given regulatory failures and structural inefficiencies at different levels. This was, therefore, a sound basis for a partnership but it is also, in a sense, a negative kind of complementarity.
It is useful to recall that the trade and investment profile in the relationship owes more to Singapore’s success in building itself up as a formidable trading platform and global investment centre than any inherent complementarity between the two economies. We, therefore, need to be conscious of how much our own regulatory shortcomings need to be addressed. Singapore is relevant to India’s growth story because it is a pointer to just how much terrain we still have to traverse.
The writer is a former Indian High Commissioner to Singapore
