Singaporean roots in India

Tata's Syamal Gupta is exploring an India-Singapore Friendship Society to strengthen common interests at a non-official level

Adapting Oscar Wilde, good Indians go to Singapore before they die. It was, therefore, a surprise to learn that no friendship society binds the two countries at a non-official level. The disclosure came at a private tea Tata's Syamal Gupta hosted in the sanctum sanctorum of The Chambers at Mumbai's Taj Palace last Wednesday while the rest of the hotel was in a tizzy over Joe Biden.

The US vice-president left the next day for Singapore whose foreign minister, K Shanmugam, is soon expected to inaugurate the ambitious $700-million 1,500-acre Omega industrial project near Chennai. Singapore's deputy prime minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, was in Mumbai two months ago offering to invest in infrastructure, water, sewage, airports, a mono rail and metro, health and hospitality.

If ever there were natural allies (to repeat Atal Behari Vajpayee's famous phrase but more appropriately), they are India and Singapore. The name is a Sanskrit derivative as Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, reminds people. For many decades Singapore was administered from Calcutta. Current immigration ("We are now getting high-quality Indians", says the veteran Lee Kuan Yew) has increased its Indian population from seven to nine per cent. Thanks to the 2005 Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, Singapore provides 10 per cent of India's foreign direct investment. Despite last year's decline, trade is valued at more than $24 billion. What matters most in a time of flux is that both countries are committed to economic growth, political stability, freedom of the seas, balanced power and Asia's security.

Biden addressed the last concerns at the Bombay Stock Exchange just before Gupta's tea party. "We are three big nations - China, India, and the United States - with our own perspectives" he said. "We have significant common interests, all three of us, and the entire region would benefit if we coordinated more closely." The senior Lee has pursued that aim for decades, pleading with Lal Bahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi to invest in South-east Asia. He inspired the second deck heading - "Lee Kuan Yew's Mission India" - of my book on India's Look East policy.

After years of setbacks and stagnation, things are now moving. The Durgapur aerotropolis may be Singapore's only stake in Bengal but Singapore's construction company Ascendas has two "integrated community" projects in Gurgaon. Lin Chung Ying, Singapore's quietly efficient consul-general in Mumbai, tells me that apart from DBS, his country has five establishments in the city to promote trade and travel. There's even greater interaction with Tamil Nadu which isn't surprising, since Tamils like Shanmugam and Shanmugaratnam comprise 60 per cent of Indian Singaporeans. Though the extravagant expectations of some local politicians killed Ameer Jumabhoy's pioneering "Madras Corridor", the new Omega industrial estate will be bigger even than the Ascendas park in Bangalore.

The burgeoning partnership with Maharashtra recalled another historical precedent. In the dark days of World War Two when the Japanese overran Singapore, a leading Singaporean banker, Tan Chin Tuan, shifted his Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation to Bombay. Tan's nephew Tony Tan Keng Yam succeeded India's loyal friend, S R Nathan, as president of Singapore.

Now Special Adviser with Tata International, 79-year-old Gupta knows them all. Forty years ago he spearheaded Tatas' contribution to Singapore's industrialisation with a training centre and precision tools manufacturing company. Singapore acknowledged the debt in 2008 by making Ratan Tata an honorary citizen. President Nathan also paid tribute to Gupta with a book in which he wrote "With much appreciation for your abiding interest in Singapore and all that you have done over the years to promote Singapore as a place of business opportunity beyond the Tata family."

So it's fitting that Gupta should gather a few like-minded persons to discuss their shared interest in Singapore and ways of strengthening the bond. Apart from the consul-general, there were three bright young men, two of them, Mukund Govind Rajan and Vasanth Ramesan, senior Tata Sons executives; the third, Vikram Apte, an enterprising entrepreneur with ancestral links to Singapore, accompanied by his charming wife. My son Deep and I, old Singapore hands both, completed the party.

About 6,000 Indian businesses now operate in Singapore. Lee Hsien Loong told me in 2008 that over 78,000 Indian citizens had become permanent residents. The number must be much higher now. Spick and span Singapore, the city-state that works, could not be more unlike India; yet, it's where Indians feel thoroughly at home. Gupta's plan for a vigorous India-Singapore Friendship Society would reaffirm and perpetuate that welcome paradox. When first mooted, it was an idea before its time. That time may now have come.