CPF

In January 1999, the employer's CPF contribution rate was reduced by 10%-points to 10% of wages as part of the cost cutting package to cushion the impact of the Asian economic crisis on businesses. With the quick economic rebound, the employer's CPF contribution rate was partially restored by 2%-points to 12% of wages in April 2000.

In view of the strong economic growth and rising wage pressures, a higher quantum of the employers' CPF contribution rate should be restored.After consulting employers and the unions, the Government has decided to raise the employers' CPF contribution rate by 4%-points, from 12% of wages currently to 16% with effect from 1 January 2001.

In 2005, our Singapore Economy grew by 6.4%. As then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong delivered his 13th National Day Rally speech on 17 Aug 03 at the NUS University Cultural Centre said, "I would, therefore want the option of cutting CPF in bad years, and conversely, putting more into the CPF in good years"

So, since the economy had done well last year, think it is time to revise upwards the employers's contribution back to 20%.

PS: CPF changes take effect from 1 Oct 2003 with employers' contribution rate down from 16% to 13% due to poor economy.

Lift Upgrading Programme

Press release on 7 sept 2001
The new Lift Upgrading Programme was introduced in March 2001 in response to requests from Members of Parliament for more and earlier lift upgrading works to provide greater convenience to HDB residents. To speed up lift upgrading for high-rise HDB blocks, the LUP can be carried out as part of the MUP or the IUP from 2001 onwards. In addition, MND will select a number of precincts each year solely for the purpose of lift upgrading.

The scope of works will include installation of new lifts and lift shafts, upgrading of existing lifts and addition of new lift landings, where technically feasible. With the implementation of the LUP, the limited lift upgrading works that are currently carried out under the IUP will be subsumed under the new programme.

HDB will conduct a special poll for each LUP precinct. All flat owners in an HDB block, except those living on the ground floor and floors that already have lift landings, will have to vote and co-pay for the lift upgrading works. The LUP will proceed only if 75% or more of the households who stand to benefit from the lift upgrading works vote in favour of the LUP. Polling for precincts in the Demonstration Phase will start in the next one to two months.

The cost of the lift upgrading works will be co-shared among the Government, Town Councils and the flat owners. To ensure that the flat owners’ share of the lift upgrading cost is affordable, the Government will subsidise 75% to 90% of the cost of the lift upgrading works. The actual proportion will depend on the flat type and block configuration.

Town Councils will also be allowed to use their sinking funds to co-pay the remaining cost with the flat owners. For lift upgrading for a typical 4-room flat in a standard block, the Government will pay about $10,000, while Town Councils and the owner will each pay about $900.

Flat owners in segmented blocks will have to pay a higher amount because lift upgrading for these blocks will cost considerably more. This is because new lifts and lift shafts have to be added, and the lifts will serve a smaller number of flats. However, the Government will cap the maximum amount that each household has to pay at $3,000.

HDB flat owners need only pay for the lift upgrading cost after the works are completed. On average, this will be about 2 years from the date of announcement. Flat owners can pay for their share of the lift upgrading costs either in one lump sum or by monthly instalments over a 5 or 10-year period, using their CPF savings or cash. HDB will also extend the existing assistance measures under the MUP to flat owners who have difficulties paying for the LUP.




Mah Bow Tan, Minister of MND:-
Lift upgrading in HDB estates, Members would have heard the Prime Minister announce that MND will be targeting to complete the Lift Upgrading Programme in 10 years for all eligible blocks. Members have also asked whether we can speed up the programme. Let me now give some details about how we intend to implement the LUP in 10 years, as well as to address some of the Members' concerns and suggestions.

We introduced LUP in 2001, and that was to meet the needs of our ageing population by providing lifts on every floor, and the programme has been very, very popular with residents. I say that it is going to be even more in demand as our population ages.

What is the status so far? We have selected about 600 blocks for LUP. Some of the works have been completed, while others are in various stages of completion. Another 650 blocks have had their lifts upgraded under another programme, which is the Main Upgrading Programme (MUP) which incorporates lift upgrading. Blocks that are built after 1990 already have direct lift access. So, if we do our mathematics, it gives us about 3,000 high-rise and 800 low-rise HDB blocks which are still waiting for their lifts to be upgraded.

To provide lifts on every floor, we will have to add new lift cars, landings, lift shafts, depending on the different block configurations. This is a very major and
costly exercise.

The cost per unit ranges from as low as $1,500 to as high as $80,000 or $90,000 per unit. To provide for lifts for all the remaining blocks, it is going to cost the Government something like $5 billion. To put this figure in perspective, this is more than four times what the whole Ministry's public housing budget is for the financial year of 2005, if Parliament approves the budget for MND.

That is $5 billion.

So, when Prof. Ivan Png asked what if we were to accelerate the programme and complete it within five years, what is going to be the extra cost, the answer is
really that it is not likely to be less than that. In fact, it may even be more. At
the moment, we have low construction cost, but I do not think that this is going
to be the case for ever and ever. Costs are likely to rise.

In fact, they have already risen. Material costs have gone up. Labour cost will go up, and construction cost generally will rise over time.
But, more importantly, we have to ask ourselves, if we were to accelerate the programme, whether HDB, the contractors, suppliers, etc, will have the capacity to cope with such an accelerated
programme. We also have to take into account the funds that are available for completing this programme quickly.


Budget FY 2005 – Committee of Supply -- Ministry of National Development Obviously, when you do it in five years, you are going to spend much more per year, and the budget within each year would have to be considered very carefully. So, our assessment is that 10 years is a realistic timeframe. The cost of lift upgrading per unit, as I said earlier, ranges from about $1,500 for a standard block with a standard configuration, ie, common corridors where you just have to punch the lifts through, to something like $80,000 to $90,000 for some of the more complicated segmented blocks where you have to have virtually a lift shaft for every stack of flats. So, to ensure that the largest possible number of residents can benefit from lift upgrading, we will only select blocks for lift upgrading if the cost per unit does not exceed $30,000. With this cost cap of $30,000, 95% of the blocks will be be ligible for LUP."

Note: this is the actual picture we are seeing over the next 10 years. hopefully our block will have Lift upgrading as most of our neighbours are getting old.

The Myth of the Soul

The Myth of the Soul
by Clarence Darrow


Is the Belief in Immortality Necessary or Even Desirable?

There is, perhaps, no more striking example of the credulity of man than the widespread belief in immortality. This idea includes not only the belief that death is not the end of what we call life, but that personal identity involving memory persists beyond the grave. So determined is the ordinary individual to hold fast to this belief that, as a rule, he refuses to read or think upon the subject lest it cast doubt upon his cherished dream. Of those who may chance to look at this contribution, many will do so with the determination not to be convinced, and will refuse to even consider the manifold reasons that might weaken their faith. I know that this is true, for I know the reluctance with which I long approached the subject and my firm determination not to give up my hope. Thus the myth will stand in the way of a sensible adjustment to facts.

Even many of those who claim to believe in immortality still tell themselves and others that neither side of the question is susceptible to proof. Just what can these hopeful ones believe that the word "proof" involves? The evidence against the persistence of personal consciousness is as strong as the evidence of gravitation, and much more obvious. It is as convincing and unassailable as the proof of the destruction of wood or coal by fire. If it is not certain that death ends personal identity and memory, then almost nothing that man accepts as true is susceptible to proof.

The beliefs of the race and its individuals are relics of the past. Without careful examination no one can begin to understand how many of man's cherished opinions have no foundation in face. The common experience of all men should teach them how easy it is to believe, what they wish to accept. Experienced psychologists know perfectly well that if they desire to convince a man of some idea, they must first make him want to believe it. There are so many hopes, so many strong yearnings and desires attached to the doctrine of immortality that it is practically impossible to create in any mind the wish to be mortal. Still, in spite of strong desires, millions of people are filled with doubts and fears that will not down. After all, is it not better to look the question squarely in the face and find out whether we are harboring a delusion?

It is customary to speak of a "belief in immortality." -- First, then, let us see what is meant by the word "belief." If I take a train in Chicago at noon, bound for New York, I believe I will reach that city the next morning. I believe it because I have been to New York, I have read about the city, I have known many other people who have been there, and their stories are not inconsistent with any known facts in my own experience. I have even examined the time tables and I know just how I will go and how long the trip will take. In other words, when I board the train for New York, I believe I will reach that city because I have reason to believe it.

If, instead, I wanted to see Timbuktu or some other point on the globe where I had never been, or of which I had only heard, I still know something about geography, and if I did not I could find out about the place I wished to visit. Through the encyclopedia and other means of information, I could get a fair idea of the location and character of the country or city, the kind of people who lived there and almost anything I wished to know, including the means of transportation and the time it would take to go and return. I already am satisfied that the earth is round, and I know about its size. I know the extent of its land and water. I know the names of its countries. I know perfectly well that there are many places on its surface that I have never seen. I can easily satisfy myself as to whether there is any such place and how to get there, and what I shall do when I arrive.

But if I am told that next week I shall start on a trip to Goofville; that I shall not take my body with me; that I shall stay for all eternity: can I find a single fact connected with my journey -- the way I shall go, the time of the journey, the country I shall reach, its location in space, the way I shall live there -- or anything that would lead to a rational belief that I shall really make the trip? Have I ever known anyone who has made the journey and returned? If I am really to believe, I must try to get some information about all these important facts.

But people hesitate to ask questions about life after death. They do not ask, for they know that only silence comes out of the eternal darkness of endless space. If people really believed in a beautiful, happy, glorious land waiting to receive them when they died; if they believed that their friends would be waiting to meet them; if they believed that all pain and suffering would be left behind: why should they live through weeks, months, and even years of pain and torture while a cancer eats its way to the vital parts of the body? Why should one fight off death? Because he does not believe in any real sense; he only hopes. Everyone knows that there is no real evidence of any such state of bliss; so we are told not to search for proof. We are to accept through faith alone. But every thinking person knows that faith can only come through belief. Belief implies a condition of mind that accepts a certain idea. This condition can be brought about only by evidence. True, the evidence may be simply the unsupported statement of your grandmother; it may be wholly insufficient for reasoning men; but, good or bad, it must be enough for the believer or he could not believe.

Upon what evidence, then, are we asked to believe in immortality? There is no evidence. One is told to rely on faith, and no doubt this serves the purpose so long as one can believe blindly whatever he is told. But if there is no evidence upon which to build a positive belief in immortality, let us examine the other side of the question. Perhaps evidence can be found to support a positive conviction that immortality is a delusion.

The belief in immortality expresses itself in two different forms. On the one hand, there is a belief in the immortality of the "soul." This is sometimes interpreted to mean simply that the identity, the consciousness, the memory of the individual persists after death. On the other hand, many religious creeds formulated a belief in "the resurrection of the body" -- which is something else again. It will be necessary to examine both forms of this belief in turn.

The idea of continued life after death is very old. It doubtless had its roots back in the childhood of the race. In view of the limited knowledge of primitive man, it was not unreasonable. His dead friends and relatives visited him in dreams and visions and were present in his feeling and imagination until they were forgotten. Therefore, the lifeless body did not raise the question of dissolution, but rather of duality. It was thought that man was a dual being possessing a body and a soul as separate entities, and that when a man died, his soul was released from his body to continue its life apart. Consequently, food and drink were placed upon the graves of the dead to be used in the long journey into the unknown. In modified forms, this belief in the duality of man persists to the present day. But primitive man had no conception of life as having a beginning and an end. In this he was like the rest of the animals. Today, everyone of ordinary intelligence knows how life begins, and to examine the beginnings of life leads to inevitable conclusions about the way life ends. If man has a soul, it must creep in somewhere during the period of gestation and growth.

All the higher forms of animal life grow from a single cell. Before the individual life can begin its development, it must be fertilized by union with another cell; then the cell divides and multiplies until it takes the form and pattern of its kind. At a certain regular time the being emerges into the world. During its term of life millions of cells in its body are born, die, and are replaced until, through age, disease, or some catastrophe, the cells fall apart and the individual life is ended.

It is obvious that but for the fertilization of the cell under right conditions, the being would not have lived. It is idle to say that the initial cell has a soul. In one sense it has life; but even that is precarious and depends for its continued life upon union with another cell of the proper kind. The human mother is the bearer of probably ten thousand of one kind of cell, and the human father of countless billions of the other kind. Only a very small fraction of these result in human life. If the unfertilized cells of the female and the unused cells of the male are human beings possessed of souls, then the population of the world is infinitely greater than has ever been dreamed. Of course no such idea as belief in the immortality of germ cells could satisfy the yearnings of the individual for a survival of life after death.

If that which is called a "soul" is a separate entity apart from the body, when, then, and where and how was this soul placed in the human structure? The individual began with the union of two cells, neither of which had a soul. How could these two soulless cells produce a soul? I must leave this search to the metaphysicians. When they have found the answer, I hope they will tell me, for I should really like to know.

We know that a baby may live and fully develop in its mother's womb and then, through some shock at birth, may be born without life. In the past, these babies were promptly buried. But now we know that in many such cases, where the bodily structure is complete, the machine may be set to work by artificial respiration or electricity. Then it will run like any other human body through its allotted term of years. We also know that in many cases of drowning, or when some mishap virtually destroys life without hopelessly impairing the body, artificial means may set it in motion once more, so that it will complete its term of existence until the final catastrophe comes. Are we to believe that somewhere around the stillborn child and somewhere in the vicinity of the drowned man there hovers a detached soul waiting to be summoned back into the body by a pulmotor? This, too, must be left to the metaphysicians.

The beginnings of life yield no evidence of the beginnings of a soul. It is idle to say that something in the human being which we call "life" is the soul itself, for the soul is generally taken to distinguish human beings from other forms of life. There is life in all animals and plants, and at least potential life in inorganic matter. This potential life is simply unreleased force and matter -- the greatest storehouse from which all forms of life emerge and are constantly replenished. It is impossible to draw the line between inorganic matter and the simpler forms of plant life, and equally impossible to draw the line between plant life and animal life, or between other forms of animal life and what we human beings are pleased to call the highest form. If the thing which we call "life" is itself the soul, then cows have souls; and, in the very nature of things, we must allow souls to all forms of life and to inorganic matter as well.

Life itself is something very real, as distinguished from the soul. Every man knows that his life had a beginning. Can one imagine an organism that has a beginning and no end? If I did not exist in the infinite past, why should I, or could I, exist in the infinite future? "But," say some, "your consciousness, your memory may exist even after you are dead. This is what we mean by the soul." Let us examine this point a little.

I have no remembrance of the months I lay in my mother's womb. I cannot recall the day of my birth nor the time when I first opened my eyes to the light of the sun. I cannot remember when I was an infant, or when I began to creep on the floor, or when I was taught to walk, or anything before I was five of six years old. Still, all of these events were important, wonderful, and strange in a new life. What I call my "consciousness," for lack of a better word and a better understanding, developed with my growth and the crowding experiences I met at every turn. I have a hazy recollection of the burial of a boy soldier who was shot toward the end of the Civil War. He was buried near the schoolhouse when I was seven years old. But I have no remembrance of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, although I must then have been eight years old. I must have known about it at the time, for my family and my community idolized Lincoln, and all America was in mourning at his death. Why do I remember the dead boy soldier who was buried a year before? Perhaps because I knew him well. Perhaps because his family was close to my childish life. Possibly because it came to me as my first knowledge of death. At all events, it made so deep an impression that I recall it now.

"Ah, yes," say the believers in the soul, "What you say confirms our own belief. You certainly existed when these early experiences took place. You were conscious of them at the time, even though you are not aware of it now. In the same way, may not your consciousness persist after you die, even though you are not aware of that fact?

On the contrary, my fading memory of the events that filled the early years of my life leads me to the opposite conclusion. So far as these incidents are concerned, the mind and consciousness of the boy are already dead. Even now, am I fully alive? I am seventy-one years old. I often fail to recollect the names of some of those I knew full well. Many events do not make the lasting impression that they once did. I know that it will be only a few years, even if my body still survives decay, when few important matters will even register in my mind. I know how it is with the old. I know that physical life can persist beyond the time when the mind can fully function. I know that if I live to an extreme old age, my mind will fail. I shall eat and drink and go to my bed in an automatic way. Memory -- which is all that binds me to the past -- will already be dead. All that will remain will be a vegetative existence; I shall sit and doze in the chimney corner, and my body will function in a measure even though the ego will already be practically dead. I am sure that if I die of what is called "old age," my consciousness will gradually slip away with my failing emotions! I shall no more be aware of the near approach of final dissolution than is the dying tree.

I am aware that now and then at long intervals there is a man who preserves his faculties until a late period of his life. I know that these cases are very, very rare. No superstition needs to be called into service to account for the unusual things that are incident to life. There may be those who retain, in a measurable degree, consciousness and mental activity beyond the time of the ordinary mortal. Still, everyone with the least information knows that it is almost a universal rule that the body declines with age, and that those who live a long life gradually yield their intellectual activity until they reach the period of senility and unconsciousness.

In primitive times, before men knew anything about the human body or the universe of which it is a part, it was not unreasonable to believe in spirits, ghosts, and the duality of man. For one thing, celestial geography was much simpler then. Just above the earth was a firmament in which the stars were set, and above the firmament was heaven. The place was easy of access and in dreams the angels were seen going up and coming down on a ladder. But now we have a slightly more adequate conception of space and the infinite universe of which we are so small a part. Our great telescopes reveal countless worlds and planetary systems which make our own sink into utter insignificance in comparison. We have every reason to think that beyond our sight there is endless space filled with still more planets, so infinite in size and number that no brain has the smallest conception of their extent. Is there any reason to think that in this universe, with its myriads of worlds, there is no other life so important as our own? It is possible that the inhabitants of the earth have been singled out for special favor and endowed with souls and immortal life? Is it at all reasonable to suppose that any special account is taken of the human atoms that forever come and go upon this planet?

If man has a soul that persists after death, that goes to a heaven of the blessed or to a hell of the damned, where are these places? It is not so easily imagined as it once was. How does the soul make its journey? What does immortal man find when he gets there, and how will he live after he reaches the end of endless space? We know that the atmosphere will be absent; that there will be no light, no heat -- only the infinite reaches of darkness and frigidity.

If there is a future place for the abode of the spirits of the dead, where is this place? Trusting people have made pictures and mental images of this abode of the dead. The revelation of St. John treats rather specifically of this far-off land, but it is evident that St. John was a psychopath and his case would be plainly recognized today. True, this picture of St. John's is not very alluring to intelligent men. Still trusting and confiding mortals have visioned in words, at least, a land where families would be reunited and neighbors and friends come together once more. In this smug little place, fashioned upon experiences of life upon this mundane sphere, husbands and wives, long parted, will be united. Parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren, too, will assemble in families in that land of the blessed and the dead.

These conceptions were formed early in the history of man; in fact, it has only been in recent years that we have had any knowledge or vision of the immensity of space and the impossibility of any such place as is visioned by the credulous and trusting. We know now that the earth revolves upon its axis at a terrific speed. This motion makes a complete revolution in twenty-four hours. We know down to the second of time that no spot bears the same relation to space as it did before. If no one who dies at midnight has a soul and starts on his trip to Heaven, he goes in an opposite direction from one who dies at noon, and chances to meet under any circumstances which can be conceived would grow less as they traveled on. Besides this revolution on its axis, the earth is traveling at an inconceivable speed around the sun, which, at times, is about ninety-three million miles away. This complete journey is made once a year. In its orbit around the sun it travels more than a thousand miles a minute. This constant appalling speed would evidently add to the confusion of two mortals locating themselves in the same spot in space, even though they had souls. The atmosphere, even in its most attenuated form, does not reach over five hundred miles away from the earth, and for only a small fraction of that space could life as we conceive it exist. And when the earth leaves a given spot in space the atmosphere is carried along with it. In addition to the motion of the earth on its axis and its unthinkable speed in its circuit around the sun, the whole solar system is traveling around the pole star, accompanied no doubt by many other systems like our own; no one can tell how fast it goes or how far it goes, in what seems endless space. And these systems travel in turn around some other central point in the far-off Milky Way, and no one knows how many other apparently central points somewhere off amongst the stars and worlds and suns furnish foci around which the earth and all the systems constantly revolve. What possible means of locomotion could be furnished for mortals to find a place of rest, and what possible unimaginable guide could pilot individuals going in different directions at all times of the day and night and all portions of the year and century, and other greater periods of time, to this haven of the blessed? All of these conceptions beggar any sort of imagination and make and substitute the wildest unthinkable dreams in place of real beliefs.

There are those who base their hope of a future life upon the resurrection of the body. This is a purely religious doctrine. It is safe to say that few intelligent men who are willing to look obvious facts in the face hold any such belief. Yet we are seriously told that Elijah was carried bodily to heaven in a chariot of fire, and that Jesus arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The New Testament abounds in passages that support this doctrine. St. Paul states the tenet over and over again. In the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians he says: "If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? ... and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain.... For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised." The Apostles' Creed says: "I believe in the resurrection of the body." This has been carried into substantially all the orthodox creeds; and while it is more or less minimized by neglect and omission, it is still a cardinal doctrine of the orthodox churches.

Two thousand years ago, in Palestine, little was known of man, of the earth, or of the universe. It was then currently believed that the earth was only four thousand years old, that life had begun anew after the deluge about two thousand years before, and that the entire earth was soon to be destroyed. Today it is fairly well established that man has been upon the earth for a million years. During that long stretch of time the world has changed many times; it is changing every moment. At least three of four ice ages have swept across continents, driving death before them, carrying human beings into the sea or burying them deep in the earth. Animals have fed on man and on each other. Every dead body, no matter whether consumed by fire or buried in the earth, has been resolved into its elements, so that the matter and energy that once formed human beings has fed animals and plants and other men. As the great naturalist, Fabre, has said: "At the banquet of life each is in turn a guest and a dish." Thus the body of every man now living is in part made from the bodies of those who have been dead for ages.

Yet we are still asked to believe in the resurrection of the body. By what alchemy, then, are the individual bodies that have successfully fed the generations of men to be separated and restored to their former identities? And if I am to be resurrected, what particular I shall be called from the grave, from the animals and plants and the bodies of other men who shall inherit this body I now call my own? My body has been made over and over, piece by piece, as the days went by, and will continue to be so made until the end. It has changed so slowly that each new cell is fitted into the living part, and will go on changing until the final crisis comes. Is it the child in the mother's womb or the tottering frame of the old man that shall be brought back? The mere thought of such a resurrection beggars reason, ignores facts, and enthrones blind faith, wild dreams, hopeless hopes, and cowardly fears as sovereign of the human mind.

Some of those who profess to believe in the immortality of man -- whether it be of his soul or body -- have drawn what comfort they could from the modern scientific doctrine of the indestructibility of matter and force. This doctrine, they say, only confirms in scientific language what they have always believed. This, however, is pure sophistry. It is probably true that no matter or force has ever been or ever can be destroyed. But it is likewise true that there is no connection whatever between the notion that personal consciousness and memory persist after death and the scientific theory that matter and force are indestructible. For the scientific theory carries with it a corollary, that the forms of matter and energy are constantly changing through an endless cycle of new combinations. Of what possible use would it be, then, to have a consciousness that was immortal, but which, from the moment of death, was dispersed into new combinations, so that no two parts of the original identity could ever be reunited again?

These natural processes of change, which in the human being take the forms of growth, disease, senility, death, and decay, are essentially the same as the processes by which a lump of coal is disintegrated in burning. One may watch the lump of coal burning in the grate until nothing but ashes remains. Part of the coal goes up the chimney in the form of smoke; part of it radiates through the house as heat; the residue lies in the ashes on the hearth. So it is within human life. In all forms of life nature is engaged in combining, breaking down, and recombining her store of energy and matter into hew forms. The thing we call "life" is nothing other than a state of equilibrium which endures for a short span of years between the two opposing tendencies of nature -- the one that builds up, and the one that tears down. In old age, the tearing-down process has already gained the ascendency, and when death intervenes, the equilibrium is finally upset by the complete stoppage of the building-up process, so that nothing remains but complete disintegration. The energy thus released may be converted into grass or trees or animal life; or it may lie dormant until caught up again in the crucible of nature's laboratory. But whatever happens, the man -- the You and the I -- like the lump of coal that has been burned, is gone -- irrevocably dispersed. All the King's horses and all the King's men cannot restore it to its former unity.

The idea that man is a being set apart, distinct from all the rest of nature, is born of man's emotions, of his loves and hates, of his hopes and fears, and of the primitive conceptions of undeveloped minds. The You and The I which is known to our friends does not consist of an immaterial something called a "soul" which cannot be conceived. We know perfectly well what we mean when we talk about this You and this Me: and it is equally plain that the whole fabric that makes up our separate personalities is destroyed, dispersed, disintegrated beyond repair by what we call "death."

As a matter of fact, does anyone really believe in a future life? The faith does not simply involve the persistence of activity, but it has been stretched and magnified to mean a future world infinitely better than the earth. In this far-off land no troubles will harass the body or the soul. Eternity will be an eternity of bliss. Heaven, a land made much more delightful because of the union with which those who have gone before. This doctrine has been taught so persistently through the years that men and women of strong faith in their dying moments have seen relatives and friends, long since dead, who have come to lead them to their heavenly home.

Does this conduct of the intense disciple show that he really believes that death is a glad deliverance? Why do men and women who are suffering torture on earth seek to prolong their days of agony? Why do victims of cancer being slowly eaten alive for months and years prefer enduring such pain rather than going to a land of bliss? Why will the afflicted travel all over the world and be cut to pieces by inches that they may stay a few weeks longer, in agony and torture? The one answer that is made to this query is that the afflicted struggle to live because it is their duty to hang fast to mortal life, no matter what the pain or the expected joy in heaven. The answer is not true. The afflicted cling to life because they doubt their faith, and do not wish to let go of what they have, terrible as it is.

Those who refuse to give up the idea of immortality declare that their nature never creates a desire without providing the means for its satisfaction. They likewise insist that all people, from the rudest to the most civilized, yearn for another life. As a matter of fact, nature creates many desires which she does not satisfy; most of the wishes of men meet no fruition. But nature does not create any emotion demanding a future life. The only yearning that the individual has is to keep on living -- which is a very different thing. This urge is found in every animal, in every plant. It is simply the momentum of a living structure: or, as Schopenhauer put it, "the will to live." What we long for is a continuation of our present state of existence, not an uncertain reincarnation in a mysterious world of which we know nothing. The idea of another life is created after men are convinced that this life ends.

I am not unmindful of those who base their hope of a future life on what they claim are the evidences furnished by the investigation of spiritualism. So far as having any prejudice against this doctrine, I have no more desire to disbelieve than I have as to any other theories of a future life. In fact, for many years, I have searched here for evidence that man still lives after all our senses show that he is dead. For more than fifty years until almost ten years past, I have given some attention to spiritualism. I have read most of the important books of scientists: Alfred Russel Wallace, Crooks, Oliver Lodge, and the books of many other men of ability and integrity who believed that they had found their dead friends who had come back to them. Likewise, I have for years investigated what are called spiritual phenomena. I am satisfied that if any intelligent man, in possession of his senses, thoroughly investigates spiritualism, he will find that there no evidence to support his faith. At least nine-tenths of the phenomena can be set down as pure fraud and imposition. The evidence comes in the main from mediums who are ignorant, and whose tricks are clumsy in the extreme. Perhaps one-tenth of the manifestations are not the result of fraud but the evidence is entirely inadequate to prove the cause of the phenomena. It is possible that there are phenomena which no one can explain. I have many times seen what are called manifestations of spirit-return that I could not explain, but all of these failed utterly to convince me of the communication of disembodies spirits. It does not follow that because the manifestations are strange and weird, and for the present unexplainable, that those phenomena show that life persists after death. In the realm of these manifestations, the evidence of scientists, is worth no more than the evidence of other men. Most likely it is worth much less. The truth is that real scientists, outside of their special field, are more helpless than other men in detecting frauds and tricks. It is likewise true that most of the men of science, like Sir Oliver Lodge, have come to their conviction late in life, and under some great stress, which is calculated to unsettle the mind, in the particular field to which they appeal.

Sir Oliver Lodge lost his son in the great war. This was a sore bereavement to this eminent scientist. When one considers the greatness of Lodge, the clearness with which he discusses every scientific theory with which he deals, and then reads his book called Raymond, in which he tells of his meetings with his beloved son, it is not difficult to see that as to this bereavement his mind was unsettled and he is reaching out in the darkness to find what he so strongly wants.

Is it possible that any sort of proof could prove the existence of an individual after his decay? Suppose that some good fairy, distressed at my unbelief, should come to me with the offer to produce any evidence that I desired to satisfy me that I would see my loved ones after death; suppose I should tell this fairy that my father had been dead for twenty years; that I followed his lifeless body to the crematory where he was converted into ashes; that I desired to have him brought back to me as a living entity, and to stay in my house for a year, that I might not be deceived. Assume that when the year had passed I should go out and tell my neighbors and friends that my father had been living in my house, although he died two score years ago; suppose that they believed implicitly in my integrity and my judgement; even then, could I convince one person that my statement was true? Would they be right in doubting my word? After all, which is the more reasonable, that the dead have come back to life, or that I have become insane? All of my friends would say: "Poor fellow, I am sorry he has lost his mind." Against the universal experience of mankind and nature, the dementia or the insanity of one man, or a thousand men, could count as nothing. The insane asylums of the world are filled with men who have these dreams and visions which are realities to them, but which no one else believes, because they are entirely at variance with well-known facts.

All men recognize the hopelessness of finding any evidence that the individual will persist beyond the grave. As a last resort, we are told that it is better that the doctrine be believed even if it is not true. We are assured that without this faith, life is only desolation and despair. However that may be, it remains that many of the conclusions of logic are not pleasant to contemplate; still, so long as men think and feel, at least some of them will use their faculties as best they can. For if we are to believe things that are not true, who is to write our creed? Is it safe to leave it to any man or organization to pick out the errors that we must accept? The whole history of the world has answered this question in a way that cannot be mistaken.

And after all, is the belief in immortality necessary or even desirable for man? Millions of men and women have no such faith; they go on with their daily tasks and feel joy and sorrow without the lure of immortal life. The things that really affect the happiness of the individual are the matters of daily living. They are the companionship of friends, the games and contemplations. They are misunderstandings and cruel judgements, false friends and debts, poverty and disease. They are our joys in our living companions and our sorrows over those who die. Whatever our faith, we mainly live in the present -- in the here and now. Those who hold the view that man is mortal are never troubled by metaphysical problems. At the end of the day's labor we are glad to lose our consciousness in sleep; and intellectually, at least, we look forward to the long rest from the stresses and storms that are always incidental to existence.

When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.

Kaempfer's Japan Tokugawa Culture Observed

Engelbert Kaempfer (September 16, 1651 – November 2, 1716) was a German traveller and physician

He was born at Lemgo in the principality of Lippe, Westphalia, where his father was a pastor. He studied at Hameln, Lüneburg, Hamburg, Lübeck and Gdansk, and after graduating Ph.D. at Kraków, spent four years at Königsberg in Prussia, studying medicine and natural science

In 1681 he visited Uppsala in Sweden, where he was offered inducements to settle; but his desire for foreign travel led him to become secretary to the embassy which Charles XI sent through Russia to Persia in 1683. He reached Persia by way of Moscow, Kazan and Astrakhan, landing at Nizabad in Dagestan after a voyage in the Caspian Sea; from Shemakha in Shirvan he made an expedition to the Baku peninsula, being perhaps the first modern scientist to visit these fields of eternal fire. In 1684 he arrived in Isfahan, then the Persian capital. When after a stay of more than a year the Swedish embassy prepared to return, Kaempfer joined the fleet of the Dutch East India Company in the Persian Gulf as chief surgeon, and in spite of fever caught at Bander Abbasi he found opportunity to see something of Arabia and of many of the western coast-lands of India.



Japan
In September 1689 he reached Batavia; spent the following winter in studying Javanese natural history; and in May 1690 set out for Japan as physician to the embassy sent yearly to that country by the Dutch. The ship in which he sailed touched at Siam, whose capital he visited; and in September 1690 he arrived at the coast of Nagasaki, the only Japanese port then open to foreigners.

Kaempfer stayed two years in Japan, during which he twice visited Tokyo and the Shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi there. When he visited Buddhist monks in Nagasaki in February 1691, he was the first western scientist to describe the tree Ginkgo biloba, scientists at the time previously thought that all Ginkgo species were extinct. He brought some Ginkgo seeds back that was planted in the botanical garden in Utrecht and can still be seen today. During his stay in Japan, his adroitness, insinuating manners and medical skill overcame the habitual jealousy and reticence of the natives, and enabled him to elicit much valuable information. In November 1692 he left Japan for Java and Europe, and in October 1693 he landed at Amsterdam. Receiving the degree of M.D. at Leiden, he settled down in his native city, becoming also physician to the count of Lippe. He died at Lemgo.



Here are some of extracts from his book:
A Description of Post Stations, Inns, Roadside Food and Tea Stalls Shuku, or Post Stations

The most important towns and villages along our highway all have a station, operating under the territorial lord, where one can always obtain at a fixed price many horses, porters, runners, and whatever else may be necessary for the journey. Incoming and tired horses and men, or those who have been hired only up to this point, can be replaced here.


All necessities are available, and the inns are comfortable at these places of exchange or post stations, called shuku in Japanese, and so traveling processions will stop only here. The stations are located at a distance of one and a half to four miles from each other. But they are not furnished so properly and comfortably on our shorter overland trip in Kyushu as on the main island of Japan, where we pass fifty-six between Osaka and Edo. The stations are not set up as inns but are merely for stabling horses. There is an open space in front where the transfer takes place so that the public streets are kept clear. The stations have many scribes and accountants, who note down everything accurately and render accounts to the administration of the territorial lord.

Prices are fixed throughout the country, and those between each shuku are calculated not only according to the distance but also according to whether the road is difficult or easy, whether the animals' fodder is expensive or cheap, and other factors.

On an average, one pays the following prices for each mile: for one norikake, that is, a horse to ride loaded with two packs and bedding, 33 zeni; for one karajiri, that is, a saddled horse only, 25 zeni; for each porter of a kago or other burden, 19 zeni. Couriers are available day and night to transport letters of the shogun and the territorial lords. The letters are handed to the next courier as soon as they arrive and are thus carried to the next post station with uninterrupted running. They are handed over in a small, black lacquered box, painted with the crest of the sender, and are attached to a pole carried across the shoulder. These messengers always run in twos, so that if one has an accident, the other can take his place and hurry on to deliver the box. If letters of His Majesty, the shogun, are contained in the box, everybody, even the procession of a territorial lord, must move to the side and let the courier pass without obstruction. The couriers make a certain sound to give notice of this from afar.

Inns
Our highway is well supplied with inns. The best ones are found in those post stations that are so well furnished that even the important lords on their annual journey to and from Edo stop here and occupy rooms. Like other well-built houses, they have only one storey, and if there is an upper floor, it is low and perfumed. They are as wide as ordinary residential buildings but are very deep or long, sometimes forty fathoms. At the back they end in a tsubo, that is, a house or pleasure garden,...

April Fools Day

The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.”
American writer Mark Twain

What is April Fools Day and what are its origins? It is commonly believed that in medieval France, New Year was celebrated on April 1st. Then in 1562, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, changing New Year to January 1st. With no modern communications, news travelled slowly and new ideas were often questioned. Many people did not hear of the change, others chose to ignore it, while some merely forgot. These people were called fools. Invitations to non-existent ‘New Year’ parties were sent and other practical jokes were played. This jesting evolved over time into a tradition of playing pranks on the 1st of April. The custom eventually spread to England and Scotland, and it was later transported across the Atlantic to the American colonies of the English and the French. April Fools Day has now developed into an international festival of fun, with different nationalities celebrating the day in a special way.

In France and Italy, if someone plays a trick on you, you are the ‘fish of April’. By the month of April fish have only just hatched and are therefore easy to catch. Children stick paper fish to their friends’ backs and chocolate fish are found in the shops.

In Scotland, April Fools Day lasts for two days! The second day is called ‘Taily Day’ and tricks on this day involve the bottom (or the ‘tail’ in informal speech). Often a sign saying ‘kick me’ is stuck onto someone’s back without them knowing.


In Spain and Mexico, similar celebrations take place on December 28th. The day is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Originally, the day was a sad remembrance of the slaughter of the innocent children by Herod in his search for the baby Jesus.
It eventually changed to a lighter commemoration of innocence involving pranks and trickery.

Today, Americans and the British play small tricks on friends and strangers alike on April 1st. A common trick is to point to a friends’ shoe and say ‘Your shoelace is untied.’ When they look down, they are laughed at. Schoolchildren might tell a friend that school has been cancelled.
A bag of flour might be balanced on the top of a door so that when the ‘victim’ opens the door, the flour empties over their head. Sometimes the media gets involved. Once, a British short film was shown on April Fools Day about spaghetti farmers and how they harvest their crop from spaghetti trees!

Most April Fool jokes are in good fun and not meant to harm anyone. The best trick is the one where everyone laughs, especially the person upon whom the joke has been played.

China and India

Part II: China and India
SPEECH BY MINISTER MENTOR LEE KUAN YEW AT THE 37TH JAWAHARLAL NEHRU MEMORIAL LECTURE ON MONDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 2005, NEW DELHI INDIA IN AN ASIAN RENAISSANCE

.. I had been influenced by the ideas of the British Fabian society. But I soon realised that before distributing the pie I had first to bake it. So I departed from welfarism because it sapped a people’s self-reliance and their desire to excel and succeed. I also abandoned the model of industrialisation through import substitution. When most of the Third World was deeply suspicious of exploitation by western MNCs (multinational corporations), Singapore invited them in. They helped us grow, brought in technology and know-how, and raised productivity levels faster than any alternative strategy could.

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union undercut the strategic premises of India's external and economic policies. By 1991, with the country on the verge of bankruptcy, India had no choice but to change. Some Indians believe that, had Rajiv Gandhi lived to serve a second term as India’s Prime Minister, he would have pushed for major reform. But he was cut down before he was able to.
It was left to PM Narasimha Rao to make the big move in 1991. Later that year, then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and Commerce Minister Chidambaram gave a seminar in Singapore on India’s new policy of reform and opening up. In 1992,

Prime Minister Narasimha Rao met Singapor’s then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at the Non-Aligned Conference in Jakarta and persuaded him to visit India with a delegation of Singapore businessmen. PM Goh visited India from 23-30 January 1994 and
returned enthused.

In January 1996, I visited New Delhi and spoke to civil servants and businessmen on the changes that Prime Minister Rao and his team were putting into place. I said that India's 'tryst with destiny' had been repeatedly postponed.

When I published the second volume of my Memoirs in 2000, I wrote "India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, under-used." Time to Keep the Tryst
I am happy to now revise my view. Nehru's view of India's place in the world and of India as a global player is within India’s grasp.

Since 1991, India has changed governments from Congress to BJP to Janata Dal to BJP, and back again to Congress.
There have been six Prime Ministers. The pace of reforms has varied, but there has been no change in basic direction. The middle class has expanded. There is now no stigma in acquiring wealth . Indians have seen what market orientated policies have done for China and they do not want to be left behind.


The rise of India and China is changing the global balance. Together they account for about 40 percent of the world's working age population and 19 percent of the global economy in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms. On present trends, in 20 years, their collective share of the global economy will match their percentage of the global population, which is roughly where they were in the 18th Century, before European colonialism engulfed them. China’s and India’s trade, investments and other economic relations with the countries of East Asia and the Pacific are reshaping Asia’s economic geography. India is an important ASEAN Dialogue Partner, a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum, and an inaugural member of the East Asia Summit this December. And there is no reason why it should not join APEC (Asia -Pacific Economic Cooperation) after it has developed a thick web of economic ties across the Pacific.

East Asia is coalescing, brought together by market forces. India, China and Japan are readjusting their relationships with each other and with the US. This will not be an easy process because all countries want to preserve their independence and space to grow. If there are no mishaps by 2050 the US, China, India and Japan will be economic heavyweights , as will Russia if it converts its revenue from oil and gas into long term value in infrastructure and non-oil industries.

India is an intrinsic part of this unfolding new world order. India can no longer be dismissed as a "wounded civilisation", in the hurtful phrase of a westernised non-resident Indian author (V.S. Naipal). Instead, the western media, market analysts, and the International Financial Institutions now show-case India as a success story and the next big opportunity.

This is a comforting development for the US and the West, that a multi-party India is able to take off and keep pace with single-party China.

Forbes Asia recently reported that US venture firms will raise US$1 billion for India by the end of this year. India has emerged as a power in IT sector. It is the largest call-centre in the world. Almost half of the largest global corporates now do at least some of their back office work in India. Indian R&D centers of American technology firms are reported to file more patents than Bell Labs. This year, India announced more than 1,300 applications for drug patents, second only to the US and 25 percent more than Germany, way ahead of the UK and Japan.

The US is now courting a nuclear India as a strategic partner. The EU has also launched a strategic partnership with India, and Japan wants a global partnership with India. These are indices of India's growing weight in the world. Many countries, including Singapore, supported India's bid to be a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council. Nehru’s vision is within grasp and India’s leaders must realise it in the next few decades.

China and India
I have always taken a keen interest in both China and India. Like all democratic socialists of the 1950s, I tried to forecast which giant would make the higher grade. I had rather hoped it would be a democratic India. By the 1980s, however, I accepted that each had its strengths and weaknesses and that the final outcome would depend on their economic policies, the execution of those policies, the responsiveness of the government is to the needs of the people, and most of all the nature of the culture of the two civilisations.

Whether Asia will take its place in the world as Nehru wanted depends on how both India and China work together as they rise and actively set out to avoid ending up in opposing camps. It is vital that they understand where they stand vis-à-vis one another. They must not be paranoid and suspicious of each other in a game of one-upmanship. Instead they can cooperate and compete economically, and each improve it s performance by using the other’s progress as benchmarks for what they should do better.

India's bilateral relations with China have improved significantly in recent years after both sides decided to resolve long outstanding issues.

Compare and contrast: India & China
The world is fascinated by the renaissance of Asia’s two largest and most ancient civilisations and political and business leaders compare and contrast their progress and prospects.

At independence in 1947, two years before the Chinese Communist Party liberated China, India was ahead in many sectors. Both lost steam by adopting the planned economy. But because of its “great leap forward” and “Cultural Revolution”, China suffered more. However Deng Xiaoping was able to acknowledge China’s mistakes and China’s course dramatically change when he returned to power in 1978.

India has a superior private sector companies. China has the more efficient and decisive administrative system.

China has invested heavily in infrastructure. India underinvested infrastructure is woefully inadequate. India has a stronger banking system and capital markets than China. In dia has stronger institutions, in particular, a well developed legal system which should provide a better environment for the creation and protection of Intellectual Property. But a judicial backlog of an estimated 26 million
cases drags down the system. One former Indian Chief Justice of India’s Supreme Court has given a legal opinion in a foreign court that India's judicial system was practically non-functional in settling commercial disputes.


3
Both India and China have excellent universities, at the peak of their systems. India’s institutes of technology and management are world class. China is determined to upgrade its top 10 universities to world class status. Overall China's education system is more comprehensive. China’s illiteracy rate is below 10%, India’s about 40%. India’s narrower band of educated people will be a weakness in the longer term. And although top quality Indian manpower is in high demand, large numbers of engineers and graduates lack the skills required in a changing economy and remain unemployed. However India has a larger English speaking elite than China. But only over half of each Indian cohort completes primary school, a big loss.
After liberalisation, China and India have followed different models of development, maximising their respective strengths. China adopted the standard East Asian model, emphasising export-oriented manufacturing. China has been immensely more successful in attracting FDI. India has focused on IT and knowledge-based services. Job creation is much slower in India and will continue to remain so until India’s infras tructure is brought up to date to attract the many manufacturers who will come to use India’s low cost workers and efficient services.

China's GDP for manufacturing is 52%, India’s 27%; in agriculture China’s is 15%, India’s 22%; for services China’s 33%, India’s 51%. Over the last decade, in the service sector India has averaged 7.6% annual growth, China 8.8%, in manufacturing
India’s growth is 5.7%, China’s 12.8%.

India and China should co-operate and compete with each other, spurring one another to greater heights.

ASEAN will be a major beneficiary. As Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong once said, India and China can be the two wings of the jumbo jet for Southeast Asia.

India should benchmark itself not just against its own past, but against the best in Asia. And India can take heart from the achievements and performance of Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in free market economies such as the US, UK and even Singapore, where large numbers of NRIs have assumed high corporate positions in multi-national corporations.

Both India and China have both done much better than most of the world. In the decade from 1994 to 2004, India's
GDP grew two-fold from US$310 billion to US$661 billion. But during the same period, China's GDP grew three-fold from US$542 billion to US$1,649 billion. In 1984, India's GDP was about 30% smaller than China's. A decade later, it was more than 40% smaller and by 2004 it was about 60% smaller. Such a wide dispari ty is unnecessary. India can and should narrow the gap by embarking on a new round of reforms.

Walking on Two Legs
Can India keep pace with China’s growth? Yes, if India does more in those sectors where China has done better.

The Chinese are learning English with great enthusiasm, and are keen to develop a services sector like India's. All the leading Indian IT players are expanding in China, and training thousands of Chinese software programmers. One Indian company,Zensar Technologies Ltd, has been contracted to train 1,000 Chinese software project managers from Shenzhen in etiquette, communication and negotiation skills. Huawei, a leading Chinese technology company, has invested in Bangalore to tap its software skills. The Chinese want to reach international standards for the software outsourcing industry. They are not too proud to learn from India. In Dalian, Singapore is helping to develop an IT park which will be specifically marketed to Indian software companies interested in the Northeast Asian market.
But India cannot grow into a major economy on services alone . Since the industrial revolution, no country has become a major economy without becoming an industrial power.

Just as China is learning from India to improve its performance in the IT sector, so India must emulate China's success in attracting FDIs and the jobs they create in manufacturing. It can do this by building infrastructure and educating and raising the skill levels of its workers.
Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian political economy at Columbia University, USA, puts the issue clearly. He noted that some have argued that India can focus on IT, grow rapidly in services, skip industrialization, and yet transform itself from a primarily rural and agricultural country into a modern economy. He dismissed such ideas as "hopelessly flawed" and "far-fetched".

IT is less than 2% of India's GDP. While services have grown rapidly, the bulk of the growth is from service sectors where wages and productivity are low. Business services, which include software and IT-enabled services, account for only 0.3% of GDP. Only manufacturing can mop up India’s vast pool of unemployed, narrow the urban-rural divide and reduce poverty. Professor Panagariya concluded:

"The right strategy for India is to walk on two legs: traditional labour intensive industry and modern IT. Both legs need strengthening through further reforms ...."

India's relatively young population can be an asset if they are universally well educated. UN forecasts that India's population will outstrip China’s by 2030. Job creation through faster GDP growth is therefore an urgent necessity. Growth in IT and other services will not create enough jobs. IT-related jobs make up only one quarter of one percent of India's labour force.

To create jobs the main thrust of reforms must be in manufacturing. That requires a change in labour laws to allow employers to retrench workers when business demand is down , streamlining the judicial processes, reducing the fiscal deficit, loosening up the bureaucracy, and most of all improving infrastructure. Let me focus on the last two as I believe they are crucial and inter-connected.

Industrialisation cannot take off without adequate infras tructure: better roads, and a reliable supply of power and clean water, better ports and airports. By one estimate, economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as US$4
to 6 billion a year. Another estimate is that the cost of most infrastructure services in India is about 50% to 100% higher than in China. The average cost of electricity for manufacturing in India is about double that in China; railway transport costs in India are three times those in China. China has spent over eight times as much as India on its infrastructure. Three years ago, China's total
capital spending on electricity, construction, transportation, telecommunications and real estate was US$260 billion or more than 20 percent of its GDP as compared to US$31 billion or 8 percent of India’s GDP.

If there are budgetary constraints , the answer is to privatise these infrastructure projects. There are wellestablished construction companies, Japanese, Korean and others, that have done many such infrastructure projects on franchise terms.

One area where India has done well is its telecommunications infrastructure. This has been a critical factor for India’s IT success. India needs to aggressively priva tise infrastructure development and open it to foreign investment. Then FDI flows will increase. And the bureaucracy must not impose onerous conditions that will hamper this privatisation.

The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) based in Hong Kong, recently surveyed expatriate businessmen on bureaucracy and red tape in Asia. India was rated worst out of the 12 countries covered. PERC's conclusion was that:

"The Government would like to liberalise many sectors, and there are plenty of announcements of new initiatives to do so. But when push comes to shove, bureaucratic inertia has been extremely difficult to overcome."

The World Bank has also done its own study. It found that in India it can take a decade to close a business through insolvency proceedings. It also found, among other things, that official fees amount to almost 13 percent of a property transaction in India as against just over 3 percent in China.

My secretaries asked Singapore businessmen with investments in India what, apart from infrastructure, they found as major constraints. To a man, they replied it was the bureaucracy.

They believe it is a mindset problem. The average Indian civil servant still sees himself primarily as a regulator and not as a facilitator. The average Indian bureaucrat has not yet accepted that it is not a sin to make profits and become rich . The average Indian bureaucrat has little trust in India’s business community. They view Indian businessmen as money grabbing opportunists who do not have the welfare of the country at heart; and all the more so if they are foreign businessmen. Deng Xiaoping said at the start of China’s open door policy, it was glorious to be rich. The sequel is reported in Forbes Asia, November 14 2005, where it listed over 300 China’s richest, 40 of them with thumbnail CVs in a centre -fold. All are new entrepreneurs creating jobs and spreading wealth. Now, after private enterprise and the free market have generated wealth in the coastal provinces, China’s leaders have concentrated on spreading growth to the inland provinces by building infrastructure and offering generous economic incentives for investments.

One Singapore businessman told me this story. He entertained a former senior Indian civil servant to lunch in Singapore. Some months later when he was in India, the former civil servant reciprocated by hosting a dinner at which several other guests were present. His host made this surprising comment that he was amazed to see that in Singapore, a business could be successful without being dishonest.

India must find some way to reward bureaucrats who facilitate , not hinder investments and enterprise whether Indian or foreign.

A factor worth noting: India gets a much better economic return for the investment it makes in its economy because India’s private sector capital efficiency is high. If India opens up fully to FDIs, the results will be profitable for the investor and add considerable employment and added GDP growth for India. With jobs there will be a trickle down of wealth to millions of Indian workers, as there has been in East Asia.


Politics is the Issue
What India has achieved since 1991 should not be underrated. There have been many successes. The Delhi Metro is one. Bharat Forge, the largest Indian exporter of auto components and the leading global chassis component manufacturer, is another example in the manufacturing sector. There are others. The question is why there are not many more of them?

There is no dearth of excellent analyses by Indians about th is problem. An entire library could be assembled on the subject. I consulted two books: The Future of India by Bimal Jalan, who was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1997 to 2003, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and has represented India at the IMF and World Bank; one other book, Governance by Arun Shourie who has held several government portfolios and is a well-known writer. To sum up their arguments for the failings of the system in a single word: politics.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a wide-ranging interview to the McKinsey Quarterly. He rated his own government's achievement as 6 out of 10, a performance he said was unsatisfactory. He acknowledged the need for better infrastructure, for more FDI, and also the need to move ahead in manufacturing. When asked whether the pace of implementation was fast enough, he replied:

" ... economic policy and decision making do not function in a political vacuum. It takes a lot of time for us to take
basic decisions. And furthermore, because we are a federal set-up, there are a lot of things that the central government does, but there are many things, like getting land, getting water, getting electricity - in all these matters the state government comes in, the local authority comes in ..... .... I do recognise that at times it gives our system the label that it is slow moving. In a world in which technology is changing at such a fast pace, where demand conditions change very fast, we need to look at a more innovative mechanism to cut down on this rigmarole of many tiers of decision-making processes."

Prime Minister Singh added, "We are a coalition government and that limits our options in some ways."
Politics is a fact of life in any country. And coalition politics is a fact of Indian political life.

It has been suggested that India's slow growth is the consequence of its democratic system of government. Almost 40 years ago, Professor Jagdish Bhagwati wrote that India may face a "cruel choice between rapid expansion and democratic processes".
But democracy should not be made an alibi for inertia. There are many examples of authoritarian governments whose economies have failed. There are as many examples of democratic governments who have achieved superior economic performance. The real issue is whether any country's political system, irrespective of whether it is democratic or authoritarian, can forge a consensus on the policies needed for the economy to grow and create jobs for all, and can ensure that these basic policies are implemented consistently without large leakage. India’s elite in politics, the media, the academia and think tanks can re-define the issues and recast the political debate. They should, for instance, insist on the provision of a much higher standard of municipal services.

By way of example, Chinese politics have always been plagued by factionalism. China also has great regional diversity. Like India, China also has powerful vested bureaucratic interests. But Deng Xiaoping forged a basic consensus among all political factions and the bureaucracy on the economic development and the necessary opening up to the outside world to succeed. A similar consensus can be achieved in India.

The passage of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Bill by the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) in May this year was an important move. SEZs can finesse some difficult internal issues blocking liberalisation. Singapore has some experience with SEZs in China. If India thinks it useful, we are willing to share our experiences with you, building upon what we have done in the Bangalore International Technology Park. I must conclude with a word of caution. SEZs, once embarked upon, must be made to succeed, which means total and sustained commitment from politicians and bureaucrats at national, state and local levels.

When they succeed, they will have a powerful effect on the whole economy, give a boost of confidence and spark off a healthy competitive dynamic between different states and regions. Successful SEZs also will erode opposition to reforms because their benefits become self-evident, as has happened in China.

A few months ago, in August, the communist Chief Minister of West Bengal was in Singapore to drum up investments for his state offering market incentives to attract investors. He said: “The lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union and from China is that [India] must reform, perform or perish.” That very same month, members of his own party in Lok Sabha in New Delhi forced a retreat on India's privatisation programme. This is India’s party politics.

There are some imponderables. American commentators believe that China’s political system is too rigid, that it does not have the flexibility of pluralistic politics and democracy with freedom of speech, the media, assembly and respect for human rights.

So China will encounter severe problems and setbacks. Professor Pranab Bardhan1 of University of California, Berkeley, has explained
the problem this way:

“China's authoritarian system of government will likely be a major economic liability in the long run, regardless of its immediate implications for short-run policy decisions.
“But inequalities (particularly rural-urban) have been increasing in China, and those left behind are getting restive.

With massive layoffs in the rust-belt provinces, arbitrary local levies on farmers, pervasive official corruption, and toxic industrial dumping, many in the countryside are highly agitated.

“China is far behind India in the ability to politically manage conflicts, and this may prove to be China's Achilles' Heel.

Over the last fifty years, India's extremely heterogeneous society has been riddled with various kinds of conflicts,but the system has by and large managed these conflicts and kept them within moderate bounds. For many centuries, the homogenizing tradition of Chinese high culture, language, and bureaucracy has not given much scope
to pluralism and diversity, and a centralizing, authoritarian Communist Party has carried on with this tradition”.
Pranab Bardhan is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded
Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance and Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economics.

6
If they are right, India will draw ahead in the longer term.
Such analyses assume that the Chinese political system will remain static. If China’s political structures do not adjust to accommodate the changes in its society resulting from high rates of growth, India will have an advantage because of its more flexible political system in the longer term.

But Bardhan also cautions: “India’s reform has been halting and hesitant. India’s heterogeneous society has been riddled with conflicts, but the system has by and large managed these. There are many severe pitfalls and roadblocks which India and China have to overcome.”

Both India and China are huge countries with vast populations and long histories. They have to evolve standards of governance that is consonant with their cultures and the spirit of their civilisations.
At stake is the future of one billion Indians. India must make up for much time lost. There is in fact already a strong political consensus between India’s two major parties that India needs to liberalise its economy and engage with the dynamic economies of the world. The BJP led coalition government of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee continued and indeed extended the economic libera lisa tion policies of Manmohan Singh when he was Finance Minister in PM Narashima Rao’s government. India now has a strong, able and experienced team wi th Manmohan Singh as PM. The time has come for India's next tryst with destiny.

make yourself relevant

MM Lee in his Q & A Session at NTU Students' Union (9th Ministerial Forum) at Nanyang Auditorium on 18 February 2003, said that :

"..we have to become a cosmopolitan city which is linked up to China, to India, to the region and to the world beyond.

In other words, if we confine ourselves only to Singapore -- localisation --

then we'll go back to the fishing village from whence we sprang, and there are only 120 people who could live off Singapore, and I wonder if we can even support our 120 people because we have destroyed all the fishing grounds around us.

So there is no choice but to move forward and there is no choice for the rest of the world too, because as you build on your discoveries -- scientific, technological, discovery of other countries, you find you can improve your standard of living, your quality of life by exchanging goods, products, services.

"Now, when that came to an end suddenly in Japanese-occupied Singapore, because their ships were being sunk by Allied submarines, Singapore just shrunk.

There were no medicines, no textiles, we took tablecloth and turned them into trousers and shirts. No rice because rice was imported from Thailand and even the junks were being sunk and we started planting tapioca and sweet potatoes and lived a very unhealthy life.

So it was a lesson to me in very practical terms of what it means by that simple concept -- division of labour.

"The world has achieved this standard of living and large parts of the world are enjoying a standard of life never before ever enjoyed in its history because advances made by certain groups in certain countries rapidly improved the well-being of others.

So somebody discovers a drug to solve, let's say, Alzheimer or Aids. First to benefit will be the drug company to recover part of its R&D and to give profits so that other people will invest in other pharmaceutical companies to continue more research, but eventually, the whole world benefits. So whether it is us or any other country, there is no choice but to plug in into what is going on in the most developed places and hoist in the benefits.


"After the war, it was fashionable for many newly independent countries to try and become self-sufficient. There were several theories around at that time advanced by Latin American economies to say that if you allow these multinationals in, you're being exploited by them, they exploit your natural resources, your labour and so on, and you are then impoverished.

So, they started trying to own their own steel mills, their own petrochemicals et cetera, and they did not succeed. We tried that route and made our own toothpaste, mosquito sticks and a few other simple products and decided if we continued along that path, we would all die of starvation.

"So we decided, let's do the practical thing. If this company is the world champion in this product, it's going to beat other companies, well, let's get them here, 100 per cent owned by them, they make use of us, we educated our people who became factory floor operators, then supervisors, then accountants, then managers, engineers and that's how we got here.

By the late 1970s, the others around the region decided that we were right and they started copying us.

Now, China has decided, yes, it is right, so they are sucking in all the investments that's coming to East Asia -- 70 per cent of all the investments coming to East Asia now is going into China -- and it's the fastest way to learn to develop your own capabilities and your infrastructure and later on, the capital to buy more machines and invent new ones.

So, whether it's localisation, regionalisation or globalisation, you come back to, how many links can you forge with the rest of the world and make yourself relevant to the most number of people in this world, and if you do that, you'll succeed."

Note:
The things MM Lee said meant something, although some may not like his style. There are something we could learn from the history of yesterday and applied ourselves in the new economy, beyong 2000's: stay relevant or be obsolete.

In the end,we have only two choice, and time is not on our side as we are aging nations. We needed to sprint to stay ahead, a step of ahead of others. There are price to pay. There are always equilibrium: you have to return what you take from others.

the line of death

I used to jog in the evening as it was cooler and you could smell the fesh fragnance of the trees and flowers along the path.

To me every jog was a special as I treasured each jog as a fresh and renewing day for me.

Little do I expected a close shave and a thin line between live and death.

I was jogging along a path when I saw many people walking on the pavement, so I took the side of the road, where I jogged the double-yellow lines. Just I started running, a double-decker droved by and I could felt the turbulence of the wind.

The bus-driver slowed and I waved my apologies, and he understood, and continued on.

I knew that I have just escape the line of death.

Hawker Centres Upgrading Programme Part II

Just find out from the HDB website that HUP for Jurong East St 24 was awarded to TEW KIM THAI CONSTRUCTION PTE LTD at contract sum of S$4,160,000.00 on 6th June 2005.

They have the lowest tender quotation. The ranges from a S$4,160,000.00 to S$5,743,800.00. Only slightest difference between the first and second lowest quotation, but 1,583,800.00 between the highest and lowest bid.

Bearing in mind, the rental will be increased for Cooked food from S$160 to new rental ranging S$320 -S$480 (100%-200% increase) per month. For existing rental for wet market ranging of S$56 - S$92, it will revised upwards to S$112 - S$276. (100%-200% increase.).
we will be expecting prices of consumed food to increase after the hawker centre to open. (if it can in time.)
That was one of the reasons of our cost of living is increasing.

Would it better not to upgrade or re-configured or Re-built Centres? Only time will tell. But I hope it will be delayed another 3 months or even more.

a close shave

one of my friends used to work in Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre. Since he has found a new job, he left a few weeks ago.
Then he was alarmed to read the new about the building at Pasir Panjang Wholesale Centre was closed temporarily after gas leak. He has worked there for quite a few years and everything seemed fine before he left. And he used to work for the building that gas has leaked.
Wow. I told him he was fortunate to escape the accident and still in one-piece.

I told him that the exposure to more concentrated levels of ammonia gas (above 25 ppm) can cause headaches, nausea, and intense burning of the eyes, nose, throat, and skin. So, it was not a good environment to work.

Well, for him it was a very close shave indeed. He lived again.

The cost of owning a car

heard from radio, there are 12 cost factors:
1. depreciation.
2. COE
3. Insurances
4. Economical cost
5. accidents cost
6. cash (such as car-washing)
7. Parking fees
8. ERP/CTE(Every Road Pay/Cut-throat Expressway)
9. Fines
10.Petrol
11. Maintenence cost
12. Road Tax

Also, was informed for every cc of car you have to pay $1.00 per month.

That meant if you want to own a 1000cc car, you needed to spent S$1000 per month. If you are driving a 2000cc's car, then you have to fork out at least S$2000 from your monthly salary.

So, do not envy those who drove a car, they have throw that kind of cash for their cars. Not forgetting for those who bought COE at much higher price, (some of my friend did and have to pay the higher same car loan) and they stand to lose at S$10,000-S$20,000 should they want to change new car and they lost twice just by
selling and buying a new car.(double whampy)

For those who earned $10,000 or even more (managers, directors), they will have no problems. (for your information, university professor are earning at least S$10,000 per month)


For those take taxis to and fro, they need not to spend S$1000 monthly. A wise choice and needed not worry too much on maintenance, rising petrol, ERP,etc)

For comparison, let say a person earning S3,000 per month. deducting off his CPF, he is left with S$2,400. If the person is driving 1,600 cc car, his actual cash for the month is S800 for himself and family (if he has).

taxi

Like many others, I also hold taxi vacational licence.
Like many others, we used it as the last retort for emergency cases.
However,when I spoke to one of my friends who has worked full-time as taxi-drivers, I was surprised to hear that tax-driver was a tough job, and told me to forget the idea of becoming one.
The main cause: the customers. whether you make in shortest time or short path, they still asked for discount. My friend always gave way.
However, there are certain advantage: you decided your working hours, and half way through working, you can take a break and go shopping.

shop house cum living quaters

Recently, we have noticed something fishy going on on a shop house of a particular block.

Previously, it was a provision shop and because of poor business, it was closed down last year. Over the past month, the roller shutter was being lowered down and we assumed that the unit was being letting out and undergoing renovation.

However, after few observations, we noticed many strangers, namely workers entering through the back gate at late evening via truck, leaving early in the morning, clothes were seen hanging inside and outside the shop and people are bathing. They occupied the second level of the same unit as well.

Wondered what has happened...

Time Machine

HG Wells (1866-1946)
The Time Machine was first published in 1894, it was brought out as a book the next year under its current name and sold more than six thousand copies in a few months.

He was just twenty-seven-years-old then.

I liked the novel's appeal lies in its attempt to tell us what will become of human beings in the distant future as we could not see the future in 100-200 years' time.

it make the central character of a time traveler who can transport himself back and forth in time with the aid of a machine he invented, he is able to explore many of the themes that obsessed him, including evolution, and the fantasy of time journey, where he can roam the world forever.

He described the future world of the effete Eloi and the cannibalistic Morlocks and the world beyond that in which all semblance of human life has been erased,

He illustrates what he believes may very well be the fate of humanity.

Hawker Centres Upgrading Programme

Our hawker centre cum wet market at Jurong East was closed for HUP from July 2005 and to be completed by April 2006.

From the day one till this year January, we only could see less workers and supervisors working(around 10-20), work done such the roof being hacked away and new rubbish centre.

After the Lunar New Year, as the days drew nearer to completion day, then there was a lot of activities. Sub-contractors from main contractor's were being called to rush to complete. They have only two months' time.

There are still alot of work to be done: tiling, rewiring,new roof, painting. The list can goes on and on..

Wondered whether they can handover to the HDB on time.

Note: The upgrading is mainly designed to improve the facilities, especially ventilation, at the hawker centres. Standard upgrading included re-tiling, replacement of tables and stools as well as improvement in facade, roofing, electrical, exhaust and plumbing systems. The toilets and bin centres will also be upgraded. Reconfiguration or rebuilding included extensive work will be carried out to redesign the layout, incorporating additional fire safety features and, where possible, the stalls will be made larger.

patience

Have watched the ladies table tennis final at Melboure in Australia. The most exciting was the last match between Sharon Tan and Jian Fang Lay.
Sharon Tan showed great patience at the last nail-biting game 5 and waiting for the Jian to make the mistakes and won.

She could have smashed for the last 2 points but she waited, and waited. And much to her relief, Jian was over anxious and made mistakes and the rest is history.

singapore serf

Have read the blog from singaporeserf.

He has started to blog again.

Think Michael Chua has left his first comments on his eight post on September 2004.

that was one and half years ago. Time really flies.