Throughout the years, our government has urbanised the country. Villages were wiped out and in place are high rise buildings like HDB flats and shopping malls. Although urbanisation has improved Singapore’s economy immensely, I think it has also at the same time made Singaporeans more stratified.
Although in the 1950s, before urbanisation, people live in villages with poor conditions, there was social solidarity. People of different ages hang around together. Although poor, there is a sense of belonging and community. After urbanisation, people were being separated into different classes. There is increasing class stratifications due the division of labour. The building of HBD flats make worse the situation as the size of the flats were being use to determine a person’s wealth and economic status. What were see nowadays are the high rise buildings which symbolises our wealth, but this is not the case for those without education and skills. We look at the poor begging on the streets, those singing till their voices are hoarse just for a few dollars, will that be the case if it was back in the 1950s? If not for urbanisation, will they be forced to move to the city area and resort to such to earn a living?
Due to the policy of multiculturalism, the government has set regulations on the number of people of different ethnic groups living in a HDB flat. Although on the surface it seems like the different races are now living together, corresponding to the idea of racial harmony and multiculturalism, I think that the people have become more stratified than ever. More Malays and Tamils live in the lower storeys of the flats, while the Chinese prefer the high levels. All the gates and doors are close almost every day, even when the owners are at home. There is minimum interaction between the people, even for those who live next door, what more those in other storeys. I doubt many of us actually know more than ten families from our own block. I feel that this policy of the government has separated the Malays and the Tamils from their own community and at the same time has failed to integrate them into the Chinese community who due to the ethnic ratio is the majority in any block of flat.
On top of that, the older generation now has little interaction with the young people. Due to urbanisation, Singapore is now a city state where there are shopping malls and places of interests like Sentosa all around. The younger generation will obviously prefer to hang around such places. On the other hand, the elderly usually gather at coffee shops or the void decks, chatting among themselves. This, on top of the government promoting nuclear families has separated the old and the young. Unlike in the past where both the young and the old gather together in the village’s coffee shops, idling and gambling together, we rarely see many youngsters hanging around with the old now. We now see cases of youngster fighting with the old for seats in transportations and coffee shops; will that be the case in the past?
Urbanisation is unavoidable in order for a country to progress and improve; however, I think there is a need to retain the rural parts of a country. The government might see rural areas as a bad side of the country, especially when tourists see them, but I feel that the rural areas are the place where inequality does not exists, and where people can actually live together in harmony. Why break the Malays from their own community? Why force the poor to move to the city area and magnify their poverty and sufferings?
