A few years ago, I came to realise that right opposite my house was a block of public rental flats. In Singapore, public rental flats — highly subsidied by the government — provide affordable accommodation for financially needy families. The presence of rental flats is not strange given that rental flats have been around in Singapore for years; however, what struck me was that they were located right opposite my home (an executive condominium that houses mostly middle income residents). This meant that communities from 2 different socioeconomic statuses (SES) would ‘live together’ by sharing similar amenities in the neighbourhood such as schools, coffee shops and places of worship.
This could seem strange from a foreigner perspective, as usually neighbourhoods are split according to income levels. Affordable public housing is typically located far from the city centre while luxurious, swanky privatised apartments would be situated in the city centre. However, this creates class enclaves where people from different classes will not get to mix. The Singapore government strongly believes that for a society to be more inclusive, there should be a mix of people from different SES within the same neighbourhood. To that end, Singapore has been intentional in its urban planning by mixing different housing types together (private and public) and ensuring that amenities (such as parks and public transport) remain fairly accessible to all. This is also complemented with equitable education and defence policies. The best schools in Singapore are accessible to all regardless of class — as long as they have proven themselves academically — while all Singaporean and Permanent Resident Males have to complete approximately 2 years of national service regardless of your SES. These policies help ensure people from different SES groups have opportunities to interact and intermingle with each other.
While these policies have been successful in bringing people from different SES physically together, integrating people from different classes in a social setting remains a challenge. A 2017 survey done by the Institute of Policy Studies found out that Singaporeans identified class (ie, SES) as the most likely reason for social divide. This kickstarted a national conversation where Channel News Asia ran a documentary in 2018, ‘Regardless of Class’, to showcase the different perspectives from people in different class groups. The documentary highlighted how a lack of social mixing caused problematic views; for instance, people from the lower class felt ‘invisible’ and students from the Normal stream shared that they felt that Express stream students looked down on them. We are in 2023 now and the conversation continues, taking on a greater urgency as class differences show up more in a post pandemic world. During the pandemic, we saw how the luxury of space and technology have allowed one to live, work and study a lot better. Families with bigger homes have the luxury of space for each family members to have their own rooms to study/work from home and homes with faster and more reliable Wi-Fi helped ensure the transition to working/studying from home was much smoother. Class divide was also recently brought up in the annual government budget debate where Straits Times Editor Grace Ho coined a catchy phrase, ‘Tale of 2 Singapores’, in her commentary on opposition leader Pritam Singh’s opening speech. In that speech, Singh warned of a split of 2 kinds of Singapores, with one where Singaporeans feel like the world is their oyster and the other where Singaporeans feel that social mobility is slowing. The reality is that the class divide conversation still continues from 2017, and we are still working on our goals to be more socially inclusive.
While policies can always be tweaked, it is important to remember that their effectiveness may be limited by what we as individuals choose to do on the ground. It is not strange to hear people not talking to those that live near them or to make small talk with their neighbourhood coffeeshop uncles/aunties. Even in national service where different people are forced to live and work together, it is common for us to fall back to socialising with familiar groups of people from the same social economic background. While policies can physically put people together, the real glue of inclusiveness comes from us deliberately coming out of our shells and intentionally breaking down the hidden walls and barriers between our groups. As individuals, we hold much power in shaping other people’s everyday experiences. I think it is time for us to steer the conversation back to what we can do as individuals in our national goal of promoting social inclusion.
Many of us are becoming more aware of the need to break down these barriers, however, we are often stopped by the challenges we face. Knowing and meeting new people is already so tough, what more someone that we share little in common with? Further, how do we know if they are interested in conversing with you? A friend once aptly put it this way: “you want to make small talk with the chicken rice uncle, but uncle just want to sell his chicken rice la”. While socialising is a skill where we need to exercise some discretion on the appropriateness to engage in conversations, most times, when we do have such opportunities, we are crippled by fear or just a sense of nonchalance. We just want to get our chicken rice too and move on. This is not helpful to the social inclusiveness which we have been trying to champion and adds to the feeling which some people of lower class groups may have of being ‘invisible’. I am guilty of that too and a shift in mindset needs to take place for us to really see services which we use as more than just transactions. The uncle/auntie we see could be someone’s father, grandfather, mother, or grandmother. Just the past month, because I was brave enough to talk to the chicken rice uncle, I was given a heartwarming story of how he and his wife raised 3 kids, with the eldest on his way to completing a PHD in physics in Germany. Moving forward, I challenge us as individuals to capitalise on the everyday opportunities we have to speak to someone out of our comfort zone. The real change and step towards a more inclusive society starts with us.
To conclude, our national goals of social inclusiveness is still a work in progress. The impact and power of change does not solely rest on government policies, but also within ourselves as individuals. While it is difficult to break out of our social groups, its impact on inclusiveness can mean a lot to the individuals we interact with, and there is a lot of value in that. Though I have lived in my current home for 9 years, it was only in my 5th year that I realised that the block opposite mine was a rental block, and only the 6th and 7th did I choose to interact more with the community around me. I am still a floundering fish when it comes to making small talk (especially in Chinese), but with time I am beginning to put faces and stories to the people living within my community. Learning how to break out of our shells and walls is not a simple process but hopefully with time, practice and some awareness, we can all break out of our shells and help each other to feel a little less ‘invisible’, and more seen to create a tale of a single Singapore story.
