After a series of meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Cabinet Ministers on Wednesday, former Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said that the former looked “younger than before.”
Speaking to select reporters, Emeritus Senior Minister Tong said, “Former PM Mr. Vajpayee was more a scholar-leader type. He was shrewd policy-wise. PM Modi did not come across as a scholar but he knows his subject, reads his brief and understands issues. He can get things done. Mr. Vajpayee left a lot to officials and Ministers and in his mind he could be constructing poetry.”
Mr. Tong had visited India when he and Vajpayee were PMs in 2002. Back then, the former had described India and China as the “two wings of the ASEAN jumbo jet.” In the last decade, he said on Wednesday, China had grown much faster than India and the “wings were now asymmetrical.”
He said that Mt. Modi’s problem was that he had raised people’s expectations too high. “While he can deliver, people may be a little impatient for things to happen very quickly… With his intention of making India a manufacturing centre of the world, he can raise the growth rate by one to three percent above the normal five per cent if India catches the right economic cycle,” Tong added.
He appreciated the Centre’s focus on skill development. High Commission sources said that a Singaporean plan to start a skill development institute in Delhi had got stuck after the Sheila Dixit Government was voted out.
To be a global manufacturer, India must have a production chain in the region. Components can be sourced from countries that are competitive. I suggested to the PM that India needs a global market which it can find in the ASEAN plus six group,” he said.
India is also part of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) with the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five others - China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
“It would send out a very powerful signal if India says I am going to open up. I am going to compete… It will attract potential investors.”
Tong met Andhra Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao in Hyderabad on Monday, where he expressed Singapore’s interest in contributing to the new capital. “India should study the best practices of other cities. When the master plan is ready, Singapore could be given a piece of land on commercial or partnership basis where we can implement a few ideas,” he said.
Smart cities
He said that PM Modi’s 100- >smart-cities plan is do-able, although it would be better to leave it to the States and cities themselves. “I’m not sure if all the cities can be done at the same time and an equal pace. The rest can follow the fastest and best cities.”
Tong proposed that a >platform of Singaporean Ministers and Indian officials be created to further his country’s partnership with India.
