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Singapore to ‘explore’ India’s soft power

SINGAPORE: Singapore will “explore” the nuances of “soft power … projection” that “India would be looking at” during the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in Chennai this week.

In an interview to The Hindu on Tuesday, Singapore Law Minister K. Shanmugam said he would also like to share with the delegates “our … own experience in preserving different cultural heritages — the Chinese, Indian, and Malay civilisations.”

Mr. Shanmugam, who will represent the City-State, pointed out that the entire top leadership of his country recently attended ‘PBD Singapore,’ the first-ever thematic event held outside India under its Diaspora banner. This, he emphasised, was a “manifestation” of Singapore’s “strategic engagement at many different levels” with India.

“China is ahead” of India “on the curve [of soft power projection]” in terms of links with their respective diasporas, he said.

“The economic connectivity between the overseas Chinese and China has been extremely strong, because of business opportunities. We see that developing with India [too], particularly from Singapore; and that is a trend we are very keen to encourage. We also want India to come here to do business.”

The Chennai conference would take place under the “clouded” global economic scenario, and he “expect[s] that the Mumbai [terrorist] incident would also come up” during his likely talks with Indian leaders.

Although “not a primary focus” of his prospective participation in the PBD event, Singapore would “want to learn from the Mumbai incident,” Mr. Shanmugam, who is also Singapore Second Minister for Home Affairs, said.

The idea was also to “understand” not only the perspectives of India but also those of its global diaspora. One view was that the Mumbai attacks, which “transfixed the world,” would be just “a footnote in history and a distraction which does not derail the fundamental trajectory [of] … a rising India.” Another strand of opinion was that the attacks would have “a serious impact, in the short term,” on foreign investment flows into India.

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