Early into his chairmanship of the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Mr Lim Kim San heard about building contractors being crooked. So, he thought that it would be a good idea for him to go around and look at some of the buildings being constructed.
The first structure that he saw – an HDB block in Margaret Drive – appeared crooked to him. He went back to his office and declared that either his eyesight was bad or there was something wrong with the block of flats. The technicians visited the building and found that it was indeed crooked.
The HDB made the contractor rebuild the whole thing. Probity and decisiveness won, and Singapore took one small but defining step in the epic struggle to move from the Third World to the First.
Many such anecdotes are recounted in my biography, Lim Kim San: A Builder of Singapore. When he visited another block of flats that was under construction, he looked at the electrical wiring. He thought that the wires were much thinner than those that he had at home. He asked why the wiring was so thin. True enough, it did not meet specifications.
He pulled out the whole wiring and ordered that it be replaced.
That was Lim Kim San, the hands-on, no-nonsense slayer of corruption, inefficiency and mediocrity whose unsmiling attention, which was as unfailing as it was unwanted, was the bane of businessmen trying to short change the state.
As “Mr HDB”, he worked with his ministerial colleagues to raise Singapore out of a festering era of unhygienic slums and teeming squatter settlements when 9 nine per cent of Singaporeans lived in Government flats. The HDB built 21,000 flats in less than three years. By Independence in 1965, it had constructed 54,000 flats. Within 10 years of its formation, the housing problem had been tackled.
For his efforts, Mr Lim was awarded the Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1965.
“Throughout Asia few problems are more acute than those created by people flocking to cities unprepared to accept the influx. The slums that usually result are a blot upon any civilised society and make a mockery of popular aspirations for a better way of life,” the awarding committee said.
“This dilemma has been resolved in Singapore in a manner that provides a model for much of the world.”
Mr Lim applied “quietly and carefully”, a businessman’s “energetic pragmatism” to the construction industry, it noted. “The community life that is developing in the glistening, well-managed blocks of flats that have replaced squalid, overcrowded shacks testifies to the concern and probity of the leaders who made this possible”.
A TANGIBLE STAKE
Of course, “Mr HDB” was more than a builder of homes. Mr Lim made a decisive difference to Singapore in his ministerial roles, which covered an astonishing range from Finance, the Interior and Defence, to National Development and Communications, to Education and the Environment.
His leadership or involvement also left an indelible mark on, among others, the Public Service Commission, the Economic and Development Board, the Public Utilities Board, the Port of Singapore Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore Press Holdings and the Council of Presidential Advisers.
In the People’s Action Party (PAP), his legendary ability to see through people was employed in helping the leadership select candidates for Parliament.
The biography fleshes out these aspects as well by drawing on the transcript of his Oral History Interview by Mrs Lily Tan. The book also covers his numerous appearances in the Hansard, his speeches, newspaper clippings, and interviews conducted with other Singapore leaders who had worked with him.
However, Mr Lim’s name will remain linked particularly to public housing. The HDB underpinned the radical legitimacy of a democratic socialist party which, through its transformational agency and agenda, turned the political economy of late-colonial Singapore upside down. There was no going back after that. To the extent that republics are made of publics, public housing gave early Singaporeans a tangible stake in their fledgling Republic.
People cannot be proud of someone else’s property any more than they can be proud of someone else’s state. And, unless they are mercenaries, people do not defend others’ states. It is in that sense that the nation-state of Singapore, defended by a people’s army drawn from the sprawling HDB heartland, is unimaginable without public housing.
Of course, one does not have to live in public housing to be a nationalist. Mr Lim’s own home in Dalvey Road was a prime piece of private property. However, what is important is not how builders live but how they enable others to live. Mr Lim helped protect Singaporeans from the vicissitudes of the very elements. That is how fundamental his contribution was.
Today, when newer HDB flats match many of the attractions of private units – and would readily be considered private property in many countries – it is important to remember that what would be deemed a miracle in less-fortunate lands is an everyday reality in Singapore.
We would forget this everyday miracle at our collective peril. The thought of a Singapore dotted with crooked housing blocks and sub-standard wiring makes me run to the windows of my HDB flat. Looking out, I see the faint but unfading smile of a giant man who left Singapore far, far taller than when he had walked into the public arena.
Is my eyesight bad, or is there something right with Singapore’s public housing?
By Asad Latif, a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies