Transcript of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's Dialogue at IIMpact Gala Dinner

The dialogue is moderated by Piyush Gupta

Mr Gupta: Prime Minister, thank you for being here. Let me echo Sanjiv’s thanks on behalf of the entire Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) alumni community to you for grtraacing this occasion. You know Sanjiv talked about over a thousand IIM alumni in this city. It is quite instructive from my own cohort of 1982 that five percent of us live in Singapore. It includes the President of your stock exchange, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Standard Chartered Bank, the Head of OLAM and I happen to run DBS – so it is quite a gathering. PM, perhaps it will be helpful if you could kick off by just saying a few words to the gathering including perhaps why you chose to accept this invitation.

PM Lee: I could not refuse! Welcome to all the IIM alumni here – the many who are based in Singapore and all those who have come to join us at this IIM IIMPact. We are very honoured to have attracted so many of you to come. We hope you have found it to be a good experience, living and working here, as well as participating in this conference. There are so many of you here that really, there is a good case to be made to the IIM management to set up a branch in Singapore.

Your theme is change and this is a period of great change in the world. You see it all over in the region. In Singapore, if you have been following our newspapers you will know that we are at a turning point and finding a new way forward because we have reached a certain level of development, have social maturity and we have to find a different path in order to keep on improving our people’s lives and upgrading our society.

In the region there are also great changes taking place. People talk about China. They angst over there will be 7 percent growth, maybe 6.5 percent and what happens if you cross the magic number. But whether it is 6.5 percent or 7 percent growth, China is undergoing very rapid change – economic as well as social change – and it is impacting the region in profound ways. Power balance is shifting, their economic influence is increasing, the way regional interdependencies and cooperation is developing. So many countries in the region, in fact in the world now has China as their biggest trading partner, including Singapore since about three years ago. And I think even for India, China is either your second or first biggest trading – first biggest trading partner. So that is a very big fact in the world which we are adjusting too and which we are cautiously optimistic will be a positive change in the global scene.

Within South East Asia, you are seeing governments change as a new government is elected. New President elected in Indonesia, President Jokowi or President-elect Jokowi came in numerically – it was percentage points of a majority but I think with a strong psychological mandate from his people to take the country another step forward, building on what President Yudhoyono has done over the last ten years. We are happy that all the challenges and electoral processes have now practically completed and we look forward to working with him. Indonesia is our biggest neighbour and we depend on and enormously value a constructive relationship where we can prosper together.

With India, you have a new Prime Minister. I think he came in with a thumping mandate. He has a majority in the Lok Sabha which is something which has not happened for a very very long time. I think it makes a big difference when you have a majority with one party as opposed to a majority with 11 coalition partners. And when you have, as at some stages happened, where you have more than one communist party in that coalition, life becomes very complicated. So there are great hopes for India to take the next step forward and India is a massive country so you do not expect transformation within 100 days but we hope that it will be going in a positive, upward and accelerated direction – connecting to world, fulfilling its potential, attracting investments, engaging with the global trading system and playing your role also strategically in the wider region. India has made a lot of progress since the early 90s – Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister and Narasimha Rao as a semi-retired person become Prime Minister and to everybody’s surprise totally transforms the game. But in the last ten years I think the pace of the transformation has moderated and we hope the new government, certainly very determined to make a fresh start, will be able to do so.

Between Singapore and India, we have a very good base to work upon. We have a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), a closer economic cooperation agreement, which was in fact the first bilateral such agreement which India had signed with any country in the world. And we hope that on that basis we can move forward. Our Ministers have been visiting India, your Ministers have been visiting Singapore. In fact I have met Mamata Banerjee a couple of days ago, I met Sushma Swaraj, Foreign Minister, last week and I am here today and I am looking forward to meeting your Prime Minister because we will be attending various things together.

Your Prime Minister has already received Shanmugam, our Foreign Minister and talked about – in a very focused way – about how we can take our relationship forward. Talking about urban development, talking about water and sewage projects - because that is one of his passions; talking about port development, because that is one of our strengths; talking about education and training because that is one of the areas where you need to move forward on. And we would like to develop these areas as well, and we are hopeful that we will be able to do so, and I think it will be beneficial to both countries. So it is a time of change and we have to get used to it. To say that I am the change is the slogan, is not a bad slogan – after all President Obama got elected on the message of change you can believe in. The challenge is to change the slogan into reality.

Mr Gupta: Thank you. I am going to ask the PM a couple of questions. As you have been told before, you are welcome to post questions on pigeonhole. We have these little cards on your table which tell you where to do it. I think it is http://phlive.at so please post questions and I will try and moderate those questions well. PM, let me start with the question around Singapore-India. The good news is there is a good base. Singapore-India 7th largest trade partner and there about 6000 Indian registered companies here. India-Singapore, 11th largest trade partner, six billion in exports and a lot of Singapore investments going in so telecommunications, port, and now airlines with Singapore Airlines, banks. That notwithstanding, it seems to me that to be brutally honest, China occupies a different position in the psyche of Singapore and Singaporeans. And I am not sure whether it is because of the ethnic makeup of our country or the Government-to-Government (G2G) comfort in the past, or just because China is bigger in size, and therefore there is a lot more happening with China. Or could it just be, which is what I find, that Singapore, particularly Singapore businesses finds it difficult to navigate India. What is your sense on this? And is there a way we can elevate the Singapore-India equation to much like the Singapore-China equation.

PM Lee: The potential is always there. You say China is bigger, in a way that is true. Their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is three times bigger than India, their trade is maybe five times bigger than India – global trade. Our trade with China and our investments in China are much bigger than our investments or trade in India. But in another way in terms of head count, there are as many Indians as there are Chinese in the world. So why is the potential not fully developed? Well it is partly the history of the way the reform has been carried out in China and they took off I think earlier than you and also because India has a more complicated society and more complicated political situation and things take longer to happen. We would like to develop much more in India. I remember vividly one Indian businessman telling me everything is quite transparent in India. You just need to know where to go. So I think there are many individual opportunities, individual businessmen go, they do well – they invest in hotels, they do projects, they have trade, I think there are some infrastructure projects now in India, Hyflux is there. But in a strategic sense, there is not that same clear focus on development, on being outwardly oriented on wanting to draw in maximum, all of the sources which can help you to prosper.

The Chinese for example have been very systematic in making use of their diaspora – in the way they cultivate the diaspora, in the way they bring the diaspora in to their activities for example when they celebrated their 60th anniversary and had their big parade in Beijing, they invited people from all over the world to come and participate – who were community leaders in their own societies. And the diaspora has made a big difference to them; bringing back capital, providing them the network. India has a tremendous Non-Resident Indian (NRI) diaspora but I think you can do more with them and you really also want to have that confidence to open up and link up with the world.

And sometimes it is difficult, sometimes you have other social considerations but if you want to move faster, if you want to fulfil that potential, you have to do that. I think the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is one where there which is a troubled issue and successive Indian governments have taken a very – if I put it very diplomatically – a very cautious and conservative view of what is wise for India to open up to. But in fact it is difficult to open up. But if there is an international deal, that is one way to overcame the domestic political difficulties and justify changes which in the long term are beneficial and which India will profit from enormously. But it has not been and I think we are waiting to see how this new government will take it. There were some leftover business from the previous government with the WTO agreement which was bridged in Bali last year in December, and the new government decided it needed to reopen that issue and unfortunately therefore the deal unravelled which I think is a pity for everybody.

Mr Gupta: PM, just sticking to the theme – you know when Foreign Minister Shanmugam was in India, there was talk about the Prime Minister in India wanting this 100 smart cities and the notion that maybe Singapore could play a role. Do you think a partnership like Suzhou or Tianjin or whatever the third one we are considering – do you think that is a possibility between Singapore and India?

PM Lee: It is a possibility. It is one which we have been discussing with India for a long time. It has not happened yet. I think there are different issues involved. We have such projects under discussion in Tamil Nadu for at least ten years; we still hope at some point it will happen.

Mr Gupta: I think the Chief Minister of Telangana might have a view on Hyderabad in the future.

PM Lee: But I should say (indistinct) Hyderabad under the preceding management – we do have significant projects there and also in Bangalore. So although we do not have project like Suzhou or Tianjin, we have significant investments. We have Information Technology (IT) parks in Bangalore, we have a park in Hyderabad, we have projects elsewhere and they are substantial investments.

Mr Gupta: PM, the number one question I have here is a question which when I posed to the Minister Mentor some years ago, he ducked. Which is, what advice would you give the Indian PM to escalate India’s growth? And he said I could not advise anybody on India. Your country is not governable.

PM Lee: I would not say that. I would say, I cannot advise the PM of India, he knows more about this than me. No, but from our point of view as a country which wishes India well and which hopes India will play a role in the region. The domestic matters, your leadership knows as well as anybody wells. But what we would like to see from our point of view sitting outside, is that India is able to spare the bandwidth and the focus in order to extend your reach, your influence, your engagement with the region, and benefit from it – whether it is through the India and ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA); whether it is what we call the regional comprehensive economic partnership which is an FTA, which we are negotiating with ASEAN as well as Northeast Asia countries, as well as Australia and New Zealand. Or, whether it is the WTO – find the bandwidth to engage, to identify the opportunities, to cultivate the partners and therefore to take full advantage of this as you grow.

Mr Gupta: PM, economics aside, the geo-politics of the region in East Asia has been getting interesting – with China increasing not only its economic but military might – so in South China Sea, in Japan there have been issues. As India builds up its deep sea navy etc, do you think in the geo-political sense there is space for India in this part of the world?

PM Lee: Well, the Pacific is a big place. And the Chinese have said it is big enough for the Chinese and the Americans together so I would take that a step forward and say it is big enough even for other participants as well. The Russians have historically been there during the Cold War. India, I think your focus have largely been on the Sub-Continent. There will be some interest in engaging in a friendly way with countries from East Asia. From time to time we get friendly naval missions which come and make port calls in Singapore and beyond, but I think that you are not seeking to make a claim in the South China Sea. So I do not see that there is a collision there but that you can make a constructive contribution. I think that is very much true, and I hope it will be done.

Mr Gupta: PM, shifting gears a bit. There are several questions here which are sort of in line with what I was planning to talk to you about as well – about Singapore. So a lot of questions about where does Singapore go from here. You talked about a lot of stuff about change, about how Singapore needs to change so the questions are principally around what can Singapore do to constantly reinvent itself to keep itself relevant and keep ahead in the changing world. How does Singapore see itself in the next ten years?

PM Lee: You should watch my National Day Rally! A lot of things can happen in ten years. We know that there are certain physical limits; our international boundaries are mostly fixed so even if I reclaim more land from the sea, it means I have less sea and more land. There are some physical constraints but I think there are no constraints on your imagination and creativity. And I do not accept for a moment that we have done everything that we can do in Singapore. We have an economy which is thriving. I think we have good systems – whether it is education, whether it is transport, whether it is housing – but at the limit, we are not at the limit. You can redevelop, you can upgrade, you can change the way you are operating, you can take full advantage of technologies existing and technologies yet to be invented. And in ten years, you do not know what the new possibilities will be. But I think we can be faster than other countries in taking and seizing them, and in adapting ourselves to them. It is discomforting for our people to have change happen fast. Our population is ageing; we have to take care of our old folks and give them assurance and security but the purpose of life is not assurance and security. The purpose of life is to use that security in order to achieve something new and different, and do better than the people who came before you. I mean that is why you go to business school – because you think you can do better and you can do the business better and actually it is not just that you will make more money in the business but you believe that you will come up with a service or a product or an idea which will change the world. That is what you dream of.

Mr Gupta: In the short term the process of change can be uncomfortable and therefore as we are trying to increase productivity in the country, trying to change the paradigm for what we want to grow, either the old model of bringing in multinational corporations (MNCs) first for infrastructure, bringing in a lot of talent to grow. We are trying to shift away from the model. It is creating a lot of discomfort. SMEs ability to grow, some industries…

PM Lee: So you have to strike a balance. We have to help the incumbents to make the change even as we bring in and allow in transformations which will alter the game altogether. Some things you can do. If you need help to get an IT system going, if you need help to train your workers, you need courses organised, we can arrange that. If you need help to come together so that you have the critical mass and operate more efficiently, we can do that. If you have a new idea but you do not have the lab to refine it and to bring it to a state of being produced and marketed, well we can help you to do that, you have to generate the idea yourself. Those things we can do. But the pace of change is not completely determined by us, you look at Lyft or Uber, it is causing great consternation around the world. It is a simple idea, you have an application, you have a way to assure service quality, you have a different pricing model, and people take that in preference to taxis even though it is often more expensive. But it is better service and you know what you are getting and you get it when you need it. Seems to be a good thing and yet it has generated such enormous concern, lawsuits in Berlin, strikes in Paris, demonstrations in Australia. Now Uber has hired Barack Obama’s Chief Campaign Manager, so as to navigate the politics and so that they can play in the regulatory’s realm, because in the economic realm, they will win but in the regulatory realm they will have to adapt and fit in. And it is going to happen to us – Uber is here. We have other taxi booking applications in Singapore like GrabTaxi and it is going to change the industry. I think we have to help the incumbents in order to enable them to operate to compete, in order to make sure that there is a fair playing field and to make sure we get to a better place without, or put it the other way, to make sure we do not get held back and prevent it from getting to a better place because it is too painful for the incumbents. And it is not easy to do but I think we know what we have to do.

Mr Gupta: Thank you PM. I have a question here, which says Singapore is a great example of multiculturalism, so what are the challenges of maintaining this harmony while encouraging development of Singapore as a global city? I am going to add to that. So in the past the whole issue of getting the multicultural thing to work with the Chinese, Malay and Indian population and so on. Increasingly, we have many other expatriate population, including, within the Indian diaspora, the new Indians and the old Indians. How do we actually make this work in a constructive way, and frankly, what advice do you have for many of the people in this room, many of whom are new Indians, and what they could do better to integrate and be part of our One Singapore?

PM Lee: Well, it is a challenge which every global city faces, we feel that it is happening to us quickly, but if you go to London, they feel the same. In fact in London, non-British born people exceed British-born people. If you just take a narrow boundary of London. I think if you go to New York, you will find that it is an extremely cosmopolitan area and somehow the people who have come from all over the world, have to be able to work and live with one another. And also fit in with the people who are natives, who have been here and who are citizens here. So, part of it is pace, part of it is the mix, we have to manage the speed in which it is happening, we have to make sure that the mix is balanced and as you point out, new Indians who come here to work are different from Indians who have grown up in Singapore – who have that multicultural experience of, the Singapore multicultural experience. And therefore their sensitivities which you tread on, if you are not careful you run into problems, and we have to learn and have time to adapt. But both sides have to make the effort, those who come have to make the effort to fit it, to participate in the society. Those who are here, Singaporeans, at the same time we have to understand that while these are new arrivals and we must help them to fit in to what is quite likely, not such a straightforward adjustment for them also. So it is on both sides. I think a good number of new arrivals from the Sub-Continent, do participate actively in our activities, for example in SINDA, there are many volunteers who participate in the reading groups and help kids to read. In our grassroots, there are quite a number who participate actively. I had an event at my own community centre a few months ago and I was happy to see some of the immigrant group associations coming and participating with us and putting up dances, including the dances for the people with the big skirts from Andhra Pradesh. The Chief Minister from Telangana is here so I think I should mention that. So I think you make the effort but it is not easy. Our culture is different. In Singapore, over the years, because we have been here so long I think caste has become not been so conspicuous amongst Singaporeans. Amongst new arrivals I am not sure that that transition has taken place yet. So when you are in a temple, in a community, or in a temple in a congregation, these are factors which can become sensitive. And you have to know about them and be able to speak candidly enough about them, comfortably and candidly, so that we can address them and gradually massage them away.

Mr Gupta: In the flock of questions which have a similar theme, which is an extension of what you were just saying, how do you think the IIM alumni can help in taking Singapore and our relationship forward and how can the IIM alumni play a bigger role in integrating itself in Singapore and also one which I actually asked Chuan Poh from A*STAR today, you know, given so many Indians have been central to the growth of the Silicon Valley, or the IT, is there an opportunity for us and our efforts to also leverage some of that Indian technology and talent in Singapore? But in general, do you see a bigger role that the IIM alumni can play?

PM Lee: Well, I think we would like you to be good corporate citizens but you have influence as a diaspora, or rather, you have influence as an alumni and you are able to organise yourself and I think if you can link us up to the network worldwide, in New York or London or Sydney or Zurich, I think that it will help us to prosper all over the world.

Mr Gupta: PM, I am going to switch tracts to a different agenda, you talk about change – one of the biggest changes is obviously societal change, the way societies operate, people interconnect, and therefore, a fundamental change in the nature of politics as well. You know in the world of social media, internet, absence of, you know, knowledge as a premium, how do you lead a country and in your own experience of being PM of 10 years, what is the evolution or change you have to go through when you think about your job?

PM Lee: Well, for a start, I now have a Facebook account. 10 years ago, Facebook did not even exist. So I would say in a fundamental way, politics has not changed, it is about power and it is about how you do things for the people. It is always about power and it should always be how you do things for the people. That sometimes is, sometimes is not. But how it is conducted has changed. Knowledge is not free. Yes, it is more readily available, but so is disinformation, so is misinformation, so is misunderstanding. And if you look at what has happened worldwide, the internet has not caused a great convergence of universal truths; far from it. It has led to divisions and all kinds of different ideas being able to take root and germinate which are completely contradictory to one another and groups which are completely antithetic to each other. And we have to make sure that with the internet, with the social media, we do not get seduced by the delusion that we know everything, that what we know is the truth and we are the sole possessors and therefore, we will fight it out till the end. Because that way you fracture the society and you are less able to form a consensus and move forward together and I think you will do worse. It is such a dramatic change over 10 years or probably even less that I think human societies are still adjusting to that. My personal view is that human societies were not designed with the internet age in mind. No, I mean that in a serious sense. In a sense that in the way it has always worked, you have lags, information disseminates over a period of time, you have time to think it over, sink in, discuss it, understand it, and gradually form, what we hope is a wise consensus. But today, all that is telescoped and splashed out tonight and tomorrow morning everybody knows the answer which may be the wrong answer. In fact, far from having a faster circuit, you have a short circuit, collectively. And that is a real problem which I do not think people have found solutions to. You look at the way the way things happen. In Singapore, sometimes we have a case, somebody says something outrageous, tomorrow, everybody knows about it and everybody expresses great outrage and we spend a long time calming ourselves down. Yes, it was an outrageous statement but do we need to get worked up every time it happens? How do we prevent ourselves form getting worked up every time that happens? That is not so easy. And you see it happen in the United States (US) where some wrong report comes out on some news media, it gets picked up and everybody gets agitated and in the next morning, you find the report was not quite correct, damage is done. I think it makes your margin of stability much narrower and you have to be able to navigate that and I think you are going to have more bumps and spills along the way. It is inevitable.

Mr Gupta: Yesterday, I was in a leadership panel discussion with Professor Kishore Mahbubani and Professor Arnaud from Singapore Management University (SMU). And the question came up in this regard, about the nature of leadership in today’s world. And the economists of course have a view that collaborative leadership is very different, I am paraphrasing – you cannot tell, you need to sell, you need to seduce people with ideas. So the question then came up – Is the day of the iconic leader, the strong leader, the iconic leadership over? And it is quite untypical because the thing about China because she is a strong leader and there are a lot of strong leaders around the world. How do you feel about this? Are collaborative leadership and an iconic leadership a contradiction in terms?

PM Lee: You should ask Mr Putin that. For this phase, in this environment, it is peace and stability in many parts of the world, everybody thinks that he knows as much as whomever who happens to be the elected leader for the moment. Yes, it is very difficult to stand up and say ‘Yes, I will be like Winston Churchhill’. But, times change and circumstances change, so I will be hesitant to say that it is like that all the time and will be like that till the end of time.

Mr Gupta: PM, switching the gears one more time. Rest of the world and I want to talk about two, one is all of the tensions of the Middle East, whether it is Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or whether it is the enduring issues in Gaza or Ukraine, central issues in Ukraine and so on. Apart from the global uncertainty, do you worry about the fact that some of these might spill over and to our more immediate region when you see the mercenary army of ISIS, you have got people from Indonesia and Malaysia and I read somewhere from India, is that something that worries us?

PM Lee: Yes, it worries us. Well, it can hit you quite unexpectedly. Ukraine, you never expected it would hit a Malaysian Airlines aircraft, it could have hit anybody else’s aeroplane. So suddenly, you have nothing to do with it and you are drawn in. ISIS, if it were a matter of mercenaries, well I think that is manageable. They are motivated by money and they do not hate the world. But here, it is not mercenaries, these are people who have a completely perverted view or the world, of the ultimate things in life, and are prepared to die for it. And you have seen it happen, from Malaysia, they say they have several dozen Malaysians in Syria fighting, one has actually perpetuated a suicide attack and killed himself. The Australians have people there, dozens, and they have had an Australian who killed himself in a suicide attack. The Indonesians worry about this considerably so President Yudhoyono has been making very strong statements, against ISIS in recent days and proscribing it, which, for a leader of an Islamic country to do and do with such conviction, it shows how seriously he must take this. And we in Singapore have also seen a few people who have gone to Syria, and are there, and a few others who are thinking of heading in that direction, whom we were able to intercept before they could do harm to themselves or others.

So we take it very seriously, it is part of being a globalised world. How do you know about it? Somebody may have told you or maybe your Facebook friend. How did you find out more? You search a Jihadist site, any number, and you get materials circulated, some real showing bloody things happening, some fake, from other wars but associated and you straight away attribute the worst deeds to the people you see as your enemies, and then you are drawn in. It is not going to turn the world upside down, but it can cause quite a lot of harm.

Mr Gupta: The other risk which I think a lot of people think about is this whole question of inequality. Increasing coefficients, the haves and the have-nots, the 99 percent and one percent, even in Singapore, how do we take our social safety net down? What is your view about the immediate or the future if the nature of work changes and inequality increases? Are we headed back to a regime where the leader still puts up an agenda or a greater view where the government plays a part or even some form of modified welfare state is inevitable?

PM Lee: I think in human affairs, nothing in inevitable. You do not know which way it will develop, I know Mr Piketty has written a big book and he made a convincing argument that if you look at it historically, it has always been unequal and it will become unequal again and a lot of economists are persuaded by what he said. But there is really nothing absolutely predictable in human development. You do not know what the next transformation will be. At this stage, it is unequal, partly because of technology. Partly because of China and India entering the global economy and you have masses of workers and you do not have that similar demand for them growing in parallel. But as China develops, as India develops, the companies will grow, the entrepreneurs will grow and there is no reason why you should fundamentally be having a surplus of workers and not enough jobs to tilt the balance against workers. So I do not think that is a fundamental long term factor. You look at China, their wages are already going up, they have been going up 10, 15 percent per year for a couple of decades, and if you continue like that, within a decade, you have triple quadruple, within two decades you are in a completely different situation and we will have different considerations. So I think that the globalisation part is transient in its impact on wages. The technology part is not so clear. Because the technology part, in a way you, in one way make the worker more productive, but on the other hand they dumb down the job. And if the worker is highly productive but he does not need much skill to do it, then any worker can do it and he is not going to benefit from his contributions. Whoever made the technology, whoever is able to write the next version of the operating system, whoever can design the next robot, he is going to benefit from it. So that part is something which we have to watch very very carefully. The old idea which Keynes imagined, was that with technology, with progress, which such enormous wealth, that really you can work three days a week and you can go on holiday the rest of the time, and I suppose in an average sense yes, if you take all the wealth in the world and divide it amongst everybody and we can all go on holiday, four days at a time.

Mr Gupta: The French do it.

PM Lee: But then you see, it does not work for them and that is a problem, it cannot work for the world because who made their wealth, who owns it and what happens if they just share it around like that. Would anybody still be working to make the wealth? And so there will be inequality and in some places extremes and you have to find a solution. But I do not see all the governments of the world getting together and say “Let us become socialists” because somewhere or other, someone will say “I will not be a socialist government and may all entrepreneurs come to me. I am not bringing the tired and the hungry and the weak, I am bringing the imaginative and the driven and the creative, come here and we shall prosper”. And in a way, that is what Singapore is trying to do, to bring in, amongst our own people, bring up the imagination and the creativity as well as to bring in people who can add to that and therefore make us prosper together and so whether you are rich or poor in Singapore, I think you can be a lot better off than you would be in any other place in the world.

Mr Gupta: PM, I have a two or three minutes, I was going to ask you the last couple of personal questions but the question here which I think may be helpful for you to address, has the Little India riots changed the long term outlook of how Indians are looked upon by the government and Singaporeans in general? And what can be done in the future to nullify it? My own view is that it is not an India issue but maybe you would want to talk about it.

PM Lee: No it has not changed our view at all, I mean there was an incident. There was a riot. It is unfortunate. We have investigated it. I think the causes have been established, the follow-up actions have to be taken. I mean there are some practical things you can do to deal with the crowds in Little India. There are also legal consequences – the justice system has to follow up, rioters have to be brought to justice and punished. But I do not think it has changed the situation.

The workers are here for a purpose, we need them – they are building houses for us, they are building trains for us, they are working all over, in banks, in so many companies. And I think that we have to manage the non-indigenous population in a way that we can wear over the long-term, and the Little India riot notwithstanding, we have to continue to do that. I do not think that it has changed the way Singaporeans look at the foreign workers, from what we can tell, the foreign workers who are here, continue to be quite comfortable living and working here and certainly many more are wanting to come. That is why we have to manage the numbers.

Mr Gupta: So PM, my last couple of questions, one, what does your normal day look like, what would you say are easy versus tough decisions – do you have any easy decisions?

PM Lee: Agreeing to come to IIM is easy.

Mr Gupta: Alright, and my last question, the most popular question. You seem to be wearing the Fitbit on the right hand, how many steps do you take in a day?

PM Lee: If I work hard about 8,000, but it tells me that I need to do 10,000.

Mr Gupta: So another couple of thousands of steps PM! Alright, so maybe we can have PM walk around the room to shake some hands and get him towards his 10,000. You will agree with me the PM as usual has been delightful, candid, forthright and very easy to talk to. Please join me in giving him a very warm round of applause.

PM Lee: Thank you very much.

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