The business of death and dying has long been taboo across much of Asia; cemeteries and nursing homes near residential areas are shunned, while investors attract gossip.
In Singapore, Toa Payoh Industrial Park sits alongside the nation’s busy Central Expressway.
Singaporeans traditionally held everything from weddings to funerals on the open air ‘void decks’ of public housing estates.
The funeral arrangement room in Flying Home, Singapore.
Singapore-based multifamily office Kamet Capital Partners Pte committed $100 million last year to a European manager of U.S. life settlements.
Singapore is even becoming a popular roadshow stop for life-settlement funds looking for backers.
For Singapore’s Tsao clan, which made its fortune in shipping and property, taking the sting out of aging and death has been in the family for three generations.
Since 1993, it’s expanded to include a community center in central Singapore, aged-care training and home visit services.
Singapore had 15,205 nursing-home beds at the end of 2018, Ministry of Health data show.
There’s an opportunity, as Singapore’s Tharman Shanmugaratnam has consistently argued, to rise above false binaries and build a new social contract from the political centre.
Overturning the taboo around unlimited monetary easing will exacerbate fundamental dysfunction in the architecture of finance, capital markets and investment management.
The challenge of underfunded pensions or financial repression in general will only get worse forcing us to confront additional taboos further down the line.
Countries such as the US, Canada, Japan and Singapore are giving cash, directly and quickly, to citizens with fairly liberal conditions or generous thresholds of eligibility.
On 22 April 2020, Singapore’s foreign minister personally went to the airport to receive a shipment of essential supplies from New Zealand.
The outright taboo around capital controls was already dented in 2012 when the IMF reversed its earlier stance and supported their use «as a last resort, imposed selectively on capital inflows, and on a temporary basis».
Overall, coordinated international assistance for emerging economies have not yet demonstrated the requisite imagination, especially when compared to the taboo-breaking decisive action taken in the domestic arena.
Lutfey Siddiqi, CFA, is a visiting professor-in-practice at the London School of Economics and an adjunct professor at the National University of Singapore.
Lutfey is a member of the advisory boards of LSE Systemic Risk Centre and the Centre for Governance , Singapore.
Singapore did almost everything right.
But over the past few days, Singapore’s coronavirus caseload has more than doubled, with more than 8,000 cases confirmed as of Monday, the highest in Southeast Asia.
Although countries can closely track contacts to try to keep an outbreak at bay as Singapore did, the coronavirus is sickening, killing and spreading with each passing day, leaving scientists and political leaders racing to catch up with its relentless pace and new dangers.
If anything, the trials of this intensely urban, hyper-international country hint at a global future in which travel is taboo, borders are shut, quarantines endure and industries like tourism and entertainment are battered.
Ordinary, errant Singaporeans have been showily prosecuted, photographed outside the court, their misdeeds blasted on the news as a warning.
A Singapore citizen who traveled to Indonesia in violation of his stay-at-home notice had his passport suspended.
In April, a dramatic surge of infections among poorly paid foreign workers crushed Singapore’s sense of invulnerability.
As of May 19, Singapore counted a total of 28,794 confirmed cases and 22 deaths.
Singapore is now, more than ever, divided into two cities, two populations: the foreign workers in dormitories, and the rest of us.
«Report safe distancing infringements on OneService app,» said a WhatsApp message I got from the Singaporean government.
SINGAPORE – Among a record eleven parties set to contest Singapore’s election on Friday, there has been virtual silence on one of the conservative city-state’s most controversial issues, gay rights.
But for some gay Singaporeans, casting their vote in the mandatory July 10 ballot will serve as a reminder that they have few political allies on one of the issues that matters most to them.
«It’s a non-topic with the parties, the choices we have,» said Victor Ong, a 44-year-old Singaporean who lives with his British husband Harry, whom he married four years ago in London, and their amber-coloured cat Whisky.
Ong’s marriage is not recognised in Singapore, meaning the couple are not eligible for some benefits like housing and tax.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has previously called the law an «uneasy compromise» as society «is not that liberal on these matters».
There is no mention of gay rights or 377A in the manifesto of his People’s Action Party, which has ruled Singapore since independence in 1965 and is widely-expected to be returned to power, or that of any other party in the election.
Of the four main parties contesting, only the new Progress Singapore Party responded to a request for comment.
«That tacit acceptance of the status quo is giving way to a sense of frustration amongst the younger voters,» said Clement Tan of Pink Dot SG, which hosted an online rally last month for Singapore’s LGBT community.
«We are sons and daughters of Singapore, whether we are gay or straight, and to vote, I think it should be accounted for».
Shivangi Bagri, Co-founder of TruCup, is in charge of Singapore operations.
Shivangi Bagri, 29, from Rajasthan, is a graduate in Design and Business Administration from Lasalle College of Arts in Singapore.
She was previously Director, IC Green Solutions, a freelance stylist, and a editor at Singapore-based Affluent Magazine, World Business Magazine, and Vogue .
This was a major reason for dropouts at school and a life filled with taboos.
Breaking a taboo
NGOs like Raah Foundation and Singapore-based HER Planet Earth spread awareness during their own exhibitions and workshops.
TruCup is currently available in Singapore, and will soon launch in Vietnam and Philippines.
«South East Asia has low awareness of menstrual health and hygiene. We want to break that taboo,» Alakshi tells YourStory.
The text of this article was generated by the Breaking The Silence system that collected 6 news articles posted on the web from January 2019 to September 2020 and clustered for the taboo subjects related to Singapore
