What Is Human Resource?
I have always been interested in understanding government policies and their impact on the nation. For we have to admit that the road to hell is oft paved with good intentions, and noble ideas may still end up with disastrous consequences.
Take the British policy of trying to get more students to gain some form of certification after attending ten years of compulsory education. The GCSEs were meant to help school-leavers, but had the undesired effect of lowering the standard of secondary education, which then went on to affect both sixth-form education and beyond.
Or the creation of the Euro, which gave a common currency to Europe, easing cross-border trade. However, it also unleashed low interest rates to many emerging economies, who ended up borrowing too much, giving rise to the current crisis in Europe.
I seem to be giving negative examples, so what of unexpected positive results from policies?
What about sanctions against South Africa during the era of apartheid which fueled scientific innovation? That definitely was not the intended result, but it still happened.
So what of the Singapore's government's policy on foreign talent? On one side, there is the sense of entitlement of some locals, having no inkling of the impact of global competition; on the other side are foreigners taking advantage of loop-holes in the system and causing a slew of further problems.
I am not sure if we really need to compete on the world stage, and not just settle for the regional stage. For we do not have a special gene-pool that sets us apart from the rest. To have us compete only makes us more vulnerable to the changes on the global playing field, one that changes like the change in the wind, where the process of selection is Darwinian. Are we, a socially-engineered population, able to stand up to Darwinian natural selection?
It seems not, and hence, the injection of foreign talent. Yet, we know that there are those who make a system work, and those who game the system. Singaporeans are known for making systems work, but are we ready for the onslaught of the gamers?
Those that milk the system, and leave when the system is a dried shell? Those that dump trash into the system, letting the system inherit and deal with the trash?
Or what about the signals that are sent to the local citizenry? That they are not good enough, and better substitutes will take their place? What does that do for an ego of a child, who is constantly compared with a better neighbour? What sense of love or belonging does the child feel? Or does the child grow up longing for the day to be strong enough to flee the family home?
What holds a citizen home, if all that is construed as Singapore, is merely material possessions? For the soul longs for more than the material things, that of love, comfort and protection, when things go awry, for a community that is beyond comparing who has the bigger car, but one that looks after anyone who stumbles along the way.
Yes, natural selection may be the way of the world, but that drives change and movement, not a sense of community and settledness. Is it time to look beyond mere survival, but to start looking for our souls?
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