On 8 December, Sakthivel Kumaravelu died in a bus accident in Singapore’s Little India district. The orderly veneer of Singapore collapsed. A riot erupted, and hundreds of Indian workers, including a few Bangladeshis, attacked rescuers and police, leaving four cars and a scooter destroyed, all rescue or police vehicles. Singapore will now deport 52 Indians and one Bangladeshi national and prosecute 28 for rioting—their punishment will include prison term and flogging, known as caning in Singapore.

That Sunday evening Sakthivel Kumaravelu was near Serangoon Road, the go-to place for shoppers from South Asia, with its Mustafa Samsudin store and those idlis at Komala Vilas. Like thousands of other workers from South Asia, he would have worked hard doing backbreaking six-days-a-week jobs in Singapore’s construction or services sector. You can see the workers being ferried from their housing estates far from the city centre to construction sites downtown in open trucks in early mornings, and returning after dark. Sunday is their day to relax—they visit the Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, shop for vegetables at the tekka market, drink beer at any of Serangoon Road’s inexpensive restaurants and bars, and catch up with friends and exchange gossip. Foreign tourists like Little India, for it is one of the few parts of Singapore that “feels" like Asia, with its markets and congested streets; other Singaporeans avoid it probably for the same reasons. In the 1990s, Choo Wee Khiang, a ruling party politician, came under fire for remarking, partly in jest, that every time he drove through Serangoon Road, he felt there was a blackout—seen as a pejorative comment about dark-skinned Indians.

What provoked the workers to attack rescue workers and police remains a mystery. Some have called it a race riot, since the rioters were predominantly Indian—but their target was not another ethnic group. Singapore takes racial harmony seriously, and there hasn’t been a race riot for over four decades. The People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore since Independence in 1965, warns Singaporeans against chaos, justifying its strict laws as the shield against disorder, like the race riots of 1969 between Chinese and Malay communities. Singapore had erupted in fury after weeks of riots in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, after the “May 13 Incident", in which nearly 200 people had died.

Of the 5.26 million people on the island, 3.27 million are Singaporeans, with about half a million permanent residents and 1.46 million foreigners. Some 74% are ethnically Chinese, 13% are Malays, and 9% are Indians. A government white paper expects the island’s population to grow to 6.9 million by 2030, which would require more foreigners to move to Singapore, given Singapore’s low birth rate.

The republic is hospitable to foreigners, and jobs are easy to find. This has caused resentment locally, particularly in the last decade, with Singaporeans complaining of overcrowded public transport and rising costs. The opposition has attempted to harvest the discontent—while 80 of the 87 MPs in Parliament are from the PAP, in the 2011 elections, opposition parties secured unprecedented gains, as two out of five Singaporeans voted against the PAP. (Singapore’s first-past-the-post system and unique “group" and “individual" constituencies make it hard for the opposition to make significant inroads).

Singapore values interracial harmony. A government-commissioned patriotic song, One People, One Nation, One Singapore, goes: “Every creed and every race, has its role and has its place." Those words can be read in different ways, but to its credit, Singapore’s authorities are alert to any sign of racial turbulence. In the mid-1990s, when an opposition politician, Tang Liang Hong, tried to stoke ethnic Chinese pride, the PAP called him a Chinese chauvinist. After he criticized the PAP’s leaders, they sued him for defamation; he never returned to Singapore.

It is true that groups keep to themselves: young western and Asian expatriates relax at Boat Quay, older expatriates are in their clubs, Filipina domestic workers at Lucky Plaza, and Indians in Little India. Such divisions are self-selected, but some notice a class divide.

Singapore sees itself as meritocratic and bristles when class divide is mentioned. With the right education and skills, many Singaporeans have aspired to great heights. And while Singapore has poor, they are not destitute as in other parts of Asia. And yet, Singaporeans are talking of growing inequality, and foreign workers resent their conditions. In November 2012, 171 bus drivers hired from China went on an unprecedented strike deemed illegal, protesting over work conditions, and strike leaders were arrested. Human rights groups have criticized the treatment of foreign domestic workers by private employers. And now the Little India riot. One politician has already suggested that foreign workers’ housing should be relocated to outer islands.

The government faces a delicate task—on one hand, there is growing public concern over the rising number of foreigners. On the other, it has to safeguard foreign workers because the economy needs them: to build those tall buildings, trim the lawns, and keep the roads and footpaths squeaky clean.

Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London. Your comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com. To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi-

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