This was a completely pointless conversation, but it did raise an interesting question: What the fuck is a heartland, really?

These days, the term ‘heartland’ is used so often that we cease to register its strangeness. Every time a Minister gives a speech about the ‘heartland’ at some ‘grassroots event’, we roll our eyes and zone out.

NDP mobile columns don’t visit Tampines or the East, they visit ‘the heartland’. In ST headlines, we speak of heartland SMEs, newly-opened heartland malls, and even heartland condos. When sex workers are arrested for plying their trade, we write editorials on how vice has penetrated the heartlands, as if Geylang/Orchard Towers were 400 kilometres away instead of $14 by Grab.

Nonetheless, the concept is universally understood. Unbidden, it conjures up images of a wage-earning, middle-income Singaporean who commutes to work by MRT from his/her home in Toa Payoh or Tampines, returning every evening to their family with a packet of something from the nearby hawker centre.

Sounds about right?

Well, it shouldn’t. There is no reason why this particular vision should be christened ‘heartland’. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘heartland’ means:

1.The inner part of a country, region or area, esp in contrast or when regarded as important or powerful

2.A region which is especially important to or is associated with an activity, organization or ideology

Neither of these definitions makes sense in the local context.

Firstly, Singapore is too small to have an ‘inner part’. Secondly, I can’t imagine in what way is Ang Mo Kio or Yishun ‘especially important’ or to what ends.