I’ve always had
a fascination for different places and cultures. So, whilst I never really “made
it” to a level where I got sent to all sorts of obscure places, I’ve been able
to live my fantasies of being outside of the confines of small-town England or
Singapore through watching movies shot in different parts of the world. I loved
watching Kung-Fu movies because I got an idealized image of China and Hong
Kong. You could say that I was most comfortable in “Chinatowns” because I
always saw myself as the rickshaw puller in Chinatown who would somehow become
a hero (my folks would shoot me for saying it, but I preferred to be seen as a “Collie”
than an English gentleman inhabiting a Chinese body).
As I grew older
and the community that I interacted with more was increasingly Indian national,
my interest in Bollywood grew. I found certain meanings from Bollywood movies,
tried to pick up Hindi (which is easier for me than picking up Hokkien) and every
Indian girl on screen was a goddess. I also had a fantasy of ending up with an
Indian girl, after lengthy battles with my parents (which would never have happened.
Firstly, I was never in a place where I could meet a Bollywood lookalike and
secondly my parents are exceedingly open-minded, thus ruining any teenage needs
I might have had of trying to rebel).
I haven’t lost
my fascination of with how people from all over the world might live. My greatest
discovery during the various Covid imposed lock downs in the last year was “Nollywood”
or Nigerian cinema. Whist Bollywood has become exceedingly “slick,” Nollywood
is refreshingly crude. Many of the scenes look like they’ve been shot with a
handheld video camera. The actors and actresses are not wonderfully attractive
(they look like the rest of us) and that provides a wonderful sense of realism
that you don’t get in either Hollywood or Bollywood.
One of the
things that Nollywood does well is to cover the corruption that Nigeria has
become so famous for. If you watch Nollywood, you get to see how people expect
palms to be greased for the smallest of things and you get a glimpse of how the
chase for power becomes particularly addictive.
I just finished
a series called “King of Boys: The Return of the King,” which tells a story of
a businesswoman who is also a gangster. She comes back from exile and proceeds
to go into politics. The main character is violent (there’s a line which says
that “peace of mind” is not for people like her), bribes and blackmails her way
to power. In the end, she ends up as “Governor” of Lagos State (one of Nigeria’s
wealthier ones), and rules from the top and she instills a successor for her
underworld activities – hence he rules from below.
There is a
crucial point in the series when her enemies think they finally have her and she
then explains that she remained “Oba” (Yoruba for ruler) of the table for so
long because she always knew what her enemies were going to do before they even
planned it.”
This fictional
character is providing the rest of us with much valuable advice – which is to know
how the people we’re going to deal with, are going to react even before they
know what they’re going to do. I believe the correct term is “empathy.”
Modern management
theory works on the maxim that “Information of power.” As such, everyone is
focused on how to “acquire” information. People in leadership positions have
become particularly obsessed with “gathering intelligence.” The idea is simple –
the more I know about a given situation, the more I can act correctly. The
follow up idea is that if I can limit your sources of information, the more I
can limit your ability to act.
Take CECA
debates. Whatever one thinks of CECA, the government inevitably has the upper
hand when it comes to quoting statistics. The reason is simple, they control
the information flow.
However, what
people forget is that while controlling the flow of information is important in
dealing with situations, there’s got to be an element of knowing what people
will do with the information. It’s like this – if you know exactly what the
other guy is going to do, you’ve won most of the battle.
This, however,
requires a certain characteristic. One needs empathy or at least some
imagination. This is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes. Let’s go
back to the recent events in Afghanistan as an example. We had a group of
bearded men who managed to send the world’s most powerful military and
information gathering machine packing. How did they do that?
Part of the
explanation was provided by former General HR McMaster, who served as National
Security Advisor to the Trump administration. He argued that “we also assume
that people are like us.” General McMaster then went onto argue that US policy
makers made mistakes because they assumed the Taliban would act in the way that
Americans would act.
I will leave US
military policy to better informed people. However, I do believe that the
General has hit the nail on the head in as much as part of our failures in life
come from the assumption that people are “exactly like us,” which in turn makes
us unable to understand why people don’t do or react in the same way as us.
Look at the
current PAP government and how it handles issues like CECA. They came out with
great statistics to get their points across. Take a look at the Ministry of
Trade and Industry’s website on CECA, which says that 97,000 locals were
employed by Singapore-based companies that invested in India in 2019:
https://www.mti.gov.sg/Improving-Trade/Free-Trade-Agreements/CECA
I can’t dispute
that statistic. However, what does that mean to a 40-year-old mid-career
professional who has just been retrenched, can’t find a job and every time he
steps in for an interview, the interviewer is inevitably from India? Has anyone
in a policy making position ever thought of how you’d explain the benefits of
CECA to someone in that position.
If the Prime Minister
seriously wants to secure his legacy, he should watch this Nollywood flick. He and
his team need to understand that having statistics to support their policies is
only part of the battle. The other part is, as former President Bill Clinton said
is getting people to “feel it.” The ruling party needs to know and understand
the people that it is ruling – otherwise it could end up being the most
successful ruling party in history to lose an election.
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