Gross National Distress — Gross National Distress

Gross National Distress

The title is derived from a quote by the Secretary General of the National Trade Union Congress(NTUC) at the time, C.V. Devan Nair.

“Once it is clearly shown that the economic shock of the British withdrawal has been successfully absorbed by the economy, the trade unions can and will press for fair shares in the fruits of general economic progress. A growing G.N.P., which does not reflect itself in corresponding improvements in wages must be- come suspect, can only lead to what might be called a growing G.N.D. standing for "Gross National Distress”.”¹

Singapore went through several changes according to ideological and economic objectives. Post independence Singapore can be categorised into three economic phases. According to historian Thum Ping Tjin, these are the three periods:

1965 -1978 Export oriented industrialisation/Socialist period

Fresh from independence, Singapore implemented policies to draw foreign capital to the state. Low cost labour could be easily provided to firms that were looking to reduce costs in their manufacturing process. Singaporeans would benefit from this through a rise in wages and living standards.

1979 -1985 Second industrial revolution

This is when the state decides that it cannot rely on foreign direct investments forever. It attempts to raise

10 percent drop in GDP
40 percent wage rise
Forcing employers to raise wages and tightening control over Singapore
40 percent decline in investment
Hardly any advancement in technology

This strategy was essentially abandoned.

1986 - Present Neoliberal period

During this period, the state acquiesces to the shift of capitalism towards neoliberalism. Low cost labour is imported and makes up the bulk of the local workforce. The suppression of wages through cost cutting has also forced Singaporeans to be burdened with anxieties about wage levels. In this way, Singaporeans do not progress to become more “entrepreneurial”. Instead with stricter laws that ensure stability and predictability, individuals never cultivate a culture of innovation. Unfortunately, Singapore despite being a global hub of capital has developed what Albert Winsemius termed “village mentality” on other fronts. It relies on low cost foreign labour to achieve results in productivity and foreign capital for growth in GDP.

In thinking about the title, one might consider that the original use of the term “Gross National Distress” to be a prophecy come true. C.V. Devan Nair made the comment that if workers’ wages did not rise in tandem with GDP, there would be Gross National Distress.

This seems to be a reality as wages are being suppressed through the state’s propensity for importing transient low cost labour. Both migrant and local labour are in competition for the suppression of their own wages. This supposed strategy was initially a temporary solution to the dwindling population of Singapore which could be traced to a policy that was implemented in the 1970s.

“As part of the two-child policy, the government introduced a set of disincentives pertaining to childbirth fees, income tax, maternity leave and prioritisation of public housing allocation aimed at penalising couples who had more than two children from 1 August 1973 onwards.”²

The change in demographics of factory labour indicates the state’s inability to solve its manpower issue. The population dilemma is also coupled with strict government policies that prevent citizens from developing higher levels of “productivity consciousness”. The worker must meet targets for the firm but also meet targets for the state while under the supervision of both. Targets in factories measure productivity of factory labour. By negotiating or resisting, workers are therefore obliquely resisting the government's call to increase productivity. Productivity, which is seen to be determined by the worker in Chung Yuen Kay’s essay, is also a driving force of value. As stated by Beverly Best,

“Value exerts its determining force as productivity because productivity determines the cost of things: it determines the range of things that can be, and are, produced; the scale of production(also a delimited range; and, finally, the range of possibilities for the distribution of the product.”³

The targets of factory production in the eyes of the state become social targets. Productivity consciousness in the case of Singapore is a strategy to subject workers to social obligations. This is evident in how the state devises strategies to govern personal aspects of Singaporean life through notions of cleanliness and Asian values.

Initially I believed that productivity consciousness might have been the reason for mass psychogenic illness(MPI) to occur among factory workers. I cannot determine whether that is true based on the evidence gathered. MPI might not be a result of productivity consciousess but it has become a feature of the Singaporean productivity consciousness.

Potential tactics such as notions of cleanliness and Asian values also engineer the motion of the Singaporean consciousness towards higher productivity. However, cleanliness and Asian values are wrought with inherent contradictions that render these ideas hard to follow or believe. Workers rely on their own network and strategies of negotiation to navigate factory labour. The ‘human aspect’ should not be extinguished but encouraged through lessening measures of control. The language used to propagate ideas of productivity consciousness draw from “scientific rationality” and this does not seem to appeal to workers. Perhaps the state should yield to language, and inevitably actions, that show care and concern.

I propose that instead of the workers, the employers of firms should undergo indoctrination of productivity consciousness. As mentioned by S. Rajaratnam during the May Day rally of 1968,

“Sacrifice, discipline and effort on the part of workers must be matched by similar sacrifice, discipline and effort on the part of employers and government.”⁴

This might help to instill the ‘human aspect’ in their attitudes and possibly build deeper connections with the factory operators, management and unions. Episodes of MPI are only momentary disruptions in the production chain, however, an employer with no clear understanding of productivity consciousness will incur a heavier cost. One could even say that this could be a cause for Gross National Distress.

Singapore has built for itself a superstructure through various strategies of control. This superstructure inherits traits from the one thing it sought during the first industrialisation period: capital. According to Beverly Best,

“Capital is a social relation that invents a world in its image, a particular mode of sociality that we can also call ‘value’. Capital is value-in-motion; capital is a value machine. What makes capital unique is that its base(concept, essence), while an objective outgrowth of its historical conditions, is nonetheless formless: immaterial, invisible, supra-sensible.”⁵

Productivity consciousness was conceived to be a tool to sustain the growth of capital. However, various levels of socialisation occur in the factories as mentioned by Chung Yuen Kay, Nadia Florman and Zainab Mahmood. This in turn leads to cultivation of a space for the consciousness of the worker to emerge. This emergence of consciousness results in strategies towards negotiation and in certain cases, MPI or spirit possession/sightings.

In the context of this publication, Gross National Distress is a space that attempts to contemplate the relationship between mass psychogenic illness(MPI) and productivity consciousness. At the core of this consideration, I find that MPI is viewed as a ‘problem’ while productivity consciousness - an aspiration. The objective of this research is to make the ‘problem’ an aspiration. The unconscious use of MPI as a strategy of resistance or refusal, along with other tactics of negotiation, will continue to be a source of inspiration for this research. Keeping this in mind, the main driving force works that are made during this research process also seek to experiment with latent expressions of tensions unvoiced.

_{1. PERJUANGAN NTUC, April Issue, 1971.
2. Saw,Swee-Hock, Population Control for Zero Growth in Singapore, Oxford University Press, 1980,
3. Best, Beverley. The Automatic Fetish. Verso Books, 2024.
4. NTUC(National Trade Union Congress) May Day Rally, 1968.
5. Best, Beverley. The Automatic Fetish. Verso Books, 2024.}