Sharanjit Leyl presents this special 45-minute programme to mark 50 years of Singapore's independence, recorded at 2310hrs SGT on 1 Mar 2015. The following presentation is reproduced from the BBC News online website @ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31626174 Fifty years ago Singapore became an independent state, after leaving the short-lived Malaysian Federation. With no natural resources, just how did this tiny country go from swamp to one of the region's leading economies? On the strength of its human resources - immigrants like my grandfather. At the age of 17, with only the shirt on his back, Fauja Singh left his parents in a small Punjabi village and made the long and dusty journey on foot and by train to Kolkata (Calcutta), where he caught a ship to his new home. It was the early 1930s. He arrived in a melting pot of cultures and chaos on an island at the mouth of a river, which bustled with trade - Singapore. Once a swamp-filled jungle, when the British arrived in 1819, under the leadership of Sir Stamford Raffles, the makings of modern Singapore began. Lying at the mid-point of the shipping route between India and China, it became a thriving trading port, and with this trade came a huge influx of immigrants from all over Asia. Life was not easy for the new arrivals. Many from China worked as labourers and lived in squalid and cramped conditions. Fauja worked in jobs ranging from night watchman to milk vendor and moneylender. When he had made enough money he went home to fetch his brother, sister and young bride from Amritsar. Fauja and his wife Swaran Kaur had eight children. His eldest son Kernail excelled academically and made it to the country's most prestigious school, Raffles Institution. He went on to win scholarships at university and after graduating he joined the government of a young and newly independent nation. Fauja Singh was my grandfather, and Kernail my father. They paved the way for me to be educated and well-off. It's a story that echoes that of many Singaporeans, and also of the nation itself. Singaporeans are among the world's wealthiest populations - Ferraris and Rolls Royces are a common sight on the clean streets. It's a far cry from the island's humble beginnings, when more than a million Singaporeans lived in "squatters" - makeshift wooden houses in villages known by the Malay term "kampongs". My father and his siblings grew up on a large plot of land that sits in current-day Bukit Merah, an area in central Singapore whose name means "Red Hill". My grandfather claimed the land by planting a perimeter of banana trees which formed dense foliage and kept others out. Then he built a house so large, he would later rent out its back rooms to lodgers. But the house, like many at the time, was rudimentary. My aunt, Manjit Kaur, was born there in pre-independence Singapore. "It was a hard life. There was no water, no healthy water," she says. "We lived a simple life, our neighbours were simple. We looked after each other and we had the same goal - to survive." In 1959, Britain took the first steps toward granting independence by allowing Singapore to govern itself. The charismatic Lee Kuan Yew of the People's Action Party won a landslide victory in the first fully elected parliament. Manjit remembers the family attended a political rally, despite not speaking the language. "We didn't understand a word but I think whatever he was saying must have been quite important because everyone was paying attention. They clapped every time he would say something. When they clapped, we clapped," she says. This was a revelation to me - I had no idea my grandfather had had any interest in politics. In August 1963, Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia. It was made up of four countries and territories - Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak and Singapore. Manjit remembers celebrating the union at school. "We started learning a song called something like Let's Get Together, Sing a Happy Song, Malaysia Forever." But it wasn't forever. The members of the federation disagreed on fundamental issues like who should control the finances of Singapore. Racial tensions led to riots between Singaporean Chinese and Malay groups. In 1965, Singapore was forced to leave the Malaysian Federation. Manjit remembers seeing the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, cry during an interview. "We'd go to our neighbours' house and watch TV and we saw him crying and we didn't know why." It was a traumatic beginning to independence. Many believed Singapore could not survive on its own. But with huge hopes for the future, Singapore began to build the infrastructure that would transform the city. You can read the remainder of the above presentation @ http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31626174

• published: 01 Mar 2015
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