The serious business of belling the cat

The phrase ‘To bell a cat’ comes from Aesop’s fables. It is an interesting fable with an equally interesting lesson. It goes something like this: Long ago, the mice had a general council to consider what measures they could take to outwit their common enemy, the Cat. Various ideas came up; but at last a young mouse got up and said he had a proposal to make which he thought would meet the case. “You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the enemy approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of her approach, we could easily escape from her. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cat. By this means we should always know when she was about, and could easily retire while she was in the neighbourhood.”This proposal was received with general applause, until an old mouse got up and said: “That is all very well, but who is to bell the Cat?” The mice looked at one another and nobody spoke. Moral of the fable: It is easy to propose impossible remedies.We find ourselves in the Mice Council situation. We do not know how to bell the cat. Indeed, we don’t seem to know the cat. Tom cat comes to us like some sort of inexplicable malady like the plague in medieval England. We have problems that seem unsolvable in our part of the world; poverty, disease, famine and droughts are some of the huge problems that beset us. The good thing about these is that they are easy to recognise. But this is the surface. Further scrutiny reveals otherwise. Think about it, bad weather is not unique to Africa, other places have hurricanes and earthquakes that make our situation look like child’s play. At independence, we were at par with the Far Eastern countries, we were all poor countries. One has to ask what happened to make South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and the like at par today with first world countries while we remain mired in poverty. How did they become tigers while we remained lambs and chicken?The first thing is they got to identify the cat, and properly so! They figured it in their economies. Singapore provides a good example. After gaining independence in 1963, the country joined Malaysia but broke off after experiencing problems that occur when we take our eyes off the ball… when one group felt that it must dominate others. They did the opposite thing; everyone at independence celebrations got citizenship. To this day, this sense of egalitarianism exists in the Singaporean society. Singaporean economy is known as one of the freest, most innovative, most competitive, and most business-friendly. It is the 14th largest exporter and the 15th largest importer in the world (not bad for a country of only 5 million). The country has the highest trade-to-GDP ratio in the world at 407.9 per cent, signifying the importance of trade to its economy.The country is currently the only Asian nation to have AAA credit ratings from all major credit rating agencies. It attracts a lot of foreign direct investments because of its location, corruption-free environment, skilled workforce, low tax rates and advanced infrastructure. There are more than 7,000 multinational corporations from the United States, Japan, and Europe in Singapore. There are also 1,500 companies from China and 1,500 from India. Foreign firms are found in almost all sectors of the economy. Interestingly, roughly 44 per cent of the Singaporean workforce is made up of non-Singaporeans. Over ten free trade agreements have been signed with other countries and regions. Now that is an entrepreneurial country.Our Cat is in our minds, individually and collectively. We need to take ownership of our situation and creatively seek and promote home-grown solutions. We will have to go beyond the usual conferences on this and get our hands dirty. We need to turn conventional wisdom on its head and keep at it until we get a breakthrough. Insanity is doing the same thing in the same manner and expecting different results. We must think and act entrepreneurially.