[rattray]

I visited Singapore before coming to India. I stayed in Little India because it was the only part of town with cheap hostels. It was also, I am told, the unofficial red light district. It may be more that Little India is one of the poorest parts of downtown Singapore, than that it's the "most Indian" part of Singapore.

Many Indians in Singapore occupy higher social classes, similar to Indians in America (from what I was told by an American-educated Singaporean friend). But Little India is where a different sort of Indian lives - the cheap, expendable, poorly treated laborer. In fact, there were riots there under a year back because such laborers were being treated so poorly, that caused many Singaporeans to reflect on how they were treating these people (from what I was told).

Did you visit the residential heartlands? It can be dirty there too, just in more of a Chinese way. A friend of mine works in the Singaporean police, and cited a number of recurring embarrassing incidents in these neighborhoods that are symptomatic of poverty elsewhere.

tl;dr: Little India isn't "Indian", it's just "poor".

[raincom]

My brother's friend, an electrician from India, worked in singapore. He was like $400 USD per month (20,000 Indian rupees) like 6 years ago. He used to live in a place whose roof is corrugated mental, and this was in Singapore. There are lots of laborers in Singapore, whose incomes don't allow them to live in nicer parts. So, glorified shanty town type homes exist there.

[psykotic]

Yes, Singapore probably couldn't exist without its poor guest workers. One of my in-laws is a long-time truck driver there for construction companies, and he and his colleagues live in makeshift shanties on construction sites, making 450 USD per month while working 12 hours a day.

[reagency]

It is sickening to see people boasting of the beauty of civilized Singapore and shaming the poor laborers, the ones who make the city beautiful and are massively underpaid for their effort.