In Lieu of Ideology: An Intellectual Biography of Goh Keng Swee
This book took three years to write, and was completed exactly a month after Dr GOH KENG SWEE passed away on 14 May 2010. It attempts to fathom the genius of the man who initiated many of Singapore’s major institutions. Born in Malacca in 1918, this keen-eyed Malayan reached maturity at a time when European colonialism was breathing its last. By the time he became self-governing Singapore’s first Minister of Finance in 1959, he had made a name for himself as the colony’s foremost social scientist, having carried out groundbreaking surveys on urban poverty and housing. When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, Dr Goh immediately took charge of the task of building an army from scratch for the accidental city-state.
His contributions to the infrastructure of Singapore in the fields of Finance, Defence, Education and others, are well recorded. What is less understood was the man’s legendary practical sense. This work avoids reliance on secondary accounts and concentrates strongly on Dr Goh’s own words to comprehend his potent and proactive powers of reasoning.
