Lee Kuan Yew is no more.

Lee Kuan Yew was one of my favourite world leaders whom I respected greatly.

I suppose he has died at a very ripe age, after accomplishing all that he set out to do. However, it is always sad when a great man passes away.

I have given some excerpts of an article which came out in the Telegraph today.

I liked his comparison with India which I have marked in red. Fortunately, Singapore did not have the hang-up of reservations and the best people were placed in the most suitable jobs. 

In India, our reservation policy and the rule of the leftist has destroyed discipline and meritocracy and the Congress with Mulayam Singh and Mamata Banerjee are further destroying it by bringing in religion. 

Unfortunately, it seems that AAP is following their footsteps.

Another point to note is making English as "Neutral platform"

By end of June 2012, the island's population stood at 5.31 million. Singapore is a multiracial and multicultural country with a majority population of Chinese (74.2% of the resident population), with substantial Malay (13.2%) and Indian minorities (9.2%).

In spte of 74.2 % of the population being Chinese, they preferred a neutral language like neutral so that they could develop as Englsih is the language of trade in the world. We Indians, with 20 languages, try to enforce Hindi on all the others with the result that we have not been able to unite and are becoming even more divided as we saw in Telengana.

Lee died early morning on Monday at the age of 91 after more than a month in hospital for treatment of severe pneumonia.

Lee's son and current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong entered parliament in 1984 that he was the heir-apparent to the father of modern Singapore.

It was the elder Lee's resolve that the son would be on the shop floor of statecraft and work his way up the ranks.

Lee's perspicacity, which has made Singapore an Asian showcase, is that he could have made his son his successor any time he wanted. But the son first served in the Singapore Army for more than a decade.

After he became a Member of Parliament, it took 20 long years in several challenging jobs and strict mentoring under Singapore's second Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong before Lee Hsien Loong became head of the government.

It should not come as a surprise to those who are familiar with Singapore's ethnic mix that the elder Lee's writings and speeches on India are voluminous enough to fill a whole section of any library.

He spoke candidly of how he cried when Singapore was unilaterally expelled from Malaysia in 1965. The city-state had little land, no water or natural resources and its different races were threatening to prey on each other in a cycle of death.

But on rare occasions, circumstances combine with people to produce results that are magical. The evolution of Singapore was one such. Lee told us that he was not sure if he could produce the same outcome if his city-state was given to him once again in the same condition that he inherited it as a republic on August 9, 1965.

 He then went on to identify some elements that made Singapore what it is today. Meritocracy, absence of corruption, integrity, a young population, English as a "neutral platform" among the different linguistic groups....

Lee did not say it in so many words, but the implication was that India did not have any of these qualities, at least not enough to realise this country's full potential at that time.

A strong streak of pragmatism was dominant in Lee's personality throughout. More than one biographer has recounted the World War II story of how Lee was rounded up by Japanese occupation forces along with several Chinese men. He asked for permission to go to his house nearby and fetch a change of clothes.

The Japanese agreed and Lee never returned. All the men who were rounded up that day were taken to a nearby beach and shot in cold blood. The incident is remembered in Singapore as the Sook Ching massacre.

Lee has often been assailed for being authoritarian and for depriving his countrymen of democracy as it is understood in the "free world". Lee was practical enough to realise that even the prospect of future prime ministership was not good enough to persuade a bright young man to live in a society unless it appealed to him if there was a better choice elsewhere.

It was the same streak of pragmatism which persuaded him - once Singapore acquired prosperity - that corruption in government can only be ended by paying government servants more salary and benefits than what the private sector could afford. It was a unique experiment that has worked.

The same streak of pragmatism transformed Lee in his later years into an enthusiast for India's economic reforms and its place in the Asian century.

Lee had a conversation with former US ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, and two Harvard academics from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs a few days before he was hospitalised in February 2013 for a cardiac problem which hindered blood flow to the brain.

Lee told them: "India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, underused. Whatever the political leadership may want to do, it must go through a very complex system at the Centre, and then even a more complex system in the various states."

Prophetic words, especially this month when the fate of the land acquisition legislation finely hangs in the balance.

He added: "The average Indian civil servant still sees himself primarily as a regulator and not as a facilitator. The average Indian bureaucrat has not yet accepted that it is not a sin to make profits and become rich." The entire conversation has been published as a book: Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master's Insights on China, the United States, and the World.

"India's private sector is superior to China's.... India has a stronger banking system and capital markets. India has stronger institutions - in particular, a well-developed legal system. India with an average age of 26, compared to China's 33... will enjoy a bigger demographic dividend, but it will have to educate its people better, or else, the opportunity will turn into a burden."