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Singapore PM finds 'Wokeness' problematic amid Ola boss' 'pronoun' fight with LinkedIn

Singapore PM finds 'Wokeness' problematic amid Ola boss' 'pronoun' fight with LinkedIn

“In the West they’ve got a movement called Wokeness where you are super sensitive about other peoples issues… It leads to very extreme attitudes and social norms particularly in some academic institutions, universities.”

Business Today Desk
Business Today Desk
  • Updated May 13, 2024 9:17 AM IST
Singapore PM finds 'Wokeness' problematic amid Ola boss' 'pronoun' fight with LinkedInOla chief on LinkedIn termed the usage of the pronoun ‘they’ an “illness”, which was taken down by the site

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in an interview panned 'Western Woke Culture', arguing that it undermined societal solidarity. “In the West they’ve got a movement called Wokeness where you are super sensitive about other peoples issues… It leads to very extreme attitudes and social norms particularly in some academic institutions, universities.”

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He mentioned concepts such as creating safe environments, respecting preferred pronouns, and giving warnings before potentially offensive remarks.

Lee said this movement has a negative knock-on effect. “You become hypersensitive when others say things or mention things or refer to you, without the respect which you or your super subgroup feel you are entitled to.”

“I do not think we want to go in that direction,” said Lee.  The Singapore PM's comment comes amid Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal's criticism of LinkedIn and Microsoft for their 'woke' policies. Aggarwal in a post on X, said that he plans to develop an Indian tech platform and move Ola's operations away from Microsoft's Azure cloud service post the spat.

"I'm not against global tech companies. But as an Indian citizen, I feel concerned that my life will be governed by western Big Tech monopolies and we will be culturally subsumed as the above experience shows...I want to confront this forced ideology as a free-thinking Indian," he wrote on X.

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His specific point of contention was LinkedIn's introduction of pronoun options in user profiles. He viewed this as an example of Western ideology potentially overriding Indian cultural values. Zoho chief Sridhar Vembu backed Aggarwal in a post, writing that India needs to resist the West’s woke imperialism. “I agree with Bhavish. We in India have to strongly resist this woke imperialism – it is best understood as a fanatical religious doctrine that masquerades as a socio-political movement,” replied Vembu to Aggarwal’s lengthy post on X where he expressed his concerns about the dominance of Western companies in the tech industry and their impact on Indian society.

Lee in the interview also highlighted the quality of IIT-IIM alumni as he underscored the need for Singapore to continue bringing in foreign talent to meet manpower demands. The IITs and the IIMs are the top institutions in India and securing a place in them is comparable to getting into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University or Harvard University, Lee told Channel News Asia.

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The professionals from there (IIT-IIM Alumni) have formed associations in Singapore and hold functions from time to time. "If I can get such a pool, come here and work here, it is a tremendous plus for us," he said.

Published on: May 13, 2024 9:17 AM IST
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