Riot was an incident waiting to happen

Amid the flood of reports on and responses to the Little India riot, perhaps the question to ask is whether it was an incident waiting to happen.

One frequently encounters jaywalkers and vehicles flouting traffic rules blatantly on Serangoon Road or the side lanes. It is not uncommon for offenders to stare at drivers after a warning honk. Left unchecked, this has become the norm.

Jaywalkers elsewhere are fined frequently. Is Little India allowed to develop in isolation?

No incident of this magnitude is caused by a single factor, though. There are usually underlying forces at work, and when conditions prevail, all that is needed is a trigger. On Sunday, it was a traffic accident.

And one underlying force was group behaviour. The larger the group, the more assertive its members become. Small differences with others can be amplified and often contribute to a feeling of them-versus-us.

The crowds at Little India are now very large, and many of us avoid the place. It creates an atmosphere for people to follow the acts of others whose backgrounds are similar.

In this case, the foreign workers also share a similar working and living regime that they may not be used to or even resent. Was this why the authorities were targeted?

Then there is the alcohol issue. Residents have been complaining about drinking groups, while government and business coffers have been fed by a mild but growing addiction.

The alcohol issue is slowly creeping into even parks and mini-parks, and a drinking ban in certain public places is being considered. In Little India, the problem is much larger.

Are these manifestations of our capacity for foreigners in our society being exceeded? We can build taller buildings, but building a bigger society is not as easy.

No one denies the need for foreigners to complement our workforce, but the breakneck speed at which we are building infrastructure for a growing population may be causing us to import more such workers than we can accommodate comfortably.

Unless we wake up to this, I worry that we may treat only the symptoms, not the cause, and that more incidents may come.