MY VIEW by ASAD LATIF

TWO recent incidents captured two aspects of recessionary Singapore.

A bus was travelling quite some distance behind a taxi on a road that passes through a housing estate. A couple tried to wave down the cab. It slowed, but because the bus driver refused to reduce his speed although there was no vehicle immediately behind him, the taxi sped off without taking on the couple.

In the second incident, a woman driving a luxury car turned from a road into a street. Ignoring two prominent "No Entry" signs, she accelerated as she travelled the wrong way up the one-way street.

These are not insignificant incidents.

In a recession, every dollar counts. Two passengers needed a taxi, which was cruising by empty. But because of the bus driver's inflexible adherence to rules that are right in themselves, the cabby lost his fare.

And then there was the driver of the luxury car. Her bristling dismissiveness of the rules was provocative, almost obscene.

Was she emboldened by the notion that highly-motivated, highly-driven individuals like her have become more valuable in recession-hit Singapore?

Neither the density of laws nor their infraction is peculiar to this country.

The incidents were not evidence that Singaporeans in general obey rules mindlessly, like the bus driver did, or break them wilfully if they think they can get away with it, like the car driver did.

Singaporeans who behave that way have their counterparts everywhere.

Yet, Singapore's laws take on an astringent edge in these tough times. That is because regulations, rules, laws and, indeed, the law are ultimately a function of economics.

Look at it this way. Providing visual proof of Singapore's economic growth is a sprawling transport network, stretching from roads to expressways and MRT lines, that has been erected over the past three decades.

Though invisible, no less impressive is the infrastructure of laws that has been put in place over the same period.

The laws underpin, like the expressways, this country's reach into the future.

But for networks, whether of transport or of laws, to survive, all beneficiaries of economic mobility must acknowledge that a road is only as good as those who use it.

An anxious taxi driver who is driven away from passengers by a bus driver develops dissatisfaction not only towards the latter but also towards the rules which enable the bus driver to act that way.

A pedestrian who cannot prevent a luxury car driver from breaking the rules develops an aversion to the ease with which the upwardly mobile transgress the rules of mobility for all.

These reactions might be excessive. However, at a time when the laws of logic are under pressure from the laws of the market place, such sentiments should not be ignored.

Do not get me wrong. I am not calling for laws to be broken to make a point. I am saying that even within the parameters of the law, there is enough space to adjust to changing realities, so that, in fact, everyone's stake in a common system -- the highway code of life -- increases instead of decreasing.

Let me broaden the argument. There is greater need for give-and-take in society precisely because the times are constricting.

The moody passenger sharing a bus seat might be an unemployed person. It is necessary to bear with his fidgety behaviour.

The woman shoving her way through a wet market crowd may be jobless, too. Her aggressiveness is a form of self-defence against her helplessness, an attempt to protect her self-esteem. Her attitude needs to be accommodated.

Or take taxis, again. Many unemployed have turned to driving them for a living. So if a driver is unfamiliar with a destination or a route, there is no need to rub in his insecurity by taunting him for his ignorance and incompetence.

The passenger should be grateful, instead, that he can afford to be a passenger -- because he is employed.

What the driver deserves is not pity or condescension but respect, respect for being an honourable human who is earning a living and not stealing it from grandmothers wearing necklaces in lifts or little girls sporting bangles in the playgrounds of innocence.

These small realisations will make a cumulative difference as Singapore is challenged by the caprice of the post-modern global economy. It is worse than the fear of attack in some ways.

A military threat, terrible though it is, shocks people into a galvanised sense of their shared vulnerability.

Unemployment is, by contrast, a pulverising disease. Instead of turning strangers into comrades, as war does, it turns comrades into strangers.

A war requires people to fight against an intolerable affront to their collective being.

Unemployment demands unconditional surrender, for the unemployed cannot exist except by accepting their situation as natural, a malign nature from which they must seek deliverance in hope -- the hope of another job, another chance, another opportunity to be a self-respecting father, mother, husband, wife, son or daughter.

They deserve support. So let those Singaporeans who are not beleaguered stand by those who are desperate. Bus drivers, whose salaries are guaranteed, must think of taxi drivers, whose earnings are not.

As for luxury car drivers, no dispossession threatens them, but being on the wrong side of a one-way street could provide a one-way ticket to the next life.

Long live the law in Singapore.