Was there any reluctance to certain public policies that, in Singapore’s context of the 1960s just after years of high levels of corruption, could have seemed authoritarian or ill-intended. For example, the Land Acquisition Act that empowered the govmnt to acquire land at low cost for “public use”
Well, rich people, especially land-owners, those whom owned farms and plantations were unhappy.
But if we look closely, the acquired land was mostly used for:
Industrial estates,which allowed foreign investors to build factories, hiring thousands upon thousands of former coolies and labourers, allowing them to have better-paying jobs, acquiring technical skills and building a middle-class
HDB public estates, which allowed the common people to move out of slums
Military training grounds, allowing a strong defence force to be sustainable.
Usually, the rich families lost out.