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Singapore-Indian Sat Pal Khattar will receive the Padma Shri in New Delhi on Thursday, becoming the first person to be so honoured with the award from the City-State.
Several years ago, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding was conferred on the then Singapore Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, in recognition of his diplomatic efforts to build an East Asian community that would accord a rightful place to India among other powers.
Significantly, Mr. Khattar (68) co-chairs the Singapore-India Partnership Foundation, which was started with the Nehru Award money as the nucleus for exchanges between the two countries. He is also a member of the city-State's presidential panel on minority rights, besides being an advisor to the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
A few years ago, he headed the Network India, one of the pioneering official groups in Singapore that sensed the possibility of India's “rise” as a potentially powerful economic power.
In his individual capacity as an international investor, Mr. Khattar is known to have made a mark in keeping India in some positive focus on Singapore's hyper-sensitive economic radar. As Chairman of Khattar Holdings, started in the early 1990s as a family enterprise, he has invested in diverse fields in not only India but also in China, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Recounting his first investment foray into India soon after it announced economic “liberalisation” in the early 1990s, he remembers how he was categorically told by Manmohan Singh, then the Finance Minister, that there should be no attempt to circumvent the Indian tax network by funnelling capital through Mauritius. For investing in India over the long term, “there are issues … because of democracy, but on the whole, it has been very good experience for us [in Khattar Holdings] in terms of our objectives,” says the seasoned Singapore-Indian.
Mr. Khattar says he has no idea who nominated him for the Padma Shri and why he was chosen.
Meticulous in his words, he says he was “born in that part of India which is now Pakistan.” The story of his early years criss-crossed the Partition trauma; and as a boy, he found himself, along with his sister, in a refugee camp on the Indian side for a while. He remembers being in Delhi on the day of India's Independence.
His father, good at Sanskrit and Urdu at school, was accidentally introduced to the world of small business and to Singapore by “someone” before Partition itself. And, he introduced Sat Pal to the challenges of business at his age of 18 in Singapore. Mr. Khattar's career graph also criss-crosses such fields as the selling of sports goods, legal education, the stewardship of a law firm, civil service in the inland revenue domain, and finally international investment.
Several years ago, the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding was conferred on the then Singapore Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, in recognition of his diplomatic efforts to build an East Asian community that would accord a rightful place to India among other powers.
Significantly, Mr. Khattar (68) co-chairs the Singapore-India Partnership Foundation, which was started with the Nehru Award money as the nucleus for exchanges between the two countries. He is also a member of the city-State's presidential panel on minority rights, besides being an advisor to the Singapore Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
A few years ago, he headed the Network India, one of the pioneering official groups in Singapore that sensed the possibility of India's “rise” as a potentially powerful economic power.
In his individual capacity as an international investor, Mr. Khattar is known to have made a mark in keeping India in some positive focus on Singapore's hyper-sensitive economic radar. As Chairman of Khattar Holdings, started in the early 1990s as a family enterprise, he has invested in diverse fields in not only India but also in China, Vietnam, the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
Recounting his first investment foray into India soon after it announced economic “liberalisation” in the early 1990s, he remembers how he was categorically told by Manmohan Singh, then the Finance Minister, that there should be no attempt to circumvent the Indian tax network by funnelling capital through Mauritius. For investing in India over the long term, “there are issues … because of democracy, but on the whole, it has been very good experience for us [in Khattar Holdings] in terms of our objectives,” says the seasoned Singapore-Indian.
Mr. Khattar says he has no idea who nominated him for the Padma Shri and why he was chosen.
Meticulous in his words, he says he was “born in that part of India which is now Pakistan.” The story of his early years criss-crossed the Partition trauma; and as a boy, he found himself, along with his sister, in a refugee camp on the Indian side for a while. He remembers being in Delhi on the day of India's Independence.
His father, good at Sanskrit and Urdu at school, was accidentally introduced to the world of small business and to Singapore by “someone” before Partition itself. And, he introduced Sat Pal to the challenges of business at his age of 18 in Singapore. Mr. Khattar's career graph also criss-crosses such fields as the selling of sports goods, legal education, the stewardship of a law firm, civil service in the inland revenue domain, and finally international investment.