Transition: The Story of PN Balji

Review by Abhijit Nag (ex journalist at SPH)

PN Balji has the distinction of helping launch two newspapers in Singapore. Starting as the deputy editor of The New Paper, he soon became its editor and, after steering it to success, was the founding editor of Today. Though both are available online only now, they were widely circulated major dailies with large readerships in their day. The catchy, splashy The New Paper could not be more different from the text-heavy Today — proof of Balji’s versatility. Innovative, incisive, a gregarious wordsmith who mixes freely with people and writes insightfully about society, Balji has his fans who catapulted his memoir, The Reluctant Editor, to the top of the bestseller list in Singapore. Now here’s his biography by another media trailblazer: Woon Tai Ho founded the Singapore TV news channel, Channel NewsAsia.

An admirer of Balji, he writes engagingly about the newspaper veteran. While Balji in The Reluctant Editor wrote primarily about his experiences as a journalist, Woon tries to portray the man in his totality — not just as a newsman but as a husband, father and grandfather. He describes shooting the breeze with Balji over coffee, gets candid comments from Balji’s wife Uma and their precocious grandsons.

Affectionate, intimate, this is biography that is also social commentary. Reading about Balji and what he thinks of Singapore, his ancestral land India, and the world at large, one also gets an impression of Singapore. A tiny city-state that has prospered since independence, its transformation mirrors Balji’s own ascent: the son of a union leader in the former British naval base in Singapore, Balji started journalism as a crime reporter and went on to be a successful editor, able to afford a good life for his family. But that has not stopped him from fretting about the future of Singapore, which also is characteristic of Singaporeans, starting with the nation’s founder, the late Lee Kuan Yew. In short, this is a good book to read about Singapore — and not just Balji.