The current racial balance – about 75 percent Chinese, 15 percent Malay – is important to the government. Singapore's Chinese majority is one reason the state split from its confederation with Malaysia in 1965, following race riots. Lee Kwan Yew, Singapore's founding father and architect of its social policies during his 20 years as prime minister, is closely identified with policies to promote Chinese culture. To critics, the focus on "educated" men and women today is merely a politically correct way of targeting the ethnic Chinese. In fact, in the early days of the SDU, the divergence in birth rates across racial and socioeconomic classes was a stated reason for taking action. "If we continue to reproduce ourselves in this lopsided way we will be unable to maintain our present standards,'' Mr. Lee said in his national day speech in 1984, the year the SDU was created.

Derisive laughter rises from the young hipsters reclining on a red velvet sofa when the unit is mentioned. "SDU – Single, Desperate and Ugly,'' says a thirty-something woman in a miniskirt and an open-backed shirt. "Those guys are geeks – the government doesn't think we can do better on our own,'' says another young woman. "You kind of get fed up sometimes with all the hand-holding. We're grown-ups. And the government is not our parent."